samkydd

I thought it was very sad when they traced the little girl (now 87) who was filmed by Claude with her brothers as small children. About a year after the filming their widowed mother died and the brothers were whisked off to an orphanage while the little girl was sent to live with a great aunt, who forbade her from visiting or even writing to them. She didn't say whether they ever got in touch again but she'd held on to a letter from them for all those years.

A very tragic separation and I would imagine that it was fairly common occurrence in those days when many poor people died from things like pneumonia and TB, and this was pre-welfare state and extreme poverty was everywhere. You could see the sadness in her eyes as she watched the film and saw her favourite brother in 1926 playing with the kitten. "I remember we had a black cat I didn't think we ever had a ginger one!" (or was that a flaw in Claude's colour process?)

When you see something like that you just secretly hope that the brothers are still alive, and having seen the programme they'll get reunited with their sister. People around us are worth getting to know and everyone has a story to tell, and I just wish we could find the time to listen.

One example of this was when I was a kid and my mother worked in an old people's home, and being young and selfish I just thought they were all just a bunch of old fossils. I chatted with one old boy in the gardens one day and he was in the army from a young age and was an artist/sign writer. One of his proudest achievements was designing and creating the 'Your Country Needs You' poster of Lord Kitchener, arguably the most famous poster of the 20th century, but as he was a serving soldier he got sod all extra for doing it and not a farthing in royalties!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Freddy

Agree with you.

Originally I think F-G designed it for a series of 10 minute features, I would have prefered to see those and then have Dan's narrative at a later date. It lost some of its wonder and fascination in the way BBC handled it. We lost the chance to see it as how our ancestors saw it.

Freddy

"What I owe you Colonel Lawrence, is beyond evaluation."

penfold

There was a plan, I think shelved, for there also to be a DVD release of the original footage only...I think this might have proved expensive for a niche product because the footage was deposited at the Archive as unedited rushes, with 'Flash ' intertitles...obviously the BBC have edited the footage they wanted, not the whole lot. I believe the original material came to about three hours (I thought it was 26x5 mins plus a 10 min special on London, but I may be wrong) , so a lot of work.....as for seeing it as our ancestors did; our ancestors didn't. Unless they were in the cinema trade, and attended the trade show at The London Pavilion in November '25, or in New York that same year...as far as I know, the films were never seen anywhere else until the NFT showed the raw footage - still unedited - around ten years ago...

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

penfold

There was going to be a second one, as per the two different Mitchell and Kenyon releases....

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Rob Compton

The BFI site BFI | Features | Friese-Greene and The Open Road says that there will be another release later:

"The three part television series became available on DVD from the 3 May 2006 and the edited highlights from the bfi's restoration will be released later in the year."

For some reason I missed part 3 - can anyone confirm when it was shown please?

rgds
Rob

penfold

I hope you're right...but I had my info from a good source...perhaps it's back on again...fingers crossed.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

theuofc

It's been shown on TV, now out on DVD, but if you'd like to see more than just extracts from Friese-Greene's "The Open Road" on the big screen, here's your chance. It's being shown twice at the Cambridge Film Festival, ongoing now. Live accompaniment on piano and violin.

Barbara

26th Cambridge Film Festival

Claude Friese-Greene's 1924 "The Open Road,"

13 July 2006, 19:30, Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge
14 Jul 2006, 13:30, Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge

In the summer of 1924 Claude Friese-Greene, a pioneer of colour cinematography, set out from Cornwall with the aim of recording life on the road between Land’s End and John O'Groats. Entitled THE OPEN ROAD, his remarkable travelogue was conceived as a series of shorts, 26 episodes in all, to be shown weekly at the cinema. Unfortunately, Claude's experimental colour process failed to reach a large audience owing to heavy flicker and colour fringeing. Following on from the BBC's recent documentary The Lost World of Friese-Greene, the bfi National Film and Television Archive has restored a special compilation of highlights from the journey, using digital intermediate technology to remove the technical defects of the original. The result is a fascinating portrait of inter-war Britain, in which town and country, people and landscapes are captured as never before, in a truly unique and rich colour palette.

With live accompaniment by Neil Brand (piano) and Gunter Buchwald (violin).

The film restoration was generously supported by the Eric Anker-Petersen charity.

These screenings are presented by Cambridge Saab.