Hobson's Choice

1920
Silent
73m

The first film adaptation of Harold Brighouse's Salford-set play, humorously depicting the travails of a dipsomaniac cobbler.

The first of three film versions of the famous Salford-set play by Harold Brighouse. It humorously depicts the travails - caused by his three daughters and a gauche, but talented, employee - of the dipsomaniac cobbler, Henry Hobson. A faithful if largely studio bound adaptation is enlivened by a gallery of engaging performances, especially Arthur Pitt as the inebriated and indolent Hobson.

Comedy about the energetic daughter of an alcoholic Lancashire bootmaker who gets one of her father's journeymen to marry her and then creates a completely successful business in opposition to her father.

Forgotten Features

A hand-picked assortment of hard-to-see British feature films, featuring mischievous mermaids, murderous minors and military mayhem.

Thanks to decades of DVD and online publishing, not to mention archive revivals and restorations, more of Britain’s screen heritage is available today than ever before. You might even be forgiven for imagining that the whole of British cinema is now just a click away.

But much of that history - from the silent era to the relatively recent past - remains out of reach. This selection from the vaults, hand-picked by the BFI's curators, goes some way to remedying that. These fresh rediscoveries offer something for all tastes: whether futuristic fantasy, battle-of-the-sexes comedy, subversive provocation or an Indian-British rarity.