THE OPEN ROAD
F.: Claude Friese-Greene; Prod.: Claude Friese-Greene. 35mm. D.: 65’ a 24 f/s. Col.
Film Notes
The Open Road was the culmination of Claude Friese- Greene’s development of a natural colour photography system in the early 1920s. He travelled the length of Britain’s west coast by car, from Land’s End to John O’Groats, filming people and places of picturesque interest along the way.
Designed as a travelogue in 26 episodes of approximately 15 minutes each, the first 9 episodes were screened at trade shows from November 1925. There is no indication that the series was in fact distributed. The original negatives were acquired by the NFTVA in the late 1950s in their uedited form.
In Friese-Greene’s system, the camera was fitted with a disc containing filters which exposed frames alternately through a red filter and a combination of a yellow filter and an unfiltered aperture. Colour was therefore recorded in an alternating pattern across the motion. The black-and-white print was tinted so that red-filtered frames were tinted red and the alternate frames were tinted cyan. The film flickered heavily in projection, but a colour image was perceived through the rapid alternation of the tinted frames.
This new print represents an hour of the footage in a form approaching the original running order. The colour has been synthesized digitally, based on the two tints of the only contemporary nitrate print known to exist. This print of Episode Three was discovered in the collection of the Cinema Museum, London.
Kieron Webb, BFI National Film and Television Archive