A FILM bought for £15 in a Monmouth antiques shop is being used to form the centrepiece of a new Hollywood production portraying the Angel of Mons and featuring Hollywood superstar Marlon Brando.
The film was found in Bonita's, the antiques shop in Agincourt Square, Monmouth, where it was bought by Mr Danny Sullivan who, when he realised what he had, sold it on to Hollywood film director Tony Kaye for £350,000.
The owner of Bonita's, Mr John Read Smith, who lives in Hereford, told a reporter that he was kicking himself for letting the film slip through his fingers for such a small sum. It had come into his shop with a group of other items in a trunk, together with a collection of documents detailing the life of a British soldier who served in the First World War, William Doidge.
The Angel of Mons was supposedly seen over the trenches in the First World War when it appeared to hold back the German troops as they prepared to attack the British forces at Mons in Belgium in the early days of the war. An American soldier wrote at the time that the apparition took on the shape of an angel wearing long robes and there seemed to be wings behind its shoulders.