1906 35mm Pathe Stencil Color anyone?

[Frank Wylie]

"Bobby and His Family" (1906), Pathe Films, France.

Thought some might be interested in seeing how well a 115 year old bit of Stencil Colored film has held up.  We are getting ready to run a 4K scan on this film and I marvel at how vibrant the colors remain and just how difficult the process was to cut the stencils frame by frame to color this film.

I also stumbled onto an original advertisement featuring this film; showing how film at the time was sold outright to exhibitors by the foot.

The illustration is taken from, "The Red Rooster Scare:  Making Cinema American, 1900-1910" by Richard Abel, if you find this interesting.

(Sorry for the crappy cell phone capture, but even with this, the color is amazing...)

Edited July 15, 2021 by Frank Wylie
added title card

[George Florence]

Thank you Frank for your very interesting post.

Just discovered an incredible site with very detailed and well catalogued plethora of color film history - particularly such Pathecolor history as you display here.

https://filmcolors.org/timeline-entry/1218/

Warning : it is a rabbit hole of endless images and information on color processes, encapsulating  the stupendous early history of motion picture film.

George