(L-R) Robin Macdougall as Tyltyl and Tula Belle as Mytyl. Image credits: Paramount Pictures
Cinema is a continuously altering landscape. Not just do the stories we inform reveal our inmost desires, however the innovation we utilize to inform them often verges on dreams themselves.
Right now, we are on the cusp of the AI transformation. Ethical arguments are being waged in Hollywood over de-ageing stars and digital doubles. With all this development it is simple to forget where we began. But the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival won’t let you forget.
Scotland’s very first and just quiet Film Festival, Hippfest, went back to its home at the Hippodrome in Bo’ness on Wednesday night with their glittering opening movie The Blue Bird (1918).
Based on the 1908 play by Maurice Maeterlinck, The Blue Bird, is a dream experience, spectacular audiences for a century.
One night brother or sisters Tyltyl and Mytyl are charged by the fairy Bérylune to discover the bluebird of joy. Their journey takes them to far lands, glimpsing marvels and scaries alike. But they might discover that what they look for is closer to home than they may believe.
Director Maurice Tourneur clearly valued simpleness in the story so that his images might take centre phase. Each frame might quickly be misinterpreted for a painting. Tourneur utilized broad strokes of creativity to equate the wildness of youth dreams to the screen.
Part of the intrigue of quiet movie is visualizing how modern audiences would have gotten The Blue Bird when it was very first launched. You need to envision that after 4 years of war, audiences would have been starving for escapism.
Tourneur uses girls outfitted in silks and crowns, unlike anything a household suffering under a war economy might have seen. His outfits and settings exude high-end as we are assisted through the palace of the night and of joy, each more decadent than the last.
Plus a few of the visual results that Tourneur manages most likely left movie theater fans in the exact same type of wonder that James Cameron accomplishes in Avatar.
Wednesday night’s screening was accompanied by the opening night of a brand-new commission by Sonic Bothy. The ensemble is acclaimed for its speculative and modern music. They include another layer of reverie to the already fantastical images.
Do not be frightened from this stunning piece of movie theater since of its silence. It is fantastic what can be obtained from the raising of an eyebrow or the jerk of an upper lip. Silent movie is the “show not tell technique” required to the severe and it trusts us to comprehend.
If you take anything far from quiet movie, take this. People have actually been attempting to turn their dreams into reality permanently, long prior to we had the tools to really do it.
The Hippodrome Silent Film Festival runs up until Sunday, March 26. Book tickets here.
Featured Image Credit: Paramount Pictures
