London to Brighton in Four Minutes (1953)

Directed by

Don Smith

Genre

documentary

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

4 min

Rating

6.2 of 10 from 16 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A camera shows a train ride from London to Brighton in fast motion, compressing an hour-long journey into four minutes. Made for a children's TV news program, it became a beloved British broadcast that viewers watched over and over.

fast-pacednostalgicwhimsicaltime-capsulelight-heartedobservationalspeedy

What happens

London to Brighton in Four Minutes is a short film produced by the BBC Film Unit in the early 1950s showing a train journey from London Victoria to Brighton in England. The camera was manually undercranked to produce a fast motion film so that the journey lasted only four minutes instead of the actual time of about one hour. It was originally shown on BBC Television's Children's Newsreel and over the years its frequent repeat transmissions became very popular with British television viewers of all ages. Later versions were produced, particularly in 1983 and 2013, showing some of the cultural and operational changes that had taken place. The films show the train driver's view ahead during a journey aboard the Brighton Belle. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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