This is, strictly speaking, Georgian – as in Poets – colour film, but the correct term isn’t often used, and “Edwardian” has come to mean everything between Victoria and the Miracle on the Marne.
There are quite a few examples of colour moving pictures from this period in fact, and there was a great deal of experimentation going on. But this is the best uncorrected example of a proper 3-colour subtractive system that I have found so far. If the Youtube comments are anything to go by, only the sheer expense of the method which produced this clip prevented its commercial uptake.
It’s more Henry James or E.M. Forster than Mitchell and Kenyon, but none the worse for that:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsZhK4khz9I]
But all the usual frustrations apply. Like Alfred Kahn’s autochrome emissaries, these cameramen avoid the East End of London and its continental counterparts. How I’d love this technology to have come into the hands of a Thomas Annan or Begbie. But what we have is beautiful, and fascinating in itself.