Adrian Brunel

Adrian Brunel (4 September 1892 – 18 February 1958) was an English film director and screenwriter. Brunel's directorial career started in the silent era, 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, most of which are now considered lost. One that survives, perhaps his most familiar credit to today's film buffs, is the 1935 Buster Keaton comedy The Invader. It was distributed by MGM in England, and released in the United States by film importer J. H. Hoffberg as An Old Spanish Custom. Adrian Brunel's last credit as director was in a 1940 comedy 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 includes two, The Crooked Billet (1929) and Badger's Green (1934), on its "75 Most Wanted" list of missing British feature films.