ANDREW SWIFT - JUNE.qxp_Layout 7 21/05/2021 15:39 Page 1
William Friese-Greene: Analysis of Motion Experiment. Science Museum Group © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, London
HISTORY | CINEMATOGRAPHY
The father of cinema
Only in recent years has Bristol-born cinematographer, William Friese-Greene, been recognised for his outstanding contributions to motion picture. Andrew Swift looks back at a legacy shrouded in controversy Only in recent years has Bristol-born cinematographer, William Friese-Greene, been recognised for his outstanding contributions to motion picture. Andrew Swift looks back at a legacy shrouded in controversy
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lthough the name of William Friese-Greene is a familiar one, many people might struggle if asked to list his achievements. This isn’t too surprising, even though in Bristol, where he was born, there are no less than three plaques to his memory. One hails him as ‘the pioneer of cinematography’, another calls him ‘the inventor of commercial cinematography’, while a third credits him with being ‘the inventor of the moving picture camera’. All of which suggests he was a very significant figure indeed. Unfortunately, it isn’t quite as straightforward as that. His life was a roller coaster – from rags to riches, and then, following a devastating bankruptcy, back to rags again. His posthumous reputation had an even stranger trajectory. Hailed after his death as a pioneering genius who virtually invented motion pictures, his life story 48 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
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JUNE 2021
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No 199
featured in a star-studded film to mark the Festival of Britain in 1951. Four years later, however, plans to celebrate the centenary of his birth were scuppered by revelations that he was little more than a fraud who pinched other people’s ideas. Only now, a century after his death, is it becoming clear that both the adulation and the condemnation were wide of the mark, with a more balanced view of his achievements finally emerging. He was born William Edward Green, the son of a metalworker, in Bristol in 1855. He won a scholarship to Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital, and, when he left at the age of 14, the school apprenticed him to a photographer called Marcus Guttenberg. Five years later, he married a German girl called Helena Friese and moved to Bath, where he worked for Mrs HR Williams, a ‘photographic artiste’ in Fountain Buildings. He soon opened his own studio in the Corridor, Bath’s fashionable
