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Posted: |
Jun 30, 2013 - 11:30 AM
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By: |
mastadge
(Member)
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It seems to me that most people have a schizoid attitude towards black and white in the movies. Most people would rather watch a colorized version of an old black and white movie. But these same people have no issue with watching a modern movie purposefully filmed in black and white
Well, there are reasons for that beyond the color issues. For instance, I saved a pair of texts from my little brother a few years back that read: "These old black and white movies have the most annoying and loud music and sound effects. How do people watch them and not get a headache?" and "The movies have like no ambient noise so there's no good volume balance. mastering sound is crucial to a good movie and all these old films have terrible sound work." So his problem was not that the movies are in black and white, but that both the aesthetic and technology behind the sound design didn't work for him.
And there are plenty of other differences. Acting has changed, dialogue has changed, whole new cinematic dialects have come and gone. Regardless of any objective measure of the quality of good old films, a participant needs a context to appreciate something and that context, for many younger folk, probably doesn't extend much past the 70s now, with a few exceptions from earlier on. Kind of like how someone who's never read anything besides American bestsellers published since the 80s would probably bounce of Tolstoy or Hugo or Dickens on a first try, no matter how much it had been impressed upon that person how good they were.
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Posted: |
Jun 30, 2013 - 11:30 AM
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By: |
Michael24
(Member)
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I turn 35 in December. I've never had an aversion to B&W movies. As a kid in the '80s, I grew up on reruns of things like I Love Lucy, The Adventures of Superman and The Three Stooges. I was always watching old westerns and war movies with my dad, and other films such as The Thing From Another World and Them! When I was a teenager in high school, I "discovered" The Dick van Dyke Show, and it became a nightly staple for me during the week. Around the same time, I also saw Psycho and fell in love with it.
One of the things I like about B&W movies is that they transport me back to a simpler time. The whole "when women wore dresses and men wore hats" kind of thing. I know whenever I watch a Stooges short, for example, I always love seeing the exterior shots of '30s and '40s era Los Angeles.
There are just as many bad B&W movies as there are color. To be fair, I only have probably a handful of B&W films in my 300+ DVD collection. But as long as it's well-made and entertaining, that's all I care about.
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Posted: |
Jun 30, 2013 - 1:33 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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We've been talking about B&W and color on this thread for some years now.
I have been thinking about an issue which has been coming up more often now and I wonder if any of you have experiences and opinions and can answer my question.
With modern video transfer technology, and the enhanced digital and chemical restoration abilities of the studios, it has often been possible to see films quite close to the "first generation" way in which they were originally photographed and presented.
When I was much younger, in the late 1940s-early 1950s, double-bills of features were a common occurrence, and sometimes those double-bills contained two color features. Occasionally one of the films was in 3-color IB Technicolor and the other was in one of the much-older developed 2-color processes---Magnacolor, Trucolor, CineColor---printed on duplitized film stock with an emulsion on BOTH sides of the film.
The Technicolor film always had the complete full-color range and was usually beautiful to look at, but the 2-color film was limited to certain colors in the spectrum, and the printing stock was poor enough, that the film usually looked---failing a better term---"icky". As a discerning audience you usually sucked up the horrible, incomplete color palette and bore with it until the screening was over and you could get back to the Technicolor.
Today, with modern transfer technology, many of those 2-color films look quite acceptable, and sometimes even excellent, though in their still limited way.
Many of today's filmmakers are descending into the past, and although they now have really excellent full-color capabilities with their stocks, they are often choosing to present their films via limited color palettes---either by way of really poor photography, or by graphic design.
My question is this:
When you see an early color film on television or video---say from 1945 to 1960---and you don't know the color process in which the film was photographed---are you able to IMMEDIATELY ascertain, positively and certainly, that you ARE or ARE NOT seeing the full 3-color range of information???
I have my suspicions that because of the way modern films are photographed, most viewers don't have a clue about the older films' color values.
I also have a suspicion that a colorized B&W film---if done patiently and expensively (.....we're talking about a superb, creative job here)---can rarely be discerned by an unknowing and youthful eye.
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Posted: |
Jul 1, 2013 - 12:55 AM
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By: |
tarasis
(Member)
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I'm recently 37, but I still love B&W movies though I very rarely get to see any as we don't have a TV input (and if we did it would be in German). I grew up watching the older movies that the UK channels (Channel 4 & BBC2) used to show in the day time and I feel that it helped me appreciate films more. Two of my top 5 fav movies are Duck Soup and Arsenic & Old Lace.
I'd kill for a Internet site where I could subscribe and be able to watch again movies like Topper, The Ghost & Mrs Muir, Hobson's Choice, Kind Hearts & Coronets, The Man in the White Suit, Whisky Galore, the many British and American war movies, PI movies, the movies of the bloke whose name currently escapes me but plays the banjo, Marx Brothers movies. *sigh* the list goes on and on.
It saddens me a bit that, likely, my kids won't grow up to see many of the classics, to appreciate films that relied more on story & acting over spectacle or gore. Remakes generally fail (The Ladykillers, I enjoyed Hanks but wasn't a patch on the original) and colorization is unneeded, the movies should be left as they where made.
I should note that my wife doesn't like B&W movies, or older stuff in general. I suggested watching ST:TOS recently and her response was "that's too old".
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I've been watching a lot of b/w movies lately. I've started watching double bills at home, always starting with a b/w film. Last night was a strange double bill, Kind Hearts & Coronets & after that witty & mannered film I fancied something stupid & violent, so I went with Sly's The Expendables 2 (maybe a bit too stupid, but I enjoyed it). I've been going through the Hope/Crosby "Road" movies, & Hope's The Ghost Breakers. Dunkirk (that was a bit long, so I didn't bother with a second film). And there's the Preston Sturges box to see. Favorite b/w's are old war movies, I saw Battan the other night, Robert Taylor is just so good in it (reading a John Ford biog. I see he was first choice for They Were Expendable, but he couldn't do it, so the part went to John Wayne). I love British 50's b/w war movies & British 50's b/w comedies. And then there's all those 40's serials. I have DVD's of quite a few of them: King Of The Rocketmen, Phantom Empire, Zorro's Fighting Legion, & many more. My 83 year old mother doesn't like b/w movies, in fact the whole family takes the micky, "you were watching what! That's yonks old...& it's b/w!".
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And then there's all those 40's serials. I have DVD's of quite a few of them: King Of The Rocketmen, Phantom Empire, Zorro's Fighting Legion, & many more.
Now those are something I've always wanted to explore. I've never seen King of the Rocketmen, but I actually have a mini-poster on my wall because I love the look of it. But I would love to check out a lot of those great serials of the '40s. (Sometimes they just seem daunting because of the total length. Almost like watching a whole season of a TV series.)
Yeah, I saw them all in the late 50's & early 60's at what we used to call Saturday Morning Pictures: cartoons, a short, serial & main film. I used to live for those serials, it's what started me loving films. Having them on DVD I have found that you can't see all the episodes back to back, it doesn't work, they weren't made to be seen like that. I'd say no more than two episodes at a time. Oh, & two big favorites I left out: The Adventures Of Captain Marvel & of course, Flash Gordon. I suppose they have high camp value now, but with me it's a magical part of my childhood. Back in the late 60's I did go to a Flash Gordon all nighter at the NFT in London's South Bank, but I think I fell asleep around 2.30am!
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Do You Refuse to Watch Black & White Movies?
Yes. Shame on me. ;-)
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