Why do the colors in old movies seem to be more vivid than regular television or a lot of movies filmed today? I saw Gentleman Prefer Blondes and noticed that the colors seemed to be especially bright. It isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this, because older color movies (specifically those that emphasize the use of Technicolor) have a similar appearance to me. Is it my imagination? Was the world actually brighter back in the day?
[sub]kidding[/sub]
In a related question, why were movies still filmed in black and white after color was available? Was it a cost related issue? Art related issue? (Both?)
[sub]Sorry if this is more Cafe Society, but it seems like this would have a factual answer.[/sub]
I did see a show about the history of colour movies, but I forget the exact order of things. However, here is the Technicolor site. Click on ‘about us’ and then ‘history’.
Technicolor used a three film stripsystem (well sometimes 2 and sometimes 4). The actual light from entering the lense light was prismatically split into red, green, and blue, then exposed to the film strip of that color. The problem was each film strip stock was black and white. So you wern’t really capturing the color(let’s say green), you were essentially creating a record that there was green in that area on that frame. Then in the developing, dye was allowed to soak into the areas that were recorded as supposed to be green, So the dye system often created a much more vibrant color because the color was added at the end and could be as saturated as they wanted.
True color film, records the actual colors present in the light.
Technicolor was an unusual system and process. It used three reels of film instead of just one. The light coming into the lens was split into three beams and passed through color filters before it struck the film. The film was modified black & white film. One film reel recorded red, one film reel recorded green, one film reel recorded blue. Since it was black & white film, the negatives used silver compounds instead of fade-prone organic dyes. The printing process involved creating a set of three dye transfer films from the three negatives, then the three dye transfer films were used to create the color print. Because of the three independent reels of film, Technicolor avoided many of the compromises inherent in trying to sandwich everything into one reel of film. Modern color film is a very complex product and requires sophisticated processes. The main drawback of Technicolor was its high cost, which meant that it was reserved for blockbusters and ‘A’ list films.
Some still photographers use a similar process (dye transfer) to create prints of exceptionally high stability and quality.
I’m sure cost was the primary reason (why spend extra money on The Three Stooges go To Mars?) but it has morphed into “artistic” reasons today. Schindler’s List and Lenny come to mind.
Then there are those who resist adding color to monochrome originals on the grounds that the original director didn’t intend it be be seen in color. Never mind that the original director probably didn’t have the luxury or the technology to make that choice.
Thank you for saying this. I’ve gotten funny looks/wise cracks whenever I say that many of the directors back then would have loved to have the opportunity to use color film but budgetary considerations prevailed.
Take Laurel & Hardy’s “Babes in Toyland” aka March of the Wooden Soldiers.
There is a colorized version (not well done, probably one of the first attempts).
This movie was screaming to be made in color. But my “artist” friend insists that directors were all in love with B&W for artistic reasons, and probably wanted BiT to be in B&W.
I’d love cites to disprove him, or to disprove me to shut me up.
One director saying he loved one or the other won’t cut it.
Yes, never mind that, because regardless of why the film was made in black and white, that final black-and-white product reflected the impact of all the creative decisions of the filmmaker. Maybe, if given the choice, a particular director might have chosen to use colour, but that (very big) choice would have set off a different series of creative decisions which would be impossible for any colourist to (re-)create ex post facto.
The artistic debate between color and black-and-white is more frequently an issue for still photographers than for movie producers with the arguments tending to flow around the “unnatural” aspect of the use of dyes to achieve color.
When the issue comes up regarding movies, it is probably true that many producers would have preferred color than the more affordable black-and-white, but the issue for “colorizing” movies is not so simple as to whether to “restore” colors that were not initially present. For example, one “colorized” Casablanca placed a bright yellow piano in Rick’s Place because they colorizers knew that the piano had, indeed, been a bright yellow. (The piano might still be wandering about some back stage lot, for all I know.) However, the reason the piano was a bright yellow was that Wallis, Curtiz, and Weyl wanted a bright white piano in the film and they knew that yellow produces a better bright white on black-and-white film. So when we go back to adding color to black-and-white films, we are liable to mess up what the director attempted, regardless how he might have wanted it had he had the budget to use color.
I’ve heard a similar issue happened with “The Avengers” television program. When it was black and white, many set items and clothes had a gray tone, if were not simply black or white. Video then was, by today’s standards, quite crude, and so was broadcast television in general, so care was taken to make the image appear as distinct as possible. When the show went to color, the production crew was no longer hampered by this issue. Were one to colorize early episodes, the result would still be rather gray and not much of an improvement over the original, if an improvement at all.
I prefer color films up to about 1970 to those today–not only is the color more vibrant, but it is used to greater artistic effect. The more “realistic” color of many of today’s films is, well, rather flat and boring. I’d invite anyone who’s only seen technicolor films on television to see them on the big screen–you might be surprised at how crisp and stunningly beautiful the images are. Film revivals and summer festivals in many cities show older films, though they often get inferior prints, so we may still not be seeing what audiences back then did.
Sam’s piano is on display in the Warner Bros. museum on the studio lot (and looking at it in person, it is a tiny little thing).
It’s hilarious to think of all the research that’s done into what colors original props were, when those props would’ve been chosen because of the black/grey/white values they had and not because they were that color in the first place.
How would they deal with the makeup? From what i’ve read, the makeup was selected to get the desired effect on black & white film, not to look right in color or real life.
See, the “research” thing is usually lip service to give an air of authenticity to a crassly money-grubbing endeavor. If they’re able to justify the colorizing by stating that so-&-so was “really” red/green/mauve, then they provide a rationale for making any kind of artistic distortion they want.
But you’re right–if they emulated the real make-up that they used to get the desired effect, I suspect all the women would like like Berlin ghetto whores.
Boris Karloff’s make up in teh Frankenstien series was a gaudy green. Why? Because on black and white it gave the ghastly palour of a corpse. They originally planned to do Son of Frenkenstien in colour but the film tests showed the make up looked terrible and so it was decided to film in black and white (That and it was cheaper)
I couldn’t imagine the German impressionist films and those American films that began to imitate the style in anything but black and white. Thise were films about shadows and light used to create an impact, colour just wouldn’t work.
I heard the exact same thing about Some Like It Hot–it would’ve been impossible in color because they didn’t look remotely convincing as women that way.