Home » Posts tagged 'color'

Tag Archives: color

Color

Posted on by

Harriet Andersson and Jarl Kulle in Bergman’s All These Women (1964)

Yesterday I posted about my love for black & white films. Today, I would like to redress the balance by talking about the pros and cons of color film. With the new motion picture and video cameras, color is, for the most part, what the camera is programmed to shoot, especially when the camera is digital.

There was a brief time in the 1960s when film directors made some exciting use of color film stock. I am thinking of such films as Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Red Desert (1964), Ingmar Bergman’s All These Women (1964), and—going back a couple of decades—Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus (1947).

In fact, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has released a list of 275 films “with Amazing Use of Colours.” The list includes some well-known titles as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), Robert Zemeckis’s Forrest Gump (1994), Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), and Steven Spielberg’s E.T. (1982). Interestingly, there are scores of titles of films of which I have never heard: In each case, some film-maker wanted to make something different and succeeded.

As digital film becomes more prevalent, the temptation is for producers and directors to not attempt anything special. This is particularly true of films released by HBO, Netflix, Hulu, and others in multiple parts. Most of these productions I frankly ignore. Graphically speaking, most are failures.

Even films released as features for the theaters are not necessarily any better. In the old days of the Hollywood Studios, interesting cinematography was a matter of institutional pride. But that was then….

Black & White

Posted on by

Still from John Ford’s The Fugitive (1947)

Yesterday as I was watching John Ford’s The Fugitive on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), I was reminded of what Peter Bogdanovich said about black & white vs. color: “Orson Welles says every performance looks better in black and white. It’s the fact that you don’t see blue eyes and blond hair. You focus on the performance, not the look of the people. And it enables you to capture the period better.” And that is why he shot The Last Picture Show (1971) in black and white.

When I was growing up, I preferred color, even though the color at that time was mostly three-strip Technicolor, which, though beautiful in its own right, is not particularly realistic. Then, in 1962, I saw a black & white film that changed me: Carl Dreyer’s powerful study of witchcraft in Denmark, Day of Wrath (1943). I started attending the Dartmouth Film Society’s screenings, and I saw numerous motion pictures that made me appreciate both color and black & white.

In the world of black & white, there are some great cinematographers. They include Gabriel Figueroa (he shot The Fugitive); John Alton, the great noir master; Joseph Von Sternberg and his regulars Lee Garmes and Bert Glennon; Sidney Hickox (the 1946 The Big Sleep); and Gregg Toland. Interestingly, the great B/W photographers could also make great color films—but not always vice versa.

Today, I have no preference between B/W and color. Most of the films I watch on TCM are in black and white, probably because I do not retain my childhood preference for color. Also, I will willingly watch silent films of the 1920s and films of the 1930s, 1940s, and up to the present day. Curiously, if I am prejudiced, it is mostly against recent films, which are overwhelmingly in color.

For balance, I will also write a blog about my favorite color films within the next few days.