GB
1927
1hr 55mins
Dir: Maurice Elvey
Starring: Estelle Brody and John Stuart
During ‘Wakes Week’ the Hindle mill workers go on holiday to Blackpool
This 1927 silent film drama is adapted from Stanley Houghton’s once controversial 1912 stage play of the same name, and it includes a great deal of location work in Blackpool and Manchester. There is a view of an LMS Class 4P ‘Compound’ 4-4-0 entering a tunnel with an express and some shots of early ‘toast-rack’ Blackpool trams. Hindle Wakes was filmed four times, twice as a silent (the first version, also directed by Elvey, made in 1918) and twice in sound (in 1931 and 1952). The 1927 production was well-budgeted and is generally held by film historians to be the best of the four. Neither the 1918 or the 1931 versions feature any railway material.