Colour on the Thames (1935)
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- Опубліковано 18 жов 2010
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(This is a higher-quality version of one of BFIFilms' most popular titles)
This film is tricky to describe: is it a boat study, a film-poem, an experiment, a picture postcard? One thing is certain: it's a rare colour snapshot of the Thames and London in the 1930s - and it looks quite magical.
Its artistic qualities may look a bit old-fashioned to us today; the slow pace, orchestral music and moody colours definitely belong to a bygone era, strikingly peaceful and undemanding. Yet colour film was still a novelty for audiences in 1935, and the photography (using the new Gasparcolor system) succeeds in accentuating the sharp contrast between the vivid green banks of the countryside and the drab tones of the industrial landscape. (Sonia Genaitay)
'Colour on the Thames' is included on the BFI DVD 'Science is Fiction / The Sounds of Science: The films of Jean Painleve' - filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/...
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I find this film very good for me mentally. To know that one is never more than a background character in the film of life, really allows you to relax and enjoy the ride.
I grew up in SE London in the 70's. We used to go down to the abandoned docks, the wharfs, cranes, warehouses. So interesting to see what it was like when it was a working place. Now it's all built on with shiny blocks of flats and tree-line walkways.
85years on and it's all changed. It's lovely to see colour in old films as that's what everyones eyes saw it in back then. Lovely music too.
Nice to see such a natural, uncomplicated view of London.
Spot the racist!
Having a bit of spare time, I’ve attempted to identify some
of the vessels and sites shown in this wonderful old film. If anyone is able to
fill in the gaps or correct my mistakes, I’d be very grateful.
00:00 north of Richmond, near Teddington?;
00:53 tug Ham and u/i sister. Ham, built 1925 by NVT at Lekkerkerk and delivered to Robert Neal Tough at Teddington. In
1981 sank off Southend, but raised and repaired. Laid up at Denton’s Wharf and broken up in 2004;
00:58Barge Roselands, just north of Richmond. Owned by A J Harmsworth?;
01:03 Tug Primrose - A J Harmsworth & Son (who owned the Basingtoke canal at this time). Built at Ash Vale, but never registered;
01:38 Richmond Bridge;
01:58 Charing Cross Bridge and Shellmex House;
02:04 Waterloo Bridge, in process of being rebuilt, but completion delayed until 1945;
02:14 Southwark bridge;
02:19 Rennie’s London Bridge, completed 1831 and transported to Lake Havasu, Arizona in the early 1970’s;
02:23 Iserlohn, built 1922, Hamburg registered, shelled by British destroyers Jervis, Nubian and Mohawk in 1941 and sank off Kerkenna Islands, Tunisia;
03:05 u/I, can’t quite make out name on stern;
03:20 Verity - barge, nfi;
03:32 Grovehurst - barge, nfi;
03:53 tug Beam, Port of London Authority, built 1910, scrapped 1966;
04:00 Deanbrook, built 1908, struck mine in November 1940 with loss of crew and subsequently scrapped;
04:10 Dartford, built 1930, sailing with convoy ONS-100 was torpedoed by U-124 south of Cape Race with loss of 30 out 47
crew;
04:36 Sun IV, built 1915, delivered to W.H.J. Alexander, London. Served at Dunkirk. 1966 Sold to Societa Rimorchiatori Napoletani, Naples, renamed San Benigno. 1978 Scrapped by Palermo Salvatore & Company, Naples;
04:58 Upwey Grange, Houlder Line, built 1925, in August 1940, en route from Buenos Aires for London, was torpedoed by U-37. 36 crew lost from a total of 86;
05:20 Mercury, barge owned by W H J Alexander;
05:55 Hobson’s Bay, built in 1922, owned by Aberdeen and Commonwealth line at time of filming, renamed Esperance Bay in 1936, served as troopship in WW II and broken up at Faslane in 1955;
06:08 u/i Blue Star liners;
06:58 u/i cargo vessel;
07:02 Two funnelled liner of the Orient Line, possibly one of the R class liners;
07:08 u/i two buff funnels;
07:14 u/i green funnel;
07:57 large cargo vessel; pilot flag; W H J Alexander tugs.
Wow fascinating stuff I don't have any information but I take my hat off to you for all this work! Good on you!
Thanks Gavin!
Wondered if any of them had got to Dunkirk. Very impressive work, thank you.
Fine piece of research.
Your research does you proud.
Looking at the film I did wonder how many of those fine ships lived through WW2, notwithstanding their crews.
Only one man I knew had vast enormous information on merchant shipping, in the Thames particularly since he was a Chief Engineer and dry dock Superintendent Engineer in what is now a McDonalds in Docklands.....
Having earned my fair share of daily crust from the Thames, it's been sad to see it slide...
I know not of the white bridge and tower in the opening -
A quick look on the net to identify the ship' Dartford', being assisted by tugs, reveals that she was torpedoed on 12th June 1942 with the loss of thirty, of her forty seven crew. I suspect this is the same ship as the one I found was built 1930.
Makes this rare colour footage all the more poignant.
I posted this nine years ago, ages before Trump, Johnson and Pandemics etc. Have a little respect.
Beautiful little film, I used to love watching the ship's go in and out of the Royal dock's, but I always had a special liking for the tugs, as a boy living in Upton Park I always loved to hear them all sounding their hooter's on new years eve, in the dark of the night it was a wonderful "eerie" sound to hear the distinctive tone echoing in the distance, great day's.
My Dad's maternal side of the family - Foulser family, worked on barges and at the docks at this time. Wonderful film, thank you so much!
Buildings are still standing there but the great people who made them are leave us this is the fact of life I have tears in my eyes to watch this
Thanks for uploading the great time memories
Love from Pakistan
Made me sad too. We all have our time.
This 80 years old colour film teaches me vividly how life used to be in London.Thanks for posting.
This 4 year old comment vividly tells me the obvious. Thanks for posting!
Back them united kingdom was pure white not full of immigrants
Not a racist I myself I am non-white, immigration has caused culture, heritage all to be destroyed people in the world have came to the UK
@@saeedurrahman2056 if you are starting your sentences with "not a racist" just to follow it up with racism that does not cancel out my guy. Non-white people as you referred to them do not "ruin" culture, they add to it.
Jason Baylor “I’m not a racist... but..” that one always cracks me up
One of the most beautiful vintage colour films I've ever seen.
Thank you for your kind comments. I enjoyed doing the research even though my eyes were very tired afterwards through much straining to work out names!
It's much appreciated, thank you so much.
Fleur Black. The boats at 3.28 with red sails are Thames sailing barges. Shallow drafted vessels to get right up the shallow creeks. There are still many of them around in the south east, you can often see them at regatta's and festivals. They also have their own Thames sailing barge races on the Thames and Medway.
Of particular interest here, is at 8.27., the demolition of 'old Waterloo bridge', replaced by the sweeping concrete one we see today - that was a real surprise when I saw this so thank you BFI!
Yeah....the beautiful sweeping concrete one we see today........
The ship Dartford 4:o8 in to film was At 06.12 hours on 12 June 1942 the Dartford (Master Samuel Bulmer) in convoy ONS-100 was torpedoed and sunk by U-124 south of Cape Race. The master, 25 crew members and four gunners were lost. 14 crew members and three gunners were picked up by the British rescue ship Gothland . Dartford was build october 1930
What a fascinating film, for many reasons. One of the most striking things for me is the lack of plane trails across the sky in those days! Lovely pantomime clouds, no white artificial stripes spreading and blocking the blue and the sunlight out day after day... but what a special film this is. Thank you for sharing it with us. Hope it stays up as have added to my favourites ;) Thank you
Amazing stuff! My late uncle, Denis Forman, was a former director of the BFI before he moved to Granada TV and would have loved this.
He revitalised the BFI.
I always like watching these old videos to see what things were like back then and recognising old landmarks.
What a perfectly lovely picture! One can't help enjoying the softness of the colour contrast, somewhat like the Ectachrome still available 20-odd years ago. Thank you so much for uploading, it´s been the treat of the morning.
ganlesse Some of the softness is fringing possibly as I think its likely this was shot on Panchromatic film through a RGB filter wheel. Technnicolor wouldn't license their been splitter camera and Kodachrome would have had a credit of it has been used as the primary camera film. It is known that Bela Gaspar had a 72fps RGB camera made. Presumably this was used to make this short. Each positive b&w image was exposed through a colour filter onto the Gasparcolor film. Three b&w images (all positive) step printed onto one Gasparcolor film frame. When processed you get a nice positive image. Too much motion and it starts to get pronounced colour fringing.
Edit: I was wrong! Apparently Adrien Clyne developed a prismatic beam splitter camera superceding the earlier 72fps sequential process developed by Oskar Fischinger.
Martin Hughes ,Thank you . This is a nice explanation it helped me to quickly get up on Step . This is a very nice video .
This is highly likely 16mm Kodachrome, so martin's comments wouldn't apply.
@@2mikelim Nope, not Kodachrome. This film was shot on Gasparcolor.
The quality of the film is amazing, hard to believe its nearly 80 years old.
@MichaelKingsfordGray Wow, a reply eight years late, so that makes me twelve now, LOL.
Now it’s *84* years old! 😄
always enjoy these vintage films...thanks so much for the uploads!
marie elena so do I until the bigots hijack the comment section.
Absolument magnifique. Un document d'un grand Intérêt. Merci!
My mother was born only one year after this movie was produced. These footages describe how people at that time were look like though my mother was born in Japan which was on the opposite side of the globe. I cannot believe most of people in this film were gone a long time ago, but all of them look very animated as if they are still living somewhere in the world.
Wonderful! Truly a work of art.
Zak George
I very much enjoyed watching, thank you for sharing this wonderful time.
a fantastic piece of history, more of the same please if available, these must be cherished.
Wow, so many steamers! I'd give my eyeteeth to see something like that today. True, you don't have all the smutz and smoke with today's riverboats, but things just seem so much more lively with all the steam powered ships and boats, puffing up and down the water.
Yeah. Totally got that, watching the fillum.
As I looked at this film it came to me that so many of them would be gone in just 6 or seven years time.Then I see many people have researched their history and demise.I'm about to look at London 1927,these are marvelous insights and in colour which makes them so alive. Many thanks.
The particular about the film is that it was filmed in 3 colour Gaspar color. It is one of the first films in natural colour. The pictures comes much closer to the viewers eyes.
was that a british, french or us process ?
Nothing lasts forever,I remember the docks being busy when I was a child in the 60's.My father and grandfather worked for Harland and Wolff shipbuilders and repairs on the woolwich stretch of the river.All the docks and the thousands it employed long gone along with generations of East Enders.
Great video my dad was born in 1935 in south Wales so this is his world so amazing
We have colour everywhere now, not just on the Thames !
+Franklin Clinton What ? A bit of colour is a good thing isn't it ?
The kind of color we do not need..thank you very much !!!!!!
This film is running too fast, because it originally was probably shot at 16 fps. But you can get close to what the actual speed should be if you use the 0.75 speed option in UA-cam. The music gets a bit odd, but the image gets a realistic speed.
thanks
Ah and there I was thinking that one of the old cranes was rotating pretty darn quickly!
My dear old nan would have been in her teens when this was shot and probably just a few miles away.
Really great, thouroughly enjoyed this, thanks for posting.
Thank you so much for posting !
Magnífico Esplêndido tenho imenso fascínio pelo Continente Europeu especialmente Londres ❤️❤️❤️🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇧🇷
I felt rather sad to see this old film. Having been born in the 60's I was too young to remember when London was such an important international port, busy with trade from all over the world. Such a shame it has all gone now...
We're living through the end of the empire mate. I was born 1971.
London is now an important financial hub so you have that at least
@@HattieMcDanielonaMoon that's true but not quite the same romance sadly
What a wonderful film! Interesting to see how things have changed in less than 100 years.
This is so amazing. Thank you so much.
Nice to see the river so busy (with trade).
Lovely old film, thanks for sharing
Wonderful footage. Thank you...
Really lovely old film at 6:45 it shows how big those lovely old ship were ,and the sailors hit the deck watching the camera i bet they never did that once before.Its sad to think the older ones probably went threw WW1 and the younger WW2 and some both....Great film
I wonder if anyone has ever seen a grand parent in one of these old films.
I love that parrot animation on the title
Thanks for posting such wonderful movie.
I often canoe the Thames in central London. If I tried it in the 30's I'd be dodging ships all the time. Now I only have to look out for the Clippers and the rubbish barges.
Absolutely fascinating. All the old funnels. Pretty sure I saw a P&O two funnel job there plus some Blue Star ships. I must have seen the very tail end of London as a port when I was an apprentice in the 60s and we used KG V docks as well as Tilbury. Great stuff.
I took 50 or 60 still shots and each one of them looks like a painting it’s absolutely beautiful and it is so convincing that you are there in this wormhole of time and I think of everything else that’s going on out in the world whilst filming this, my parents would’ve been 12 or 13 at so many things to recollect and identify with that time and yet they look fresh and new The smoke in the air the the dust from the cold gives a aerial perspective a glazed look like an old painting
Really lovely film from so long ago...as film goes.
I wish someone invented a time traveller so that I can go back into time and get to know these people and how they lived etc.
Read
Beautiful, stunning footage
Shots near the end have a J.M.W. Turner quality about them.
these were in indeed the halcyon days of the Thames. When you think that the pool of London had on the south bank Tooley street. Which was said have fed the country.
Superb. Thank you so much for sharing this treasure with us.
Fascinating to see barges under sail on the Thames.
that is fabulous hard to believe its so old
I know....quite sad actually. However, I met a 70 year old white British man who was born and still lives in London, who told me that he loves how much London and Britain has changed. I am the child of immigrants and I love watching this film as much as I still love walking around London. I am grateful for these films, makes me appreciate London so much more!
So lets just ignore what we hope are the racist few.
Wonderful, brings home how great Britain once was...thanks for posting!
Lovely, thank you.
Beautiful content !
As Technicolor wouldn't license their beam splitter camera to Gasparcolor, my understanding is this film would have been shot in a modified cine camera shooting at 72fps through a RGB filter wheel onto panchromatic film.( to obtain colour records as grey scales only; on successive film frames) This is then printed onto the Gasparcolor print film three panchromatic frames at a time through a RGB filter wheel onto one Gasparcolour print film film frame. This leads to some colour fringing apparently( see 2.39,2.40); although it looks pretty good. I'm surprised there is so few actual comments about Gasparcolor on this thread. It's a fascinating system, being a chromolytic system, not chromogenic like Kodachrome or Agfacolor. It's descendent was Ilfochrome/Cibachrome for still photography. The film has 100% of the red, blue, green dyes already present, but exposure to a positive colour image leads to a positive copy.( through dye destruction) You can use either a colour film (chromogenic;such as Kodachrome-colour reversal)or positive panchromatic film records through a filter wheel like this, as your primary film record, then print on Gasparcolor film. Gasparcolor was quite slow though so was unsuited as primary camera film. It was a print film only. However it doesn't suffer from print fading like Eastman colour is prone to. Or suffer from misregistration errors that Inbibition printing(Technicolor) could suffer from. A fascinating upload, very interesting to see.
Edit: After further reading Adrien Cornwell-Clyne; developed for Gasparcolor UK a prismatic beam splitter camera superceding the Sequential 72fps system developed by Oskar Fischinger for the German Gasparcolor company.
Its fascinating! So I apologise for posting inadvertently duff information. !!
This camera was used to shoot the negatives on panchromatic film apparently. A prism was used to split light into three paths of light, blue/Green/Red. Cant find more technical info though.
Why was it Gasparcolor and not Gasparcolour?
I was about to say the same!
8.26 minutes of pure bliss !! Thanks for posting !
Fantastic, thanks.
Very interesting film; the river has changed a lot although I recognised Richmond immediately!
Wonderful stuff.Black and white film in documentaries has a tendency to distance the subject,where as colour brings the film in to the contemporary.Thanks for posting.
I sailed from the Pool twenty two years later - it looks amazingly familiar !
Thanks to BFI for this/these lovely images.
I photographed the Avelona Star coming into the Tyne for refit in 1987 she was the last one of that company I ever saw.
I'd love to see an HD transfer of this
i love old footage thankyou
I thank you for this piece of history. We can't change the past but can remember the happy memories before the 1939 war changed the world. Thank you for you contribution.
Fantastic, what a healthy short film. Great for the mind and soul.
It all looks rather nice, but the river was a foul stinking sess pit back then. Today it is has come on leaps and bounds, this is surely one thing that has changed for the better.
It remained fetid until 1957 but for the past 10 years it can sustain aquatic life again - but still don't drink the water!
One
@@noelt8895 What has happened in 1957?
@William Gruff "late Middle English: from Latin fetidus (often erroneously spelled foetidus ), from fetere ‘to stink’" (OED) I can also spell pedantic. "Far worse, he was pedantic, pernickety, letting nothing inaccurate or of uncertain meaning go by-not an aphrodisiac quality." Miriam-Webster)
It's been like that for centuries! Not an excuse, I know, but puts into perspective just how long London has put up with it, and still flourished as a centre of commerce and civilisation.
Enchanting piece of footage.
Gorgeous film.
Wonderful !
It's lovely and haunting knowing everybody you are watching is likely dead. Maybe that's just me wanting to step in the screen and go hug my nan again making me think that way. Londoners from long before these movies were shot.
I can feel by eyes stinging and my throat burning just looking at this.
My late father was born in Brixton in 1931, so this is the London of his childhood.❤️
Also this London before the Blitz of World War Two.
Much of docklands you see here that survived that war, started disappearing in the early Seventies, as dock life moved to Tilbury.
Fabulous stuff. It's difficult even for those of who've known this city for a long time to remember that it used to be a very different place. I've been here 50 years and can just about recall the cranes disappearing although there were very few big ships here by the time I got here.
That is remarkable , To think the winds of war were blowing in Europe at this time contrasted to the serene images in this piece, Priceless footage..
really beautiful
Oh Gosh...this is so nostalgic! Where has our Merchant navy gone?
This film is beautiful, there is no speaking, no sound, it just let's you listen to the amazing music as you can see the ships and tugs in London in the British Empire at the time, very rare film in terms of how most short films at that time were like compared to this.
Lol the comments are more interesting than the film itself , long live old England you will be missed x
Daniel Eyre not seen the state of the world we live in today? Its a shadow of itself. This is what multiculturalism got us and millennials.
@@mrcoiganable2988 Nurse, grandpa got out of the nursing home again.
@@jono_high It's so true. People getting all nostalgic for a time long before they were actually born. Lets just overlook the colonialism, rampant racism, the rise of fascism, polio, tuberculosis, rickets, no NHS, outside toilets, Life expectancy for a man was 60. I could go on but why bother? Given the choice between life then and life now I would choose now every time.
@Easter Worshipper "People knew their place" Well aren't you the forelock tugger.
@Daniel Eyre This is thirty years before I was born but I can paraphrase my father's general opinion of 1930s Britain... It sucked.
Working class life was work, shit pay, work, shit food, work, shit healthcare, work, shit housing, work and shit. And that's only if you were lucky enough to have a job.
As for London being ruined by multiculturalism... Even the most cursory glance at history would show that London was built on multiculturalism... They just didn't call it that then. If it weren't for London's history of multiculturalism I wouldn't even be here because, like pretty much everybody born within a thirty mile radius of London, I have distant immigrant ancestors who passed through the East End.
Why do these videos always attract the gammons who get all nostalgic for some golden era they don't remember, don't know anything about and never existed in the first place?
a peaceful time, little did they know.
My mother was born that year (1935), in Pimlico.
Which makes her 84
My mother was born in that year too. 😊
Great to see all the shipping on the river. These really are the last dying days of the Empire, and of Europe for a while. How vastly different everything would be 10 years later.
Great footage of a wonderful bygone era, spectacular film. Amazing to witness the decline of British Shipping in such a short period of time!
Following an afternoon of cranky customers & co-workers, this is a nice rest.
Color images from this period (30's & 40's) are magical for me, these people & things a re usually black & white and only look 'real' in greyscale, color gives things I have never seen such depth. Nice animation at the beginning too.
this is just incredible, its amazing how everyone is more involved back then. Would love to have been around back then. Everything is real, not like the fakery today where everything is a metal frame with bits of plastic stuck to it.
Wow. Good quality.
At 1.40 we see Richmond Bridge and some of the buildings that were incorporated into Quinlan Terry's redevelopment in the 1980s.
Superb ...
Oh boy this is a good time to live in London
true that life goes by in the blink of an eye
amazing .
85 years on and the world has dramatically changed. What will happen in the next 30 years let alone next 85 will see an amazing change again. Never has the world gone through such an upheaval in known history.
beautiful film