Brunel's next venture was in complete contrast to the visual excess of The Man Without Desire. His short comic burlesques condensed the filmmaking process down to basics and saw him working in a semi-amateur context with much greater creative control. The results are the most personal works in his filmography, representing a direct expression of his humour and perspective on the British film industry. Made between 1923 and 1925, these eight one-reel films were born of a combination of necessity and frustration, and experimented with technique in their parody of cinematic genres.

Of all Brunel's films, the burlesques have garnered the most attention from film historians, who have varying views on their nature. Michael O’Pray describes them as ‘an avant-garde attack on the conservatism of the British film industry’ (2000), while Laraine Porter asserts that they demonstrate Brunel's ‘creative genius’ (2012: 36). Rachael Low dismissed them as ‘facetious parodies’ (1971: 149) and Luke McKernan was also unimpressed by Brunel's comedic output, regarding him as ‘a restricted talent with a narrow frame of reference’ (2000: 9). More charitably, Geoff Brown concludes that ‘the burlesque comedies … give [Brunel] 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’ (2005). How distinctive Brunel's work on these films actually was and whether they managed to advance the troops in Brown's ‘uneasy war’ will be explored in this chapter.

Brunel made two loose series of burlesques: Sheer Trickery, Crossing the Great Sagrada and The Pathetic Gazette in 1923 and 1924 for Atlas-Biocraft; and So This is Jollygood, Battling Bruisers: Some Boxing Buffoonery, A Typical Budget, Cut it Out; A Day in the Life of a Censor and The Blunderland of Big Game, produced in 1924 and 1925 under the Gainsborough umbrella.

A British Avant-Garde?

Brunel's burlesques have been regarded as evidence of an alternative film culture in 1920s Britain, even an avant-garde tradition of a sort. In 2000, the British Film Institute released a VHS entitled Britain in the Twenties, as part of its series History of the Avant-Garde. The films included date mainly from the end of the decade, and the only link between them is that they were all made beyond the confines of the industry proper.