The Lost World of Friese-Greene

To help understand Claude Friese-Green's background a little history needs to be understood; his father, William (Edward) Friese-Greene (1855 - 1921), and possible inventor of Kinematography, had by 1889 patented his 'chronophotographic' camera. Sadly, William's new and underdeveloped creation was too crude to succeed in further interest, 1891 saw William selling the rights, due to bankruptcy, of the 'chronophotographic' camera patent for just £500. His persistence had now produced Biocolour, where black and white film were given the illusion of colour by passing them through two coloured filters; red or green, the down side to this method was the poor quality image, and the constant flickering by the standards of the day. William was never to see this method take off, due to many court cases and wrangling concerning copyrights from other inventors, such as Charles Urban. It was to be his son Claude, who would eventually continue with his fathers work; William Friese-Greene collapsed and died while participating in a debate concerning the state of the British film industry.

Claude Friese-Green (1898 - 1943), whose chosen career and trade was filmmaker, cinematographer and technician who in 1924 set off from England's southern tip: Land's End to the most northern point of Scotland: John O'Groats, some 1600 miles apart. While following in his father's footsteps to further the development of Biocolour, he went on to produce a series of short films, at a cost of hundreds of pounds, what was then called "The Open Road". A journey of discovery, a colourful creation of the people he would meet and their natural surroundings, and too, the experimental movie making would continue.

This journey was to take Claude and his friend Robin Haywood Booth three years to produce, while travelling across the English countryside in an open top Vauxhall D-type. This glorious time-honoured work has us seeing the people and their different environment during the time of peace between the First World War and before the depression era of the 1930's and before the build up to the Second World War, the calm and charm before the storm.

This wonderful stepping-stone of 1920's cultural England, Wales and Scotland is combined with a modern journey of the same route, produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the British Film Institute (BFI), some eighty years later. We are invited to witness a retrospective of what was then a land of black and white imagery. Claude's works were ten-minute, 26 episodes, which were shot in black and white negative, and with the technique of Biocolour applied, gave the illusion of colour. These short movies were to be shown before the "main feature" in English cinemas, as this was the only medium of its day; it was to show the day-to-day living of its people in living colour. The scenery of the time is breathtaking, an age before the explosion of the car and the dawn of industrial Britain, an unspoilt land yet to be ripped apart for modernisation. We are introduced to the layman's in the wheat fields to the Romany Gypsies and their way of life, the Lords and their fox hunting hounds and many personalities and individuals' in-between, across beautiful green fields and country lanes that contain both rustic villages, seaside towns and Cities, both from old and modern perspectives'.

We are reintroduced to this bygone age by comparing and contrasting the revisited spots and with the help of family members and old friends of the time gone by. Such as Cockington, in Devon, and its Edwardian cottages, we are introduced to the now elderly daughter of one of the young ladies we see on the original film and her account and memory of her mother being filmed by Claude. As well as the tiny village of East Budleigh, and its now eighty-six year old Frank Farr, who was only six years old, and born in 1919, at the time of filming. This Olde-World that has come back, to the farmers fields and reminiscing on the folks and times and the cider drinking farm hands who have long since been taken by time, all seen again through the eyes, and for the first time, of the surviving old-timers' of yesteryear.

This travel and time-line archive documentary of nineteen-twenties Britain from the BFI and the BBC is exceptional quality, as one would expect; a rebuilding of the short travelogue shot by Claude. Totally regenerated for modern viewing and presented by Dan Cruickshank. This reflective, and compulsive, DVD viewing is compounded in to three episodes', Episode 1 - Land's End to Weston-super-Mare, Episode 2 - Cirencester to Carlisle and the third being Gretna Green to John O'Groats. With the second disc containing extras such as The Life of an Artist; Football memories; Herefordshire Cider Farming; Life on the Canals; Scotland's Piping Tradition; Oban's Fishing Community and Jack Cardiff remembers Friese-Green.

Jack Cardiff (born 1914) work gave him an Academy Award for his role as cinematographer on Black Narcissus (1947). He has the honour of working on War and Peace (1956), The African Queen (1951), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), The Red Shoes (1948), Death on the Nile (1978) and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), this being just tip of the ice berg, as he started in the business around 1918.

During the nineteen-fifties, Claude's son donated The Open Road to the BFI, then kept in isolation until its relevance was appreciated, then along with the BBC, totally transformed the originals to what we see here, where the full account can be seen on the BBC web site, under History.

A beautifully presented package of archives of a golden age, and a splendid walk down memory lane, with the concept of how much Britain has changed, or not, in the last eighty years. With its recollections of past to present, this investigative narrative is also a historical look on how we have become decadent, complacent and sadly with progress, we can sometime be heading in the wrong direction.