For the first time in my life I was recently married, 23 and unemployed. My wife was working and I was home watching TV. A British movie came on, The Magic Box which caught my interest immediately . The frustrating life of film innovator William Freese Greene (Robert Donat). The real inventor of color motion pictures. Yes there will be debates that will go on for a time about who invented the motion picture projector and who put in the patents first. But the 100 percent perspiration and dedication of one man shines throughout this movie. Despite bouts with money and marriage problems our inventor chap continued to persevere in his quest for a beautiful finished product. Earlier I watched the original Good Bye Mister Chips starring Robert Donat in the lead. What paralleled these two pictures was the similarity of Robert Donat playing different ages throughout the picture. As in the film Mister Chips you see Donat as a young Freshman Professor at a boarding school and as the film wears on he ages well into his early eighties. In this movie Donat starts as an elderly man at a London conference and the film flashes back showing a younger spry apprentice photographer. Our movie starts with the fore mentioned conference with the older Greene speaking to fellow businessmen in the film industry. Greene's stands up frustrated as he wants to make his message about the innovations of filming but the crowd was saturated with money hungry businessmen interested in complacency. Silent black and white movies being the norm rather than technical advances stressed by Greene. The response from his peers was complacent at the very least. Greene sits himself down and ponders his past. Greene's story flashed back in time as a young studio portrait photographer for a man called Maurice Guttenberg (Frederick Valk). Guttenberg and Greene have a falling out. Greene insists on shooting a picture his way. Greene and his new bride venture out on their own. Green opens his own photography business and slowly makes a solid customer base. With the money and the help of businessman, he invests it all on developing a color film with quite a few failures along the way but persistence pays off as he finally develops a celluloid that could handle a movie projector. One night Greene sets up his makeshift projector. Greene is excited about a scene he filmed in Hyde Park earlier in the day. Greene is about to run the film but there's no audience. He calls down to the street where a Bobby is walking his beat.The Bobby is played by the exemplary Actor Sir Laurence Olivier. Greene tells the befuddled Officer to sit and watch the bed sheet on the wall. Greene runs the film to the amazement of the confused constable as he runs to the sheet and tries to grab the images. This movie has so many cameos of Iconic British cinema actors. Here are some familiars, Leo Genn, David Tomlinson, Peter Ustinov and Michael Redgrave. I always like the acting of Robert Donat and his soft spoken approach. When this movie was released it was a box office flop but to me it was informative and poignant.

A flag-waver aimed as PR for the Festival of Britain. One star role for Robert Donat surrounded by any and every one they could wheel out with the possible exception of Newtie Blick and Kynaston Reeves. It would have been nice to see more of Margatet Johnston a beautiful, talented and woefully under used actress who is allotted the thankless role of Friese-Greene's second wife thus getting less screen time than Maria Schell as his first. Friese-Greenes' actual contribution to the invention of the moving picture has been disputed but by not pushing too hard the producers got away with it at the time. One thing is certain it fails to stand the test of time and the BBC wisely screened it at 6.40 a.m. thus ensuring an audience in the low hundreds, just about what it deserves.

Richard Attenborough, Ronald Shiner, Sidney James, Margaret Rutherford, Googie Withers, Thora Hird, Marius Goring, Stanley Holloway, Eric Portman, Dennis Price, David Tomlinson, Peter Ustinov, and just about every other contemporary British actor have roles in this film about the life of the British inventor of the motion film camera, produced for the postwar "Festival Of Britain". William Friese Greene, a dedicated and spendthrift inventor starts work as a photographer's assistant and then starts his own studio. He starts a partnership with a Scottish man which he later falls out with. His first wife dies and he re-marries but after some period, she divorces him.

There were undoubtedly many people working on some of our most important inventions around the time they became prominent. William Friese-Greene spent his life working on the motion picture camera, and though he isn't the official inventor, he is someone who contributed his work to what became the final product. His story is told by an all-star cast (even in tiny roles) in 1951's "The Magic Box" starring Robert Donat and Maria Schell.Greene held the first patent on a motion picture camera, and financial problems, by which he was beset his entire life, caused him to sell his patent for 500 pounds. He also created a "Biocolor" system which won in a lawsuit against a system called Kinemacolor. This early color process was too expensive for commercial use, however.From what I can gather, Greene had good ideas that weren't very practical, and the film is basically about how he went from a highly successful photographer to a bankrupt inventor, and how his obsession with film and color controlled his life. Not mentioned is the fact that his son Claude Friese-Greene became a cinematographer and was very prolific in British films until his death in 1943. He continued to develop his father's color process and produced a series of travelogues in the 1920s using this system.Robert Donat is excellent, but the film is not very interesting except to spot all of the huge British stars in minor roles, such as Laurence Olivier as a bobby.Some people are fairly dismissive of Friese-Greene, and his place in the creation of the moving picture is controversial. There's no question that today he is considered an early pioneer in moving pictures and in working with color. He was in touch with Edison regarding his work, and just because the credit goes to the individual who makes a product commercial is no reason to ignore the work of others. If this film makes people aware that a credited inventor isn't always the only inventor, so be it.