The Open Road (1926 film series)

The Open Road
Directed byClaude Friese-Greene
Produced byClaude Friese-Greene
CinematographyClaude Friese-Greene
Release date
  • 1926 (1926)
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguagesSilent
English intertitles

The Open Road is a 1926 British travel documentary film series narrating a journey by motorcar from Land's End to John O'Groats to explore life on 'the open road' across the United Kingdom.[1] The Guardian has called it the "first comprehensive colour tourism film" of Britain.[2]

The film, in part, was designed to market the additive two-colour film process originally developed by Claude Friese-Greene's father William, and then improved by Claude as the "new all-British Friese-Green natural colour process". The process renders colour by passing the light through a pair of red or blue-green filters, and then onto standard black-and-white film, alternating the filters every frame. When played back, the same alternating coloured filters are used to project in colour.

It features various famous British locations: Land's End, Cornwall, St Michael's Mount, St Ives, Torquay, Glasgow, Stirling, Oban, Edinburgh and London.[3] It was filmed between 1924 and 1926.[4]

Though it had some interest when previewed in 1925, it did not attain great success due to problems inherent to the colour processing, which produced colour fringing and flicker.[4]

The original film was digitally restored in 2005 by the BFI, who have the original negatives on file. The footage in the archive was compiled into a 65-minute film from the original 26 parts, and was made available to watch within the UK online free of charge. A new film score (to the originally silent film) was produced by composer and pianist Neil Brand and violinist Günther Buchwald to accompany the DVD release.[5][4]

  1. ^ "The Open Road (1926)". British Film Institute. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  2. ^ "When Britain was a rose-tinted spectacle". The Guardian. 9 April 2006. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
  3. ^ "Collections Search". British Film Institute. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  4. ^ a b c "Bathing beauties, Britain 1926 (in colour for the first time)". The Independent. 1 April 2009. Archived from the original on 18 June 2022. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
  5. ^ "Buy The Open Road". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 21 October 2014. Retrieved 9 May 2020.