The Real Thing at Last (1916)

Satirical silent movie based on the play Macbeth written in 1916 by Peter Pan creator and playwright J. M. Barrie as a parody of the American entertainment industry. The film was made by the newly created British Actors Film Company in response to news that American filmmaker D. W. Griffith intended to honor the 300th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death by producing of a film version of the play. It was subtitled A Suggestion for the Artists of the Future. It was screened at a charity benefit attended by the royal family, but was not widely distributed, and no copies are known to survive.

Date of release
1916-03-08
Runtime
30m
Genres
Comedy
Director
L.C. MacBean

Casting

Interesting facts

The Real Thing at Last is a lost British satirical silent movie based on the play Macbeth. It was written in 1916 by Peter Pan creator and playwright J. M. Barrie as a parody of the American entertainment industry. The film was made by the newly created British Actors Film Company in response to news that American filmmaker D. W. Griffith intended to honor the 300th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death by producing of a film version of the play. It was subtitled A Suggestion for the Artists of the Future. It was screened at a charity benefit attended by the royal family, but was not widely distributed, and no copies are known to survive.

Production

Although nominally directed by L. C. MacBean, Barrie took an active role in its direction. The film featured several popular British stage actors of the period, and thus served as the film debuts of Edmund Gwenn, Marie Lohr, Ernest Thesiger, and Frederick Kerr. Pauline Chase had been part of the original cast of Barrie's Peter Pan and played the title role for seven years; she came out of retirement for this, her only screen performance.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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