London 1927. In Colour!

[River Don]

I love this. The past really is a different world, where people wear brown and gray and wouldn't be properly dressed without a hat.

A nice bit of editing too.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgxki8_R968" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgxki8_R968</a>

[godlike1]

Could not take my eyes of that. A different era we live in now, some good, some bad but very very fast moving

[wilts rover]

Well spotted Don, nice bit of film.

What a horrible soundtrack tho, surely something from the era would have been more appropriate.

[BillyStubbsTears]

RD

That was superb. Many thanks.

Wilts. Got to disagree about the second half if the soundtrack. Yann Tiersen's best work is timeless and that piece, comptine d'un autre été is a wonderfully apt piece, even though it's only 12 years old.

[wilts rover]

It is certainly a beautiful piece BST and yes timeless, which is the argument I would have against using it, for me it doesn't give the sense of period that the film deserves. We agree to disagree on that one.

[BobG]

Scary isn't it? It's only 86 years gone by and it' a different world. Even more scary though is what our progeny are going to think of today in another 86 years....

Now I'm off to look at the colour film clip of Roumania in 1938. I got a big soft spot for Roumania I have to say. Cracking place. Now that WILL be different. Ceaucescu bulldozed square miles of old town Bucuresti in his efforts to create a Paris of the east.

BobG

[Dagenham Rover]

Great bit of film, as to the soundtrack I've just watched it with no sound, I'll watch again later with the speakers up

[River Don]

I don't mind the soundtrack but the second piece is far better. The piano solo does have a timeless quality and a beautiful emotive ambience.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Not quite on a par with RD's stuff, but here are a few blasts from the Donny past

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/18-die-70-hurt-in-doncaster-train-crash
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/doncaster-air-port-aka-doncaster-airport/query/Hugh
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/launched-sideways-2/query/Doncaster
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/open-new-motorway/query/Doncaster
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/thompson-faces-stiff-task/query/doncaster
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-art-of-getting-tyred/query/doncaster

[River Don]

The beauty of that London footage is he has captured ordinary life on the streets. And the camera he invented captures a natural motion, not the peculiar speeded up footage you normally see on old film. His colour process brings the whole thing to life. He did it with a green and red filter, if he had included blue it would have been true full colour.

Apparently it did flicker badly but the bfi were able to get rid of that digitally.

[Sandy Lane]

These are all so interesting to watch, and I particularly like the music opening the different sequences.  I assume they must have their music categorized according to the seriousness of the event.  It's really brilliant and well done especially the early ones from the Doncaster archives and for the time, cutting edge I'd say.  Great.