Школьные годы Тома Брауна / Tom Brown's Schooldays (1916) Великобритания WEB-DL

Based on Thomas Hughes 1857 novel, "Tom Brown's Schooldays" recounts the adventures of a boy's youth, with three actors playing Tom at different ages. The film follows the young Tom as he begins life at Rugby School, confronting school bully Flashman and befriending Harry East. Later, the older Tom enters his final year of school, finds himself guardian of the timid boy Arthur and becomes an upstanding young man.
This early silent adaption represents just selected episodes from the novel, sometimes making it difficult to follow the plot without prior knowledge of the book - something which the producers assumed. But we have to consider that the surving print seems to run short of ca. 10 Minutes to the original length which may also be a reason that the film sometimes falls a little sloppy in terms of storytelling.
The first Tom Brown is actually played by a girl which is not obvious when watching the film and far from Mary Pickford giving Little Lord Fauntleroy. The world of Tom Brown is successfully recreated giving a boys' account of a boys' world, with the most effective scenes, such as the two fights and the rugby game capturing the excitement of schoolboy life. This is a highly sympathetic and entertaining feature from 1916 which truly deserves to be better remembered and which you simply can't fail to enjoy.