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I'd be far more interested in seeing a number of color films get a "monochromized" treatment.
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Posted: |
Aug 27, 2013 - 5:08 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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I'd be far more interested in seeing a number of color films get a "monochromized" treatment.
This happened regularly with reissues of Technicolor films in the late '40s-early'50s, particularly with Fox films. (Some years ago, they even made a mistake of pulling up the B&W negative of the Technicolor TO THE SHORES OF TRIPOLI and issued this B&W version on DVD---until everyone screamed.) So, you're way behind the times in considering
the "monochromizing" of Technicolor films.
But, since you seem to have an interest in this idea, how many of these Fox color films have you seen in Black-and-White, and did you like them? Did you have any objection to the commercial reasons and incentives for doing this?
Earlier than that, when David O. Selznick's partners released two of his 1930s 3-color Technicolor films to Film Classics in the 1940s (A STAR IS BORN, NOTHING SACRED) they, along with RKO's BECKY SHARP were turned into 2-color CineColor prints, thus missing the full-color spectrum of the originals.
It's also interesting that people are also far more complimentary about the full-color reissue prints of REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE than the desaturated, nearly monochromatic original-release prints "approved by the cameraman and director".  Funny about that inconsistency.....
"Colorization" (a trademarked name, by the way), has been going on since the dawn of films, with tinting and toning, the beautiful Pathe hand-stenciling frame-by-frame process, and many others. The truth is that no one really wanted Black-and-White---they were simply stuck with it and made the best of it, often very creatively. Many years ago, I once read an article discussing the history of photography (perhaps it was the Journal of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain) and in it the author felt that if simple B&W technology hadn't been a necessary step in the development of color images, no one would have even imagined it or thought of it as a final medium. B&W was simplistic and unnatural and, in these formative years, they were all striving for the color possibilities right from the beginning.
What is happening now, of course, is that the 25-50 major B&W films of each studio get restored, remastered and endlessly re-cycled on the various video media, while the other hundreds and hundreds of B&W films in each library do not get the benefit of these kinds of budgets and are slowly mouldering away, once again, because the younger crowd simply doesn't want to watch them or buy them on video. And all the lecturing about the magic of B&W in university film classes won't change their minds overall. They live in an all-color world.
But, as the "colorizing" processes improve---the stability of the color, the selection and design of the individual colors, the ability to blend colors within a given area, the steadiness of the tracking of action within the scene, and the myriad of point-by-point colors within any given scene---"colorizing" becomes more viable each year as a means of making the B&W library more valuable to its contemporary audience AND PARTICULARLY, by allowing those films to be re-copyrighted and maintained in the library for another 100-or-so years without falling into public domain. Ted Turner's concept was correct---he was just correct too early!
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My post was a smartass comment, of course (although it is interesting to play the mental game of "which color films would work well in b&w?"), but, as always, I appreciate the background info, Manderley.
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Posted: |
Aug 27, 2013 - 6:11 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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My post was a smartass comment, of course (although it is interesting to play the mental game of "which color films would work well in b&w?"), but, as always, I appreciate the background info, Manderley.
Mark R. Y.......I kinda' assumed you were trying to stir things up a bit, but I succumbed to the opportunity to turn it into a learning moment here on the board. We need more posters doing that to educate us all in their particular interests!!!
Actually, your question in this post is interesting, and I can sort of answer it.
There is a vast difference between the way Hollywood pictures are lit today and the way they were lit in the Golden Age. The Technicolor films of the past had, as their cameramen, the same ones who interchangeably photographed B&W films in any given year. So---within their individual styles---the style of the lighting in, say, a Robert Surtees Technicolor film didn't change much from his work on a B&W film. As a result, you could take a Surtees Technicolor film and print it in B&W and there would not be much difference.
I think this is why, recently on the NIGHT OF THE HUNTER thread here, someone pointed out that the cameraman, Stanley Cortez, had wished that the film had been shot in color. He believed it could be very dramatic, like B&W, if he'd been allowed to do it.
Everyone was shocked by his assertion here, but certainly his work on CHINATOWN, before he was replaced, points to this believability. [Cortez was never replaced on films because of the quality of his work. He was replaced because he could be slow and finicky and arrogant and difficult.] Even John Alton---the most revered film noir cameraman---has scenes in the ballet of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS which could easily be pulled out, printed in B&W, and they would look like a typical Alton "noir" sequence.
The reverse is not true today. There are very, very few color films today which could be printed in B&W and look great. The color lighting concepts are totally different and don't lend themselves to B&W, whereas the old lighting concepts were very similar.
(I suppose here is the place to also point out that the 1958 British-made John Ford film, GIDEON OF SCOTLAND YARD [aka- GIDEON'S DAY] was photographed in color, and printed in Technicolor for English release, but printed in B&W for US release by Columbia.)
In the very early 1950s, Dore Schary embarked on his program of making half his yearly schedule of productions at MGM in full Technicolor with upper-level budgets, and the other half productions of noir, dramatic, message, or romantic films in B&W at considerably reduced budgets from the upper-tier.
John Arnold, one of MGM's top cameramen from the early 1920s had stayed on at the studio and finally became head of the camera department. In this early 1950s period, two single-strand color processes came to the fore---Ansco Color and Eastman Color---and they could each be photographed in MGM's standard Mitchell B&W cameras and developed and printed in MGM's own lab on the lot, thus bypassing Technicolor. Arnold suggested to Schary that the year's program of these lower-budget B&W films should be shot in color and then, once cut and assembled, the studio could decide, with the marketing department, whether they wished to release them in color or B&W.
It is obvious that Arnold also saw the handwriting on the wall as regards television and its usage of the library, eventually in full color. If they had done this then a far greater percentage of the back library would today be available in color for broadcast or video release.
But Schary didn't.
(I wonder here if everyone realizes that nearly every feature film and video and TV commercial today is worked over with varying degrees of colorization to obtain that final hot "look" that everyone is striving for each day...... "Colorization" is not gone---it is just more cleverly concealed from its detractors. )
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) version over the B/W...just saying the option is there...and of course, with DVD/BD you can buy both at the same time....bargain! 