Adrian Brunel
Encyclopedia
Adrian Brunel was an English film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

. Brunel's directorial career started in the silent era
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

, and reached its peak in the latter half of the 1920s. His surviving work from the 1920s, both full-length feature films and shorts, is highly regarded by silent film historians for its distinctive innovation, sophistication and wit. With the arrival of talkies, Brunel's career ground to a halt and he was absent from the screen for several years before returning in the mid-1930s with a flurry of quota quickie productions, a majority of which are now classed as lost. Brunel's last credit as director was in a 1940 wartime propaganda short film, although he worked for a few years more as a "fixer-up" for films directed or produced by friends in the industry.

After decades of neglect, Brunel's work has latterly been rediscovered and has undergone a critical re-evaluation. His "lost" films are eagerly sought, and the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...

 includes two (The Crooked Billet
The Crooked Billet
The Crooked Billet is a 1929 British drama film directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Madeleine Carroll, Carlyle Blackwell and Miles Mander.-Cast:* Carlyle Blackwell - Dietrich Hebburn* Madeleine Carroll - Joan Easton* Miles Mander - Guy Morrow...

(1929) and Badger's Green
Badger's Green (1934 film)
Badger's Green is a 1934 British comedy film directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Valerie Hobson, Bruce Lester, David Horne and Wally Patch. It was adapted from the 1930 play Badger's Green by R.C. Sheriff. A picturesque village is threatened with redevelopment by a speculative builder, leading...

(1934)) on its "75 Most Wanted
BFI 75 Most Wanted
The BFI 75 Most Wanted is a list compiled by the British Film Institute of their most sought-after British feature films not currently held in the BFI National Archive, and classified as "missing, believed lost". The films chosen range from quota quickies and B-movies to lavish prestige...

" list of missing British feature films.

Early life and career

Born in Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...

 in 1892, Brunel was educated at Harrow School
Harrow School
Harrow School, commonly known simply as "Harrow", is an English independent school for boys situated in the town of Harrow, in north-west London.. The school is of worldwide renown. There is some evidence that there has been a school on the site since 1243 but the Harrow School we know today was...

. His mother Adey was a drama teacher so he grew up in a stage milieu and dabbled in acting and writing plays, as well as training in opera. On leaving school he worked for a time as a local journalist in Brighton before taking employment in London in the bioscope show
Bioscope show
A Bioscope show was a fairground attraction consisting of a travelling cinema. The heyday of the Bioscope was from the late 1890s until World War I....

 distribution division of music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...

 chain Moss Empires
Moss Empires
Moss Empires was a British company formed in Edinburgh from the merger of the theatre companies owned by Sir Edward Moss and Sir Oswald Stoll in 1898. This created the largest British chain of music halls...

. This spurred his interest in cinema, and in 1916 he and a friend formed a company called Mirror Films, which produced one film, The Cost of a Kiss, the following year.

In 1920 Brunel joined with actor Leslie Howard
Leslie Howard (actor)
Leslie Howard was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. Among his best-known roles was Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind and roles in Berkeley Square , Of Human Bondage , The Scarlet Pimpernel , The Petrified Forest , Pygmalion , Intermezzo , Pimpernel Smith...

 and author A. A. Milne
A. A. Milne
Alan Alexander Milne was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.-Biography:A. A...

 to set up Minerva Films, which produced six comedy shorts over a two-year period. Brunel's major break came in 1923, when he was offered the directorial role for the film The Man Without Desire
The Man Without Desire
The Man Without Desire is a 1923 British silent film fantasy drama, directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Ivor Novello, who also co-produced the film along with Miles Mander. The film was Brunel's feature-length directorial debut and has been described as "one of the stranger films to emerge from...

, starring Ivor Novello
Ivor Novello
David Ivor Davies , better known as Ivor Novello, was a Welsh composer, singer and actor who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. Born into a musical family, his first successes were as a songwriter...

. His feature film debut was a time-travelling story set in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 and included location filming in the Italian city. Studio and post-production work took place in Germany, and the result was a fascinating work which has been described as "one of the stranger films to emerge from Britain in the 1920s".

Comedy shorts

Between 1923 and 1925, Brunel directed a series of sophisticated comedy burlesque short films, frequently lampooning fads or institutions of the day. Initially these were produced and distributed independently, but their popularity among film insiders and cognoscenti brought them to the attention of Michael Balcon
Michael Balcon
Sir Michael Elias Balcon was an English film producer, known for his work with Ealing Studios.-Background:...

, who offered Brunel the opportunity to produce them through Gainsborough Pictures
Gainsborough Pictures
Gainsborough Pictures was a British film studio based on the south bank of the Regent's Canal, in Poole Street, Hoxton in the former Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch, London. Gainsborough Studios were active between 1924 and 1951. Built as a power station for the Great Northern & City Railway it...

. These films were replete with punning intertitles and playful visual wit, with a number parodying the silhouette animation
Silhouette animation
Silhouette animation is animation in which the characters are only visible as black silhouettes. This is usually accomplished by backlighting articulated cardboard cut-outs, though other methods exist...

 technique pioneered by Lotte Reiniger
Lotte Reiniger
Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger was a German silhouette animator and film director.- Early life :Lotte Reiniger was born in Berlin-Charlottenburg, German Empire, on June 2, 1899...

 by using live actors in place of animated cutouts (Two-Chinned Chow, Shimmy Sheik, and Yes, We Have No...! – in which a man is driven to distraction by the ubiquity of the song "Yes! We Have No Bananas" and travels to ever-more exotic and outlandish locations to escape it, only to find that no matter where in the world he goes, the song has got there first).

Other films were self-referential in highlighting the ability of film to produce a manipulated and distorted picture of reality. Brunel's most highly-admired production of this period is 1924's Crossing the Great Saraganda, a spoof of the hugely popular travelogue genre of the time, in which its conventions are laid bare as the absurdities they are. Brunel uses the film to satirise the prevalent colonial view of "native people", while highlighting the dishonesty inherent in the genre with ludicrously incongruous intertitles, tagging a view of an African mud-hut village as Wapping
Wapping
Wapping is a place in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets which forms part of the Docklands to the east of the City of London. It is situated between the north bank of the River Thames and the ancient thoroughfare simply called The Highway...

, and a sequence of the heroes struggling across a desert landscape as Blackpool
Blackpool
Blackpool is a borough, seaside town, and unitary authority area of Lancashire, in North West England. It is situated along England's west coast by the Irish Sea, between the Ribble and Wyre estuaries, northwest of Preston, north of Liverpool, and northwest of Manchester...

 beach. Critic Jamie Sexton notes: "The film's surreal humour prefigures that of later innovative British comedy, such as Monty Python's Flying Circus
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Monty Python’s Flying Circus is a BBC TV sketch comedy series. The shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines...

.

Brunel also targeted the British film industry itself, with So This Is Jollygood bemoaning what he saw as its general ineptitude in comparison with its American counterpart, and Cut It Out attacking the over-zealousness of the British film censors.

Gainsborough films

Impressed with Brunel's short film output, Balcon invited him to try his hand at directing full-length features for Gainsborough. This resulted in five films between 1926 and 1929, all of which were high profile, big-budget productions with star names, and were designed as serious prestige vehicles with none of the opportunities for the humour and facetiousness of most of Brunel's earlier work. The first release was Blighty
Blighty (film)
Blighty is a 1927 British World War I silent film melodrama, directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Ellaline Terriss, Lillian Hall-Davis and Jameson Thomas...

, a class-based study of life during World War I, written by Brunel's friend Ivor Montagu
Ivor Montagu
The Honorable Ivor Goldsmid Samuel Montagu was a British filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, film critic, writer, table tennis player and apparent Soviet spy...

. It was reported that Brunel was initially uneasy about directing a "war film" as it went against his moral values; however the finished product contained no militaristic or jingoistic material, concentrating instead on the effects of the unseen war on an English family.

In 1928 there followed two films which reunited Brunel with Novello as his leading actor: the first screen adaptation of Margaret Kennedy
Margaret Kennedy
Margaret Kennedy was an English novelist and playwright.-Family and education:Margaret Kennedy was born in Hyde Park Gate, London, the eldest of the four children of Charles Moore Kennedy , a barrister, and his wife Ellinor Edith Marwood...

's best-selling novel The Constant Nymph
The Constant Nymph (1928 film)
The Constant Nymph is a 1928 British silent film drama, directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Ivor Novello and Mabel Poulton. This was the first film adaptation of the 1924 best-selling and controversial novel of the same name by Margaret Kennedy...

and a version of the Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...

 play The Vortex
The Vortex
The Vortex is a play by the English writer and actor Noël Coward. The story focuses on sexual vanity and drug abuse among the upper classes. The play was Coward's first great commercial success....

. Brunel's third film of 1928 was A Light Woman starring Benita Hume
Benita Hume
Benita Hume was an English film actress. She appeared in 44 films between 1925 and 1955.She was married to actor Ronald Colman from 1938 to his death in 1958; they were the parents of a daughter, Juliet...

, while 1929 brought the Madeleine Carroll
Madeleine Carroll
Edith Madeleine Carroll was an English actress, popular in the 1930s and 1940s.-Early life:Carroll was born at 32 Herbert Street in West Bromwich, England. She graduated from the University of Birmingham, England with a B.A. degree...

 vehicle The Crooked Billet, which Brunel described in his autobiography as "my last, and perhaps my best, silent film". The film's "lost" status however precludes it from being critically evaluated alongside his surviving work.

Later career

With the introduction of talkies to British cinema, Brunel's career impetus came to a sudden halt. It is not exactly clear why Brunel in particular should have found his career so comprehensively derailed at this time, although it is suggested that his pursuance of a legal claim against Gainsborough for alleged non-payment of fees may well have tarnished his reputation in the film industry by making him appear a potential trouble-maker. After a credit as screenwriter for the television-tuning sequence of 1930's Elstree Calling
Elstree Calling
Elstree Calling is a film directed by Andre Charlot, Jack Hulbert, Paul Murray, and Alfred Hitchcock at Elstree Studios. The film, referred to as "A Cine-Radio Revue" in its original publicity, is a lavish musical film revue and was Britain's answer to the Hollywood revues which had been produced...

, no further offers were forthcoming and Brunel used the hiatus to write a book entitled Filmcraft: The Art of Picture Production, which was published in 1933.

Brunel returned to film directing in 1933, and over the following four years made 17 quota quickies, mainly for Fox British. As was the norm with quota quickie directors, Brunel's films in this period encompassed a range of genres from comedy and musicals, through drama, to thrillers and crime. However, few of these films are known to survive. Brunel's last two feature films The Rebel Son
The Rebel Son
The Rebel Son, The Barbarian and the Lady or The Rebel Son of Taras Bulba was a 1938 British film, notable as the first film appearance of Patricia Roc. It is a re-working by Alexander Korda of Granowski's 1935 French film adaptation of the Russian novel Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol, set in the...

(1938) and The Lion Has Wings
The Lion Has Wings
The Lion Has Wings is a 1939 British, black-and-white, documentary-style, propaganda, war film. The film was directed by Adrian Brunel, Brian Desmond Hurst, Alexander Korda and Michael Powell...

(1939) – the latter a three-way directorial venture with Michael Powell
Michael Powell (director)
Michael Latham Powell was a renowned English film director, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger...

 and Brian Desmond Hurst
Brian Desmond Hurst
thumb|right|200px|Portrait by [[Allan Warren]]Brian Desmond Hurst was a Belfast-born film director. Responsible for over 30 movies as director, Hurst was Ireland's most prolific movie director during the 20th century.-Early life:Hurst was born Hans Hurst in Ribble Street, East Belfast"". into a...

 – were more visible productions and do survive.

Following a propaganda short The Girl Who Forgot in 1940, Brunel drew a line under his directorial career, although he did continue for a time to offer uncredited help as a favour, most notably to his old friend Leslie Howard on The First of the Few
The First of the Few
The First of the Few, known as Spitfire in the United States, is a 1942 British film directed by and starring Leslie Howard as R.J. Mitchell, the designer of the Supermarine Spitfire, alongside co-star David Niven. The film's score was written by William Walton...

(1942) and The Gentle Sex
The Gentle Sex
The Gentle Sex is a 1943 British, black-and-white romantic comedy-drama war film directed and narrated by Leslie Howard. It was produced by Concanen Productions, Two Cities Films and Derrick de Marney.-Synopsis:...

(1943). He published an autobiography Nice Work in 1949, and died in February 1958, aged 65.

In an assessment of Brunel's significance in British cinema history, Geoff Brown concludes: "...(his) career was clearly not what it might have been, and the apparent absence of surviving copies of many of his talkies makes a thorough re-evaluation of his work difficult. But the burlesque comedies alone give him a distinctive place in British cinema history as a satirical jester, and a key player in the film industry's uneasy war between art and commerce."

Feature films

  • 1923: The Man Without Desire
    The Man Without Desire
    The Man Without Desire is a 1923 British silent film fantasy drama, directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Ivor Novello, who also co-produced the film along with Miles Mander. The film was Brunel's feature-length directorial debut and has been described as "one of the stranger films to emerge from...

  • 1927: Blighty
    Blighty (film)
    Blighty is a 1927 British World War I silent film melodrama, directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Ellaline Terriss, Lillian Hall-Davis and Jameson Thomas...

  • 1928: The Constant Nymph
    The Constant Nymph (1928 film)
    The Constant Nymph is a 1928 British silent film drama, directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Ivor Novello and Mabel Poulton. This was the first film adaptation of the 1924 best-selling and controversial novel of the same name by Margaret Kennedy...

  • 1928: A Light Woman
    A Light Woman (1928 film)
    A Light Woman is a 1928 British silence romance film directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Benita Hume, C.M. Hallard and Gerald Ames. It is also known by the alternative title Dolores. A flighty young woman learns the error of her ways through a series of love affairs. It was based on a story by...

  • 1928: The Vortex
    The Vortex (film)
    The Vortex is a 1928 British drama film directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Ivor Novello, Willette Kershaw and Frances Doble. It was an adaptation of the Noel Coward play The Vortex and was made by Gainsborough Studios.-Cast:...

  • 1929: The Crooked Billet
    The Crooked Billet
    The Crooked Billet is a 1929 British drama film directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Madeleine Carroll, Carlyle Blackwell and Miles Mander.-Cast:* Carlyle Blackwell - Dietrich Hebburn* Madeleine Carroll - Joan Easton* Miles Mander - Guy Morrow...

  • 1933: Two Wives for Henry
  • 1933: The Laughter of Fools
  • 1933: Little Napoleon
  • 1933: I'm an Explosive
  • 1933: Follow the Lady
  • 1933: Taxi to Paradise
  • 1934: Important People
    Important People
    Important People is a 1934 British comedy film directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Stewart Rome, Dorothy Boyd and Jack Raine. A bickering couple stand against each other as candidates in a local council election.-Cast:* Stewart Rome ... Tony Westcott...

  • 1934: Badger's Green
    Badger's Green (1934 film)
    Badger's Green is a 1934 British comedy film directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Valerie Hobson, Bruce Lester, David Horne and Wally Patch. It was adapted from the 1930 play Badger's Green by R.C. Sheriff. A picturesque village is threatened with redevelopment by a speculative builder, leading...

  • 1934: Menace
  • 1934: Variety
  • 1935: Vanity
    Vanity (film)
    Vanity is a 1935 British comedy film directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Jane Cain and Percy Marmont. The film was a quota quickie production, concerning a conceited actress, convinced of the general adoration in which she is held, faking her own death in order to gratify herself by observing...

  • 1935: The Invader
    The Invader
    The Invader is a comedy film, starring Buster Keaton, released in the United Kingdom. The film, also known as An Old Spanish Custom, co-stars Lupita Tovar. The film follows the same plot as its remake Pest from the West , with a millionaire setting out to win a local girl in Mexico...

  • 1935: City of Beautiful Nonsense
    City of Beautiful Nonsense (1935 film)
    City of Beautiful Nonsense is a 1935 British drama film directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Emlyn Williams and Sophie Stewart. The film is based on the best-selling 1909 novel of the same name by E. Temple Thurston, which had previously been filmed as a silent by Henry Edwards in 1919...

  • 1935: Cross Currents
  • 1935: While Parents Sleep
    While Parents Sleep
    While Parents Sleep is a 1935 British, black-and-white, comedy or farce, directed by Adrian Brunel. The film is a screen adaptation of a 1933 play by Anthony Kimmins, which had been a popular success on the West End stage in the West End of London....

  • 1936: Prison Breaker
    Prison Breaker
    Prison Breaker is a 1936 British crime drama film directed by Adrian Brunel and starring James Mason, Wally Patch, Marguerite Allan and George Merritt. A British secret service agent falls in love with the daughter of a leading London criminal, and soon after becoming involved with her father finds...

  • 1936: Love at Sea
  • 1938: The Rebel Son
    The Rebel Son
    The Rebel Son, The Barbarian and the Lady or The Rebel Son of Taras Bulba was a 1938 British film, notable as the first film appearance of Patricia Roc. It is a re-working by Alexander Korda of Granowski's 1935 French film adaptation of the Russian novel Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol, set in the...

  • 1939: The Lion Has Wings
    The Lion Has Wings
    The Lion Has Wings is a 1939 British, black-and-white, documentary-style, propaganda, war film. The film was directed by Adrian Brunel, Brian Desmond Hurst, Alexander Korda and Michael Powell...



Short films

  • 1917: The Cost of a Kiss
  • 1920: The Temporary Lady
  • 1920: Twice Two
  • 1920: The Bump
  • 1920: Five Pounds Reward
  • 1920: Bookworms
  • 1921: Too Many Cooks
  • 1923: Yes, We Have No...!
  • 1923: Two-Chinned Chow
  • 1923: The Shimmy Sheik
  • 1924: The Pathetic Gazette
  • 1924: Sheer Trickery
  • 1924: Lovers in Araby
  • 1924: Crossing the Great Saraganda
  • 1925: The Blunderland of Big Game
  • 1925: So This Is Jollygood
  • 1925: Cut It Out
  • 1925: Battling Bruisers
  • 1925: A Typical Budget
  • 1940: The Girl Who Forgot


External links

  • Adrian Brunel at Internet Movie Database
    Internet Movie Database
    Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...

  • Adrian Brunel at BritMovie
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