Raging Bull is one of the best movies ever made. I don’t know what bothers some people about B&W and I can’t recall a colorized film that was any better than the original. I’d rather see similar technology used to enhance the contrast of some old B&W movies instead of coloring them.
Not all of it. There’s plenty of color footage from that era, from all theaters.
As for TV, MeTV aired colorized versions of the first season of “Gilligan’s Island” for a while. :smack: Not a good idea.
Yes, but it is unfortunately seldom seen.
I was watching Brad Meltzer’s segment about the D-Day films on H2 last week. Apparently, a lot of that color footage was transferred immediately to B&W film for distribution as newsreels. It was faster and much cheaper than making color prints.
I was talking to a fairly well-informed 20-year-old not so long ago, and she was amazed to learn that color photography even existed in the 1940s.
Actually, all film was colour film in the 1940s. Real life was B&W.
I liked Tri-X and Pan-X
Sometimes I used Tri-X reversal
As for the finished cinema films, some flicks just only work in my head as a B&W show.
**The Thing From Another Planet
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Young Frankenstein **
are a few examples
If I’m channel surfing and I notice something in B&W, I stay on that channel to see what it is.
I find the crispness of B&W fascinating, and there are there were some films that were shot in B&W for artistic reasons (Psycho, Manhattan, Raging Bull, The Artist, etc.). There is a style that makes them fascinating.
B&W can improve a movie. Siskel and Ebert once ran the scene in Blazing Saddles where Mongo punches the horse – first in color (as filmed) and then in B&W. B&W was funnier; the lack of color someone enhanced the absurdity.
Them! was originally planned to be in color, but the studio decided just before shooting not to spend the money. I think the ants would have looks just terrible in color.
I don’t think shooting in B&W saves money in the current environment, and have heard that when modern filmmakers opt for it, the studios lean on them to use color instead because B&W is that much harder a sell. I believe the last widely-distributed film to be shot in B&W strictly for money reasons was Clerks.
Roman Holiday worked so well as a B&W film, I always assumed that was an artistic decision. But the movie was made about seven years earlier than I thought it was, 1953 instead of 1960, so (a) they weren’t really competing with television yet and (b) the Fellini movies I thought it was a visual nod to were actually made later. Still, Rome is a city I always associate with white marble statues and edifices, so shooting it in color would seem just a little pointless.
With so many productions going to digital video, cost really isn’t a factor. The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra was shot on video, but was intended as B&W from the outset.
The first color photograph was taken in the 1850s. It’s the tartan ribbon.
Autochrome was the earliest color process that was commonly used, and it was invented around 1900. You get brilliant reds and greens, but not much in the way of blue or yellow.
Has she never seen old issues of “National Geographic”? They started running color photos in the 1920s, if not before.
p.s. “The Artist”, which came out in late 2011 or early 2012, was also in B&W but it was silent too. The box office at the theater where I saw it was telling everyone when they paid admission, on the assumption that they may not know this, and I replied, “I know! That’s why I’m going to see it!” 
I recently heard that white does not photograph properly in B&W, so sets, clothing, etc. that are intended to be white are actually pale pink.
Tri-X is too harsh. Panatomic X, with a film speed barely faster than a daguerreotype, lens stopped way down so your exposure is 22 seconds and your depth of field is infinite, blacks so velvety you want to pet them…yeah, I preferred Pan-X.
The Strangelove thread has me watching the movie and I’m getting lost in the shadows. It would be a lesser movie in color.
Yeah, definitely Pan-X.
Apparently they did something similar with a lot of colors. There was a move afoot not too long ago to try to determine – using computers, I guess – the colors actually used in the studio during filming in order to colorize the old B&W movies “properly.” I think they figured this would quieten those like me who are dead set against colorization of B&W films. But then until they realized a lot of the actors wore garish, circus-color clothing due to the hue it imparted to the B&W film.
Oh, I loved that movie so much. We were on the waiting list at a dachshund rescue for a pair. If we had gotten a black-coated pair, they were going to be named Krobar and Lattice.
I don’t know anything about this specifically, but I could see that being used to reduce contrast in a scene so it fits the dynamic range (the range of tonal values that can be reproduced) of a film.
Going on a little bit of a tangent: Really old film stocks (mostly before 1930, but definitely before 1922) were orthochromatic, so they were not sensitive to the red part of the spectrum. So, anything towards red (red/orange/yellow) in the scene would be rendered much darker than it actually appears. In the early days, that’s why they would use green and blue make up on lips and the like, so the lips would not appear black or dark gray when filming. Red make-up would similarly darken the black-and-white image; blue and green make-up would lighten those parts of the image. Panchromatic film (sensitive to all colors of the spectrum, as the name would imply) was first developed in 1922, and some early pioneers did use that film stock, but it was fairly expensive, so it wasn’t until the late-20s or so when panchromatic film was very widely used.
If you’ve ever done still photography and developed and printed your own work, you’re familiar with this. When you go into the darkroom to roll your black-and-white film to develop, you have to do in complete darkness (unless you are using a specialty orthochromatic film.) This is because almost all black-and-white film is sensitive to all light wavelengths (although there is some variation to how much sensitivity there is to different parts of the spectrum). However, when you print your black and white images, that’s where you can use your red/orange safety light and actually see what you’re doing. That’s because the emulsion on black-and-white papers are generally only sensitive to blue and green light. This is also why, when printing color negatives on black-and-white paper, you should use panchromatic paper–otherwise, you get funky results in terms of tone and contrast, since regular paper isn’t sensitive to a good portion of the color spectrum.
Anyhow, back to the OP. As many have noted here, shooting black-and-white vs shooting color involves different considerations in terms of lighting, make-up, filters you might use on the lens, etc., because of how removing color translates into film. I’m a still shooter, but one simple example is imagine a portrait of a face. Black-and-white is generally more conducive to high-contrast lighting than color is, and emphasis tends to be placed on shape, the interplay of light and shadow, and the such. Color puts more emphasis on, well, color. In a simple headshot, a color photo tends to draw the viewer into the eyes and the lips, because that’s where a lot of color usually is. Black and white tends to emphasize the shape of the face. This is just a simplistic reduction, but shooting a scene in black-and-white vs shooting a scene in color requires different aesthetic decisions in terms of lighting, tonality/colors of objects in the scene, and that sort of thing. That’s partly why, IMHO, colorized black-and-white films can look a little off or odd–they’re visualized and optimized for how they will appear when color is stripped from the image. Some scenes look equally fine in either, but subtly emphasize different aspects of the subject. Other scenes simply don’t work well when shot in color or black-and-white.
For those of you who liked The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra, you might enjoy:
Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) - IMDb
I recently saw The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra and Teenagers from Outer Space is similar in quite a few ways. I really enjoyed both of them.
Does it talk about the field of Science?
Here’s my list of my favorite B&W films, and as soon as I post it, I’ll probably think of another one.
-
12 Angry Men (1957) -
42nd Street (1933) -
The 400 Blows (1959) -
Alphaville (1965) -
Amelie (2001) -
Anatomy of a Murder (1959) -
Ann Vickers (1933) -
The Apartment (1960) -
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) - The Awful Truth (1937)
- Beauty and the Beast (1946)
- Battleship Potemkin (1925)
- The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
- Blackmail (1929)
- Blue Angel (1930)
- Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
- Bringing up Baby (1938)
- Broken Blossoms (1919)
- The Bicycle Thief (1948)
- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)
- Caged (1950)
- The Cameraman (1928)
- Camille (1936)
- Carnival of Souls (1962)
- Casablanca (1942)
- A Child is Waiting (1963)
- A Christmas Carol (1938)
- Closely Watched Trains (1966)
- Compulsion (1959)
- The Crowd (1928)
- Dead of Night (1945)
- Diabolique (1955)
- Dinner at Eight (1933)
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
- Ed Wood (1994)
- Eyes without a Face (1960)
- The Elephant Man (1980)
- The Franchise Affair (1951)
- Frankenstein (1931)
- Fury (1936)
- Gaslight (1944)
- Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)
- Grand Hotel (1932)
- Go Fish (1994)
- Gojira (note: NOT Godzilla) (1954)
- Green for Danger (1946)
- Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages (1922)
- Hester Street (1975)
- His Girl Friday (1940)
- Holiday (1938)
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
- Inherit the Wind (1960)
- In Old Chicago (1937)
- Intolerance (1916)
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
- The Invisible Man (1933)
- Island of Lost Souls (1932)
- It Happened One Night (1934)
- It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
- Jane Eyre (1943)
- Joy of Living (1938)
- Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
- The Kennel Murder Case (1933)
- King Kong (1933)
- The Lady Vanishes (1938)
- Lifeboat (1944)
- The Lodger (1927)
- Love Affair (1939)
- M. (1931)
- The Maltese Falcon (1941)
- Man in the Iron Mask (1939)
- Man of a Thousand Faces (1957)
- Metropolis (1927)
- The Mortal Storm (1940)
- The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
- The Miracle Worker (1962)
- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
- Mrs. Miniver (1942)
- Murder at the Gallop (1963)
- Mutiny on the Bounty (1933)
- My Best Girl (1927)
- My Favorite Wife (1940)
- My Man Godfrey (1936)
- Night of the Demon (1957)
- Night of the Hunter (1955)
- Night of the Living Dead (1968)
- Ninotchka (1939)
- Nothing Sacred (1937)
- Nosferatu (1922)
- Notorious (1946)
- Nugget Nell (1919)
- Pandora’s Box (1929)
- The Paradine Case (1947)
- Phantom of the Opera (1925)
- The Philadelphia Story (1940)
- The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
- Psycho (1960)
- Pygmalion (1938)
- Rashomon (1950)
- Rebecca (1940)
- Repulsion (1965)
- The Rules of the Game (1939)
- Sabotage (1936)
- Safety Last! (1923)
- The Scarlet Letter (1927)
- Scarlet Street (1945)
- The Seven Samurai (1954)
- The Seventh Seal (1957)
- Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
- The Shop around the Corner (1940)
- The Shop on Main Street (1965)
- Sidewalks of London (1938)
- South Riding (1938)
- Sparrows (1927)
- Strangers on a Train (1951)
- Stranger than Paradise (1984)
- A Star is Born (1937)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1954)
- Sunrise (1927)
- Sunset Boulevard (1950)
- Tess of the Storm Country (1922)
- The Thing (1951)
- The Third Man (1949)
- To Be or Not To Be (1942)
- Top Hat (1935)
- Topper (1937)
- Touch of Evil (1958)
- Treasure Island (1934)
- Un Chien Andalou (1929)
- The Unknown (1927)
- The Uninvited (1944)
- Vampyr (1932)
- Viridiana (1961)
- Werewolf of London (1935)
- What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
- Wild Strawberries (1957)
- The Wind (1928)
- Wings of Desire (1987)
- Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
- The Wolf Man (1941)
- You Can’t Take It with You (1938)
- Zelig (1983)
This is the first transformation scene from the 1931 Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. The actor is Fredric March (who won an Oscar for the role).http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GynMi0E7B5g. The lighting technique is actually borrowed from the London stage performance, where the on-stage transformation shocked the audiences.
Anyway, in later transformations in the film, they use the technique of filming a few frames at a time while applying make-up between frames. It’s only the second time this was used (first was Werewolf of London), and it’s not as effective, but it’s not terrible, and must have looked great in 1931.
This is a wonderful film. The 1931 and 1941 films are both good, but I think the 31 version is a little better.
I’ve held my tongue during a lot of the B&W lovefest in this thread, but this! Considering every season but the first was in color, what are you saying with this comment? That B&W somehow made GI different? Better? Less stupid? What?
It’s still Gilligan’s Island, fer cripesake! B&W doesn’t turn it into Casablanca!