Hindle Wakes

Estelle Brody, Norman McKinnel and Humberstone Wright.

Directed by Maurice Elvey, assisted by Victor Saville. Based on the play by Stanley Houghton. Two original scores by In the Nursery and Philip Carli. Restored by the British Film Institute.

Factory girls Fanny Hawthorn and Mary Hollins decide to take their vacation at Blackpool — Britain’s version of Coney Island. There, Fanny meets Allan, the wealthy son of factory owner Nathaniel Jeffcote. The two impetuously ditch Mary to spend some time alone. When her family discovers what happened, they confront Nathaniel, who forces his son to propose marriage to the girl. Fanny’s decision shocks everyone…

In filming the popular stage play, director Maurice Elvey decided to provide a complete back-story. In doing so, he liberated the film from the conventions of the theater. The location scenes with Fanny and Mary are incredible. Using the actual mills in Lancashire gives the film an astonishing documentary realism, while the moving camera flying in and around Blackpool’s famed rides like the plunging Big-Dipper and Helter-Skelter, and climbing the heights of the Tower is as good as any in the history of cinema.

When Stanley Houghton’s play opened in 1912, a near riot broke out in London. Famed anarchist Emma Goldman proclaimed it as one of the most important advancements in liberating women from society’s sexual double standards. Even today, Fanny’s final decision — a choice that ripped apart the conventional morals of Edwardian society — astonishes audiences with its pure courage. For many, Hindle Wakes is England’s equivalent to Ibsen’s The Doll’s House.

Bonus Features

Two musical scores.

Modern accompaniment score by the famed British group In the Nursery.

Original piano score composed and performed by Philip Carli.

Stills Gallery including scenes from the film and the original Manchester production of the play in 1912.

Milestone press kit (DVD-rom format).

Article by anarchist Emma Goldman about the play (DVD-rom format).

Reviews

"Stylish, well written and attractively shot … Estelle Brody is a delight as the feisty heroine, down-to-earth and unaffectedly sensual in her love scenes." – Philip Kemp, film historian

"The message of Hindle Wakes is of inestimable value, inasmuch as it dispels the fog of the silly sentimentalism and disgusting bombast that declares woman a thing apart from nature — one who neither does nor must crave the joys of life permissible to man." — Emma Goldman.

"The selfless idealists at Milestone Film and Video have followed up their DVD release of E. A. Dupont's dazzling 1929 British silent "Picadilly" with another important English title recently restored by the British Film Institute: Maurice Elvey's 1927 "Hindle Wakes," a working-class melodrama set in the Lancashire mill town of Hindle during the annual break (the wakes of the title). The plot, adapted from a 1912 stage play praised by no less than Emma Goldman for its aggressive shattering of class and gender taboos, follows a brief affair between the honest, upstanding mill worker Fanny Hawthorne (Estelle Brody) and the mill owner's coddled son, Allan Jeffcoate (John Stuart), when they meet amid the carnival atmosphere of a trip to the seaside resort of Blackpool. Scandal ensues when their liaison becomes known, but Fanny then makes the starling choice that provoked Goldman's admiration, refusing to marry her holiday lover. "Hindle Wakes" anticipates such American-made "little people" dramas as Paul Fejos's "Lonesome" and King Vidor's "Crowd" (both 1928) with its visualization of working-class lives divided into weekday regimentation and weekend release. Where the protagonists of the American films head to Coney Island, the English visit Blackpool, filmed by Elvey in an extended, documentary aside as an epic swirl of humanity. The same modern, mechanical technology that rules the workers' lives in the mill is now placed in the service of their entertainment, through the huge roller coasters, vast ballrooms swept by sinister searchlights and nighttime electrical illuminations that turn the resort into a densely crowded dreamland. The shiningly restored print on the Milestone disc is accompanied by a choice of two scores, a contemporary, percussive interpretation by the group In the Nursery and a traditional piano score by Philip Carli. $29.99. Not rated." – Dave Kehr, NEW YORK TIMES