Between 1923 and 1925, Brunel directed a series of sophisticated comedy burlesque short films, frequently lampooning fads or institutions of the day. Initially these were produced and distributed independently, but their popularity among film insiders and cognoscenti brought them to the attention of
Michael Balcon, who offered Brunel the opportunity to produce them through
Gainsborough Pictures. These films were replete with punning
intertitles and playful visual wit, with a number parodying the
silhouette animation technique pioneered by
Lotte Reiniger by using live actors in place of animated cutouts (
Two-Chinned Chow,
Shimmy Sheik, and
Yes, We Have No...! – in which a man is driven to distraction by the ubiquity of the song "
Yes! We Have No Bananas" and travels to ever-more exotic and outlandish locations to escape it, only to find that no matter where in the world he goes, the song has got there first). Other films were self-referential in highlighting the ability of film to produce a manipulated and distorted picture of reality. Brunel's most highly admired production of this period is 1924's
Crossing the Great Sagrada, a spoof of the hugely popular travelogue genre of the time, in which its conventions are laid bare as the absurdities they are. Brunel uses the film to satirise the prevalent colonial view of "native people", while highlighting the dishonesty inherent in the genre with ludicrously incongruous intertitles, tagging a view of an African mud-hut village as
Wapping, and a sequence of the heroes struggling across a desert landscape as
Blackpool beach. Critic Jamie Sexton notes: "The film's surreal humour prefigures that of later innovative British comedy, such as ''
Monty Python's Flying Circus''. Brunel also targeted the British film industry itself, with
So This Is Jollygood bemoaning what he saw as its general ineptitude in comparison with its American counterpart, and
Cut It Out attacking the over-zealousness of the British film censors. ==Gainsborough films==