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BFI Most Wanted: the hunt for Britain's missing films
Milestones
Directed by Thomas Bentley, 1916
Family epic charting several generations of shipbuilders who are radical in youth but become conservative in later life.
An emotional moment from the Victorian segment of this three-part epic.
Credits
|
Director Production Company Screenplay Original Play |
Thomas Bentley Samuelson Film Manufacturing Company Harry Engholm Arnold Bennett, Edward Knoblock |
| Cast: Isobel Elsom; Owen Nares; Campbell Gullan; Mary Lincoln | |
| 8,640 feet, silent, black & white. | |
Why are we so keen to find it?
It's a rare example of an early feature film by a very interesting and competent director, Thomas Bentley, who specialised in the literary adaptation and helped establish a tradition that is still very much alive in British film and television today.
What's it about?
The story, we can assume, follows the popular play on which it was based, written by Arnold Bennett and American writer Edward Knoblock (sometimes Knoblauch). It is written in three acts and concerns the different generations of a family of shipbuilders, Sibley, Rhead & Sibley, as their work progresses from building wooden vessels to those in iron and then steel. Starting in the 1860s, each of these milestones is marked by conflict in the family between progressive youth and conservative elders, and the effects on their respective wives and daughters supplies much of the drama, ending in the present day with the modern daughter asserting herself and choosing her own path. The structure which was much admired in the play woud almost certainly have been retained in the film and probably explains the impressive two-hour-plus running time - unusual for 1916 and indicating a significant production value.
Last seen?
Not since release to our knowledge. This title was in the BFI's original Missing Believed Lost Campaign in 1992 - still no sign so far.
What else do we know about it?
Director Thomas Bentley started as a actor of Dickensian characters and went into directing Dickens versions - not easy to adapt for the silent screen. They were often filtered through stage versions, lantern slide reductions and caricatures. His adaptations were well received and he went on to become a workmanlike director with the odd flash of brilliance, such as his 1928 film Young Woodley and the wonderful Those Were the Days (1934). Milestones is also notable as the debut of Isobel Elsom (one-time spouse of celebrated director Maurice Elvey), who was still playing dowagers into the 1960s.
Does anything survive?
Just stills, plus an advertisement for a screening at the Oxford Electra Palace Cinema, held by BFI Special Collections.
Reviews
The Bioscope reviewer was ecstatic at the premiere of Milestones, "Thomas Bentley's brilliant and delightful production". He describes the show: "It was a case of 'Roses, roses all the way' at the Shaftesbury Pavilion last Thursday morning, when the Samuleson Film Company presented for the first time their genuinely delightful version of 'Milestones' the popular comedy of three epochs by Arnold Bennett and Edward Knoblock. We can honestly say that we have seldom known so successfull a trade show. They simpy 'ate' the film, and the most exacting critics candidly admitted that their taste was justified."
Special mention was made of Thomas Bentley's efforts: "Mr Bentley presents us in the three distinctive epochs covered by Milestones' three screen pictures which have seldom been equalled for vivid atmosphere, meticulous accuracy and fullness of detail."
Bryony Dixon, Curator (Silent Film), BFI National Archive
You can find more about British films of the 1910s, including entries on surviving films and video clips for users in UK schools, colleges, universities and public libraries, at BFI Screenonline. You can also view similar titles at the BFI Mediatheques.
