Editing Arnold Bennett (section)

===Stage and screen===
In 1931 the critic Graham Sutton, looking back at Bennett's career in the theatre, contrasted his achievements as a playwright with those as a novelist, suggesting that Bennett was a complete novelist but a not-entirely-complete dramatist. His plays were clearly those of a novelist: "He tends to lengthy speeches. Sometimes he overwrites a part as though distrusting the actor. He is more interested in what his people are than in what they visibly do. He 'thinks nowt' of mere slickness of plot."<ref name=sutton>Sutton, Graham. "The Plays of Arnold Bennett", ''The Bookman'', December 1931, p. 165</ref>

[[File:Arnold Bennett The Great Adventure 1913.png|thumb|upright=1.5|left|alt=Scene from a play, with young woman standing in a smart drawing room addressing three seated and two standing men|''The Great Adventure'', 1913]]
Bennett's lack of a theatrical grounding showed in the uneven construction of some of his plays, such as his 1911 comedy ''The Honeymoon'', which played for 125 performances from October 1911.<ref>Wearing, p. 175</ref> The highly successful ''Milestones'' was seen as impeccably constructed but the credit for that was given to his craftsmanlike collaborator, Edward Knoblauch (Bennett being credited with the inventive flair of the piece).<ref name=da/> By far his most successful solo effort in the theatre was ''The Great Adventure'', based on his 1908 novel ''[[Buried Alive (novel)|Buried Alive]]'', which ran in the West End for 674 performances, from March 1913 to November 1914.<ref name=Wearing327/> Sutton praised its "new strain of impish and sardonic fantasy" and rated it a much finer play than ''Milestones''.<ref name=sutton/>

After the First World War, Bennett wrote two plays on metaphysical questions, ''Sacred and Profane Love'' (1919, adapted from his novel) and ''Body and Soul'' (1922), which made little impression. ''[[Saturday Review (London newspaper)|The Saturday Review]]'' praised the "shrewd wit" of the former, but thought it "false in its essentials&nbsp;... superficial in its accidentals".<ref>"Mr Arnold Bennett at the Aldwych", ''The Saturday Review'', 22 November 1919, p. 483</ref> Of the latter, the critic Horace Shipp wondered "how the author of ''Clayhanger'' and ''The Old Wives' Tale'' could write such third-rate stuff".<ref>Shipp, Horace. "Body and Soul: A Study in Theatre Problems", ''The English Review'', October 1922, p. 340</ref> Bennett had more success in a final collaboration with [[Edward Knoblock]] (as Knoblauch had become during the war) with ''Mr Prohack'' (1927), a comedy based on his 1922 novel; one critic wrote "I could have enjoyed the play had it run to double its length", but even so he judged the middle act weaker than the outer two.<ref>Walbrook, H. M. "Plays of the Month", ''The Play Pictorial'', November 1927, p. 10</ref> Sutton concludes that Bennett's ''forte'' was character, but that the competence of his technique was variable.<ref name=sutton/> The plays are seldom revived, although some have been adapted for television.<ref>[https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?adv=1&media=tv&order=asc&q=Arnold+Bennett "Arnold Bennett"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210312093028/https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?adv=1&media=tv&order=asc&q=Arnold+Bennett |date=12 March 2021 }} BBC Genome. Retrieved 3 June 2020</ref><ref>[https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2ba124e267 "Arnold Bennett"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200603115559/https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2ba124e267 |date=3 June 2020 }}, British Film Institute. Retrieved 3 June 2020</ref>

Bennett wrote two opera [[libretti]] for the composer [[Eugene Aynsley Goossens|Eugene Goossens]]: ''Judith'' (one act, 1929) and ''Don Juan'' (four acts, produced in 1937 after the writer's death).<ref>Banfield, Stephen. [[doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.O003511|"Goossens, Sir (Aynsley) Eugene"]], ''Grove Music Online'', Oxford University Press, 1992. Retrieved 10 March 2021.</ref> There were comments that Goossens's music lacked tunes and Bennett's libretti were too wordy and literary.<ref>"Opera at Covent Garden", ''The Musical Times'', July 1937, p. 646; and Page, Philip. "Don Juan de Mañara", ''The Sphere'', 3 July 1937</ref> The critic [[Ernest Newman]] defended both works, finding Bennett's libretto for Judith "a drama told simply and straightforwardly"<ref>Rosen, p. 122</ref> and ''Don Juan'' "the best thing that English opera has so far produced&nbsp;... the most dramatic and stageworthy",<ref>''Quoted'' in ''The Cincinnati Enquirer'',  15 July 1937, p. 8</ref> but though politely received, both operas vanished from the repertory after a few performances.<ref>Rosen, p. 202</ref>

Bennett took a keen interest in the cinema, and in 1920 wrote ''The Wedding Dress'', a scenario for a silent movie, at the request of Jesse Lasky of the [[Famous Players–Lasky|Famous Players]] film company.<ref>Drabble, pp. 266 and 268–269</ref> It was never made, though Bennett wrote a full-length treatment, assumed to be lost until his daughter Virginia found it in a drawer in her Paris home in 1983; subsequently the script was sold to the [[Potteries Museum and Art Gallery]] and was finally published in 2013.<ref>Shapcott, pp. 263–264</ref> In 1928 Bennett wrote the  scenario for the silent film ''[[Piccadilly (film)|Piccadilly]]'', directed by [[E. A. Dupont]] and starring [[Anna May Wong]], described by the [[British Film Institute]] as "one of  the true greats of British silent films".<ref>{{Cite web|title=BFI Screenonline: Piccadilly (1929)|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/486639/|access-date=22 February 2021|website=www.screenonline.org.uk|archive-date=5 December 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151205074622/http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/486639/|url-status=live}}</ref> In 1929, the year the film came out, Bennett was in discussion with a young [[Alfred Hitchcock]] to script a silent film, ''Punch and Judy'', which foundered on artistic disagreements and  Bennett's refusal to see the film as a "talkie" rather than silent.<ref>Drabble, p.329</ref> His original scenario, acquired by [[Pennsylvania State University]], was published in the UK in 2012.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bennett|first=Arnold|title=Punch and Judy|editor=John Shapcott|others=   Margaret Drabble (foreword)|publisher=Churnet Valley Books|year=2012|isbn=978-1-90-454683-2|location=Leek}}</ref>