Landships II

You might recall the discussion about the above, here.

I have had some information for a little while and was hoping to pool it with another source, but that hasn't proved possible so I'll explain what I have.

I'm very grateful to Dr. Lawrence Napper, author of The Great War in Popular British Cinema of the 1920s. Extracts can be read here. Page 121 is what concerns us.

It transpires that the film was originally to be called 1918, but was released under the title Victory.

Dr. Napper has also been kind enough to reveal the following:

"The film itself doesn't survive as far as I know, apart from a single section of less than a minute which is held at the BFI National Archive - I've seen that bit and it consists of three inter titles and a shot of a man looking shifty and speaking into a field telephone! There may be a copy in the hands of a private collector or languishing unidentified in an archive, but for now it's not possible to see the film.

It might certainly be worth doing a trawl of the newspapers and the trade papers for material about it - often there are quite detailed production reports which might give you more information about the replica tank and whether it had been built especially for the film or was borrowed from elsewhere, or was in fact the real thing."

He later added:

"I've had another look at the BFI record for Victory, and although only that short section I mentioned is currently viewable, they do hold more material from it, although it's not currently available to see."

Another source tells me that there is a selection of other photos from the film in the Tank Museum collection, with many credited to the Daily Mail. That's a question of when I can get to Bov. Unless anyone's volunteering . . .

I understand that another contributor to Landships Forum has information that might affect the above - in fact, it might contradict it or render it obsolete - but plans to pool our info have not yet been realised. I do hope that something will come of it, but I thought that I'd sat on this long enough and it was probably best to go with it. If people are helping us with this, I don't want to annoy them by duplicating approaches to them.

One further source has been suggested to me, and I shall look into that.

Hope this adds to the sum of human knowledge, etc. Feel free to add/argue.