The C Word

Colorization.

Did you shudder when you read that?

Earlier today I wrote a long and tediously argued post suggesting that there might be a case for its use on cheaply-made B movies which were only made in monochrome for the sake of economy. I thought that if people who never watch old movies because they can't take b&w were to see some of them in colour, they might learn to appreciate the older stuff and be drawn to watch the Classics in all their gleaming glory.

Unfortunately before I could submit it, I lost contact with my service provider and the whole screed vanished. Maybe the Heavens disapprove.

Anyway, I just wondered (bearing in mind that no one should EVER be allowed to tamper with the truly great movies of truly accomplished cinematographers), if anyone saw any merit in the argument. Vox pop: you're on.

Colorization.

Did you shudder when you read that?

Earlier today I wrote a long and tediously argued post suggesting that there might be a case for its use on cheaply-made B movies which were only made in monochrome for the sake of economy. I thought that if people who never watch old movies because they can't take b&w were to see some of them in colour, they might learn to appreciate the older stuff and be drawn to watch the Classics in all their gleaming glory.

Unfortunately before I could submit it, I lost contact with my service provider and the whole screed vanished. Maybe the Heavens disapprove.

Anyway, I just wondered (bearing in mind that no one should EVER be allowed to tamper with the truly great movies of truly accomplished cinematographers), if anyone saw any merit in the argument. Vox pop: you're on. :eek: At the 'c' word.

You know I thought the very same thing. Maybe it would make a few folks watch some other films. But I would shudder at the thought of anyone watching Double Indemnity or The Third Man colorized. :eek:

Damn your ISP.

:
Damn your ISP.


They are, they are.

Yep, I shuddered at that word.

I recently watched the colorized 20 Million Miles to Earth, and thought they did a more than passable job with it. Still, that's one of those cases where economy dictated shooting in monochrome; I don't know that I'd ever want to see the 30s films that are getting the same treatment, like She and The Most Dangerous Game...even if Ray Harryhausen approved them.

It can never be good. I hate the idea of changing older films. I even hate director's cuts or directors who insist on recutting their movies like say Oliver Stone and Alexander. These are nothing in comparison to the idea of colourising a film.

I have a couple Laurel and Hardy of DVD's that were originally part of a 'Complete L&H Boxset' and were sold individually and each one has a "colorized" version of the film as an extra. I watched one out of curiousity and ya know what? It just ain't right. Stan and Ollie just don't look right in colour..and neither do the Marx Bros. Some films are just meant to be in b&w.

However I must confess that I've seen a version of Nosferatu that had been fully restored and had 'hand tinted frames' and that was very effective. Not colourised exactly but different scenes had a atmospheric tint to them that really made a difference.

I don't know that I'd ever want to see the 30s films that are getting the same treatment, like She and The Most Dangerous Game...even if Ray Harryhausen approved them.

Ray Harryhausen has set his seal on colourisation? I hadn't heard that. His opinion deserves to be taken seriously, since he's a man with a deep appreciation of the movies. Have you any more details to hand, Dr M?

Cicero - yours is a fine Puritanical stand, but on the subject of directors' cuts I don't think it can be turned into a Universal Law. Many films appeared in a form that pleased no one, generally through the interference of studio executives who didn't know about movies but thought they knew about box office. The first Wicker Man, for example, was initially released in a form that made very little sense and is infinitely inferior to the restored and reconstituted version.

And be honest . . . if by a miracle the lost footage of The Magnificent Ambersons turned up, would you refuse to watch it because it wasn't part of the film as RKO intended?

That's funny, Charlie - it was watching colourised footage of Laurel & Hardy that first made me wonder if the process was as pernicious as I'd always assumed. It didn't spoil my enjoyment, and I thought, if this version allows a new generation to discover the boys, why not?

When you say they "don't look right" in colour, are you sure you don't just mean that you're not used to them that way?

I have a couple Laurel and Hardy of DVD's that were originally part of a 'Complete L&H Boxset' and were sold individually and each one has a "colorized" version of the film as an extra. I watched one out of curiousity and ya know what? It just ain't right. Stan and Ollie just don't look right in colour..and neither do the Marx Bros. Some films are just meant to be in b&w.

However I must confess that I've seen a version of Nosferatu that had been fully restored and had 'hand tinted frames' and that was very effective. Not colourised exactly but different scenes had a atmospheric tint to them that really made a difference.I agree, they just do not look right. First of all the colors are just not right, some of them are way off due to shadows.

The hand tinted frames are another matter all together. Even The Golem had some, but they were original hand tinting, and not added years later to "jazz" up the film.
I was thinking for instance if somebody were to colorize The Picture of Dorian Gray 1945, how that would completely ruin the movie. It had a color scene when Dorian's picture is revealed to us at the end of the movie, and what an shock that was, made even more so by the surprise of color.

And be honest . . . if by a miracle the lost footage of The Magnificent Ambersons turned up, would you refuse to watch it because it wasn't part of the film as RKO intended? The key to that question in my mind is "as RKO intended", not as the Director had intended. Many Directors had their films butchered by the studio heads. If by some miracle The Lady From Shanghai could be restored to Welles's vision, especially the sound track he wanted, I'd be first in line to get a copy of that.

Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In America was cut beyond belief and comprehension. It is almost a 4 hour film and needs to be, the American version got cut down to about 2 and a half hours and make no sense at all!

So make sure to see the Directors cut, or don't bother seeing it at all.

The Third Man, when the film was initially distributed in America, David O. Selznick replaced the narration at the beginning, originally done by Carol Reed himself, with a narration read inexplicably by Joseph Cotten. Nearly 7 minutes of film was cut out in Selznick's version, including all references in the original cut to Cotten's Holly Martins being an implied alcoholic and anything else that portrayed him as a less than heroic figure.

Thank goodness on the restored DVD you get the film the way Carol Reed intended it.

I don't like Director's cut, when a film was released and then later they go back and tinker with it trying to perhaps make it better, but if the Director's version is messed with and then I have the opportunity to see it in it's original form, I'll take it.

I first saw The Picture Of Dorian Gray on black-and-white television.

So what, Orlock?

Dunno, it just seemed relevant somehow . . .

I should add that I gave up on a colourised version of the Alastair Sim Scrooge a few years back - not because the colour was rubbish (though it was) but from a deep, gut-wrenching sense that This Thing Was Not Meant To Be. But was I perhaps over-reacting?

Allow they get the accursed process right, and begin colouring b&w movies so well that you wouldn't know they'd been colourised if you hadn't seen them before. What then? I'll tell you what then: then after a year or so the colour versions would be the only ones on the shelves and you wouldn't be able to get hold of the originals. Now that is a serious reason for banning the whole business.

I wonder if there can ever be a definitive "final" version of any film. If so, who should determine it? Certainly not the distributor. I suppose we're stuck with the director. Oops, except that the original Casino Royale had six directors. And they were all crap!

I first saw The Picture Of Dorian Gray on black-and-white television.I did too, I saw everything on a black and white TV set.

I will still run across a movie now and again I haven't seen in 40 some years and be so surpriesed that it was a color movie. But I remember the first time I saw Dorian Gray in color, it was so exciting at the end I thought.

Nothing Scared 1937 was an early technicolor film, it has been around for a long time, color that is.

Directors had the option of using color for many years and made a choice not to use it, for many different reasons. But whatever their reasoning, I like watching a moive the way it was originally made.

And that reminds me, the first year we had a color TV when I was a kid and I watched The Wizard of Oz and Dorothy opened the door to OZ, OMG how fantastic was that.

Whenever a colorized version of a movie is on TV, I just simply turn the color off.

I recall when I was very young going to see a movie called The Solid Gold Cadillac. It was all in b&w except for the very last shot. Want to guess what was in it?

I recall when I was very young going to see a movie called The Solid Gold Cadillac. It was all in b&w except for the very last shot. Want to guess what was in it?Oh gee, haven't the faintest idea. :rolleyes:

Some Like It Hot, Marilyn Monroe wanted the film to be shot in color (her contract stipulated that all her films were to be in color), but Billy Wilder convinced her to let it be shot in black and white when costume tests revealed that the makeup that Tony Curtis and 'Jack Lemmon' wore gave their faces a green tinge.

Ray Harryhausen has set his seal on colourisation? I hadn't heard that. His opinion deserves to be taken seriously, since he's a man with a deep appreciation of the movies. Have you any more details to hand, Dr M?

Yeah, he has; there's an interesting featurette about it on the 20 Million Miles DVD. He discusses the new process used for the film (which is an improvement over past colorizing efforts) - it also shows him sitting down with some of the colorizing techs as they do their work. I still have reservations about applying it to earlier movies, though.

Thanks, Doc. I'll check that one out. And I also have reservations.

Yeah, he has; there's an interesting featurette about it on the 20 Million Miles DVD. He discusses the new process used for the film (which is an improvement over past colorizing efforts) - it also shows him sitting down with some of the colorizing techs as they do their work. I still have reservations about applying it to earlier movies, though.I do too. As in I think it is just wrong wrong wrong, did I mention how wrong I think it is. I don't care who thinks it is a good idea.

We must hope monochrome may make a comeback some day. There are directors who still see some value in it.

Kenneth Branagh used it for In The Bleak Midwinter in 1993. Now there's an underrated film.

Then of course there was Schindler's List. Sadly all that has to have said to Hollywood is that b&w is fine for seeting filmsin 1940s Germany, as in The Good German. Who knows? Maybe a trend will arise.

Woody Allen made a few, Shadows and Fog, Zelig was mostly black and white, and Broadway Danny Rose.

And then there was Carl Reiner's brilliant Film Noir spoof, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, with all the great old film clips mixed into the film.

Oh and Wings of Desire was predominately a black and white film.

The Elephant Man
Man Bites Dog
Young Frankenstein
Ed Wood
Manhatten
Eraserhead (!?)
would any of these films be any 'better' if they were made in colour? I think not..

The Elephant Man
Man Bites Dog
Young Frankenstein
Ed Wood
Manhatten
Eraserhead (!?)
would any of these films be any 'better' if they were made in colour? I think not..Jeez yeah! I think not as well.

Inspired by this thread I dug out a couple of Laurel & Hardy 'colourized' shorts and gave them another look..I think what jars with me is that they are cleaarly filmed in the 1930's (cars, clothes stytles etc) but the garish colour makes me think of films from the 50's when all these new colour film techniques were coming along and and all films were really bright and colourful. 30's film in a 50's style-ee... :confused:

My version of Nosferatu is the BFI one (no, I'm not boasting that I could afford their prices): it's in most ways excellent, but the music is by James Bernard. Now Nosferatu is emphatically not a Hammer Film, and I find it distracting.

By which I just mean to agree, Charlie, that the background details should certainly come from the right decade.

If your Laurel & Hardy colourisation had made them look like 30s colour films - The Wizard Of Oz or Gone With The Wind - would you have found it acceptable?

Well I'm guessing the colourised version of L&H's Babes in Toyland probably DOES look a lot like Wizard of Oz...having that 'fantasy element' to it.

But Wizard of Oz doesn't 'look' like a 30's film (sets, clothes etc) except when they are in Kansas..which is filmed in b&w..so it's kinda hard to say.

And Gone With The Wind is set in the 1860s, and I can't think offhand of a 1930s colour film that's set in the 1930s. Does it matter? They didn't live in black and white. Presumably the "right" kind of colour for them (if any) would be the kind that makes them look the way they really looked.

I'm beginning to think Ozma's right and we're venturing into places where Humankind Was Not Meant To Tread.

Just watched The Wizard of Oz last night, atleast a good bit of the beginning.

It has nothing to do with when a movie was made or what era. Because life is in color as you pointed out Byron. It is the fact that colorization never looks "right" and it is not the way the filmmaker intended the film to be seen.

We have brought up a few old films that were made in glorious color and they are great looking.

If somebody could colorize some old comedies that weren't made in black and white for aesthetic reasons, wouldn't take away from the director's vision of the film and I couldn't tell they were colorized, I'd probably not turn the color off when I watched it, but I haven't seen anything like that yet.

Early color movies are great, Nothng Sacred for instance, great example of an early technicolor movie.

One of the best film noirs I have ever seen Leave Her To Heaven 1945, is in glorious technicolor, but it was made that was.

E-gads we are having a wind storm, I must cut this short!

colorization never looks "right" and it is not the way the filmmaker intended the film to be seen.

If somebody could colorize some old comedies that weren't made in black and white for aesthetic reasons, wouldn't take away from the director's vision of the film and I couldn't tell they were colorized, I'd probably not turn the color off when I watched it, but I haven't seen anything like that yet.

That more or less comes back to the original point I tried to make sometime during the War of 1812: all the movies made in b&w not because of "the way the filmmaker intended them to be seen" but because monochrome was all they could afford.

Charlie Chan In Egypt - that imperishable masterpiece - was set in Egypt to give the audience a taste of the exotic, and would have looked still more exotic if some of the genuine colour of the desert had been included. Colourisation would almost certainly bring it closer to the basic conception. That is, as you say, if the process was perfected so that you couldn't tell it had been used.

Sorry you're having trouble with the wind, Oz. Better cut out the spicy chicken wings for a while. :p

That more or less comes back to the original point I tried to make sometime during the War of 1812: all the movies made in b&w not because of "the way the filmmaker intended them to be seen" but because monochrome was all they could afford.

Charlie Chan In Egypt - that imperishable masterpiece - was set in Egypt to give the audience a taste of the exotic, and would have looked still more exotic if some of the genuine colour of the desert had been included. Colourisation would almost certainly bring it closer to the basic conception. That is, as you say, if the process was perfected so that you couldn't tell it had been used.

Sorry you're having trouble with the wind, Oz. Better cut out the spicy chicken wings for a while. :pOpps!! yeah. :rolleyes:

I will give in to that idea. If it could be done and I could not tell, and they just weren't trying to jazz up The Postman Always Rings Twice or Double Indemnity, or Born To Kill...etc
Because sometimes it was a matter of money, not aesthetic reasons.

But I grew up watching all movies in black and white. So nobody needs to colorize anything for me. I used to think Gone With The Wind was a black and white movie.

Here's a story I've just remembered.

King Rat (1965): outstanding bleak movie set in Changi prisoner-of-war camp. According to John Mills, it was originally filmed in colour. Then one day they woke up and found the jungle had changed colour overnight (apparently this happens sometime), making all the previous footage useless.

So they released it in b&w, and I for one can't imagine it any other way. But what price the makers' intentions with that one?

Here's a story I've just remembered.

King Rat (1965): outstanding bleak movie set in Changi prisoner-of-war camp. According to John Mills, it was originally filmed in colour. Then one day they woke up and found the jungle had changed colour overnight (apparently this happens sometime), making all the previous footage useless.

So they released it in b&w, and I for one can't imagine it any other way. But what price the makers' intentions with that one?

It's like the scene in Lindsay Anderson's 'If...' where it goes into b&w and all the arty farty film types go on about 'symbolism' and 'minimalism' and the 'meaning of the scene' etc...truth is..the budget run out and they had no colour film left. Simple as that!

It's like the scene in Lindsay Anderson's 'If...' where it goes into b&w and all the arty farty film types go on about 'symbolism' and 'minimalism' and the 'meaning of the scene' etc...truth is..the budget run out and they had no colour film left. Simple as that!

Or Laurence Olivier's Hamlet. He himself came up with some fine sonorous reasons why the play cried out for b&w . . . later it turned out he was having a legal dispute with Technicolor at the time.

I just like the term "arty farty film types", good one Charlie. Many times there is no hidden meaning or hidden agenda in a film, but people like to see things that are not there, read meaning in nothing.

Kicking as I love to do a dead horse, here's what Orson Welles said when Peter Bogdanovich asked him:

PB: I understand you had offers for Chimes At Midnight in colour, but you only wanted to do it in black-and-white. Why, specifically?

OW: Well, it was primarily an actors' film, and colour, you know, is a great friend in need to the cameraman but it's an enemy of the actor. Faces in colour tend to look like meat - veal, beef, baloney -

And that's only their faces . . .

Kicking as I love to do a dead horse, here's what Orson Welles said when Peter Bogdanovich asked him:

PB: I understand you had offers for Chimes At Midnight in colour, but you only wanted to do it in black-and-white. Why, specifically?

OW: Well, it was primarily an actors' film, and colour, you know, is a great friend in need to the cameraman but it's an enemy of the actor. Faces in colour tend to look like meat - veal, beef, baloney -

And that's only their faces . . .
Good old Orson. I have been watching black and white movies lately like they are going out of style, no pun intended, but anyway, I love them. I can't explain the attraction of them for myself. I just like the cold crispness of them and the shadows.

On the subject of films in B&W and colour...I was always surprised that during Powell and Pressberger's most excellent "A Matter of Life and Death" (aka 'Stairway to Heaven' in the US :rolleyes: ) that 'real life' on Earth is shown in glorious Techniclour but life in Heaven is in monochrome. I would have thought it would have been the other way round (like Oz in The Wizard of Oz) to emphasise the 'wonderfulness' of heaven compared to life on war torn Earth

On the subject of films in B&W and colour...I was always surprised that during Powell and Pressberger's most excellent "A Matter of Life and Death" (aka 'Stairway to Heaven' in the US :rolleyes: ) that 'real life' on Earth is shown in glorious Techniclour but life in Heaven is in monochrome. I would have thought it would have been the other way round (like Oz in The Wizard of Oz) to emphasise the 'wonderfulness' of heaven compared to life on war torn Earth

Further to my earlier post ..I have been reading a bit online about AMOLAD since posting it and apparently P&P did it that way round (Earth in colour-heaven in monochrome) because it's the exact opposite of what people would have expected!!! So basically they did it to be bloody awkward! ;)

Further to my earlier post ..I have been reading a bit online about AMOLAD since posting it and apparently P&P did it that way round (Earth in colour-heaven in monochrome) because it's the exact opposite of what people would have expected!!! So basically they did it to be bloody awkward! ;)I loved that movie. And that is really clever of them to do that.

As a child I never even knew that The Wizard of Oz was mostly a color film, imagine my surprise the first year we had a color TV and Dorothy opened the door to Oz.

If so, the Archers got it right. As Marius Goring said: "Up there we are starved for Technicolor".

great lil arguments about color vs black and white. for me, i think the awkwardness of coloring comes from the how the director films it. b&w films really rely on serious lighting. just like a photographer using a lot of shadow for an image and therefore goes with b&w. will it work with color, possibly, but if they didn't go color originally, why bother later? simply, if it ain't broke, leave the damn thing alone ;)
films i've seen in b&w, i've loved BECAUSE they were in b&w, and there IS a nostalgic prejudice in that statement which i'm rather proud of ::smirks::