Early British color talkies - which color process?

[DeutscheFarben]

Hello to all,
I'm looking for the information which (two-)color-process was used for Britain's first two sound color feature films:
The Romance of Seville
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138755/combined
and
Harmony Heaven
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0134702/combined

AFAIK, both films were made with a subtractive two-color-process similar to the so-called Two-Strip-Technicolor, and I've heard somewhere that Claude Friese-Greene (The Open Road) who photographed The Romance of Seville was also involved in this color process...

Does anybody know how it was called and whether the films in question still survive in color?

Greetings from Germany,
Deutsche Farben

[Frederica]

Hello to all,
I'm looking for the information which (two-)color-process was used for Britain's first two sound color feature films:
The Romance of Seville
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138755/combined
and
Harmony Heaven
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0134702/combined

AFAIK, both films were made with a subtractive two-color-process similar to the so-called Two-Strip-Technicolor, and I've heard somewhere that Claude Friese-Greene (The Open Road) who photographed The Romance of Seville was also involved in this color process...

Does anybody know how it was called and whether the films in question still survive in color?

Greetings from Germany,
Deutsche Farben

This sounds like a job for (tada!) Super British Color Guy, Luke McKernan! (tada!).

You might try searching The Bioscope at http://bioscopic.wordpress.com/ ; loads of information on early British color processes, even thought he spells it "colour."

Fred

[DeutscheFarben]

Thank you for the hint @Frederica

[Penfold]

According to Rachel Low, The Romance of Seville was Pathecolour; as Harmony Heaven was the same company (BIP) and the same year, it's a fair bet that was too.
Pathecolour, though, in its late-20's version was stencil-colouring; as good as it got pre-computer colorising, but effectively hand colouring, not photochemical.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsXyDrf9HO0 is a Pathecolour film of Josephine Baker from '27....

[urbanora]

Indeed, A ROMANCE OF SEVILLE and HARMONY HEAVEN both featured Pathécolor (non-photochemical stencil colour), which seems to have been BIP practice at the time - ELSTREE CALLING has stencil colour sequences. There's a print of HARMONY HEAVEN at the BFI, but it seems to be b/w only.

Claude Friese-Greene was the cinematographer on A ROMANCE OF SEVILLE, but the colour had nothing to do with his own additive two-colour system (which was never used for fiction film production).

You might try searching The Bioscope at http://bioscopic.wordpress.com/ ; loads of information on early British color processes, even thought he spells it "colour."

The Bioscope series on colour has only got as far as 1914 - the Americans are coming (Technicolor, Prizmacolor, Kodachrome).

Luke

[DeutscheFarben]

Thank you very much for the information
I'm surprised to hear that the films taking the credit of being Britain's first sound-and-color-features were stencil-colored - I found it rather plausible that they adopted some kind of two-color subtractive process - like they had done in 1923/24 Glorious Adventure / Virgin Queen...

[earlytalkiebuffRob]

Indeed, A ROMANCE OF SEVILLE and HARMONY HEAVEN both featured Pathécolor (non-photochemical stencil colour), which seems to have been BIP practice at the time - ELSTREE CALLING has stencil colour sequences. There's a print of HARMONY HEAVEN at the BFI, but it seems to be b/w only.

Claude Friese-Greene was the cinematographer on A ROMANCE OF SEVILLE, but the colour had nothing to do with his own additive two-colour system (which was never used for fiction film production).

You might try searching The Bioscope at http://bioscopic.wordpress.com/ ; loads of information on early British color processes, even thought he spells it "colour."

The Bioscope series on colour has only got as far as 1914 - the Americans are coming (Technicolor, Prizmacolor, Kodachrome).

Luke

Regarding the BFI print of HARMONY HEAVEN, one of the writers on IMDb states that the copy he saw at the NFT was coloured...