Stunning colour film of 1920s London...

This wonderful film was made in 1927 by Claude Friese-Greene. Colour film from the 1920s is exceptionally rare, and this is a very powerful example.

It shows scenes of London Bridge, the Thames, the Tower of London, Greenwich Observatory, the London docks, Whitehall, the Cenotaph, Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Marble Arch, Petticoat Lane, the Oval, the Changing of the Guard, Rotten Row, and the Houses of Parliament.

The Cenotaph sequence from around 3:37 to 3:54 is very poignant. This was filmed only nine years after the end of the Great War. The women and looking at the wreaths would very likely be wives and mothers of the men killed, and the Second World War was, at that time, inconceivable.

Claude Friese-Greene was the son of pioneering cinematographer William Friese-Greene, and devoted himself to developing commercially his father’s colour process - Biocolour - but without great success. It was soon overtaken by Technicolor and Claude abandoned the process. His role as a pioneer of colour film has now been recognised.

The footage is part of London’s Screen Archives and the British Film Archive.