User Reviews

Here's a pretty good fireworks display, as per the title. This movie is enhanced by some nice hand-tinting, and static fireworks -- thee days we are so accustomed to rockets of various sorts that their use in a static frame, which occurs at the end of this short, seems odd.

There's a bit of debate between the other reviewers whether this was hand-tinted or used producer Charles Urban's Kinemacolor process. Kinemacolor was arguably the first successful color system for motion pictures. However, it wasn't introduced until 1908. Neither did it supplant hand-tinting entirely. It was abandoned in 1915.

IMDb seems to have this film all over the place. It records Brock's Firework Display at Crystal Palace as 1902 (Warwick Trading Company) and has another Warwick title "Fireworks) as 1905, Fireworks Display at Crystal Palace (1904) and this title (both as Urban, 1904) The Brock's Firework display was indeed originally conceived in 1902 for the Coronation of Edward VII and Queen Alexandria and it is possible that this was filmed by Urban, and also that Urban filmed the Brock's displays several times. Brock's had developed in association with Crystal Palace (1851) (it even used "Crystal Palace" as a brand name) and produced regular displays there known as "Brock's Benefits".

There is, however, certainly a very sensational film that survives of the display at Crystal Palace, filmed probably in September 1905 (the 30th September was the last day of the show). The film is preserved in the collection of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema of Turin, is available on Vimeo, beautifully restored (2011), but dated (wrongly I think) 1904.

The film itself remarkable. It is shot at night and in natural colour (presumably a trial outing for the Smith/Urban Kinemacolor system which was patented in 1906 (hence unlikely to have been shot as early as 1904). As with other trial-films using the system, it seems likely that G. A. Smith was himself behind the camera.

But the fireworks are remarkable too (I do not why it is no longer possible for such magnificent displays to be put on. Too expensive?), a display that includes steamboats, a cock fight, a railway train and fine illuminated portraits of the King and Queen.

It is a film that really deserves to be much better known.

I'd agree with the reviewer kekseka that this film is indeed sensational and should be better known, but it's not, as the review claims, a natural colour film. Instead, the print available online is hand-tinted, with each frame individually and painstakingly coloured using brushes, as is particularly noticeable in the shots of rockets and Roman candles where broad strokes are used. I'd say this method of colouring adds something natural colour wouldn't, abstracting the image and increasing the impression of kinetic art. It's certainly not Kinemacolour, which was a two-colour additive process that resulted in a distinctive flickering colour palate not evident here.