1927 London Shown in Moving Color

Back dur­ing the 1920s, Claude Friese-Greene, an ear­ly British pio­neer of film, shot The Open Road, “a series of ten-minute trav­el­ogues of Britain,” which were meant “to be shown before the main fea­ture in cin­e­ma pro­grammes,” accord­ing to the British Film Insti­tute. Clips from that series have appeared for years on the BFI’s YouTube Chan­nel. But, in recent days, the hive mind of the inter­net has focused on these five min­utes of footage show­ing 1920s Lon­don in rare mov­ing col­or. What draws us to this footage? Per­haps one Vimeo com­menter put it best, say­ing: “Pro­found­ly mov­ing some­how. All those ghosts on film, fore­shad­ow­ing our foot­steps through the same city. Parts of Lon­don remain star­tling­ly unchanged. The mega­lopo­lis was less cor­po­rate then, more impe­r­i­al, cer­tain­ly less sus­pi­cious of the cam­era. But, those pas­tel shades of peo­ple are shown dodg­ing the traf­fic in the same way as we do, per­haps show­ing us a way through the labyrinth.” It’s hard not to stop and take notice when the past seems dis­tant, yet so close and famil­iar.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the King’s Speech 1938

Ear­ly Exper­i­ments in Col­or Film (1895–1935)

The Nor­mandy Inva­sion Cap­tured on 16 mm Kodachrome Film (1944)

Rare Col­or Footage of the 1939 World Series: Yan­kees v. Reds