In early color movies (the 1960’s are just my approximation), why do all the actors’ (many of whom were blond) blue eyes seem to stand out (or shine, or whatever you wanna call it)?
Just for example, in Lawrence of Arabia the eyes of the actor (I forget his name) who plays the part of T.E. Lawrence seem to sparkle. Was this intended or is it just a byproduct of the filmmaking techniques of the times?
Note that all of the color films of the era have redshifted: In general, the warm tones have become much, much more dominant, giving a rather distinctive look to all films made in the era. The fact that the blues have no red in them to leach (or otherwise shift into dominance), the blue tones could have stayed fairly constant on a reddening background. Hence the severity of the blues in contrast to the rest of the image.
That was Peter O’Toole you were referring to. I think that David Lean wanted his eyes to look even bluer than they are in real life to emphasize his foreignness.
Many of the films have been restored though, so any red shifting (which may or may not be perceptible, depending on how the print was stored) will have been corrected; or the distributor may have a good print.
The distributors of Lawrence of Arabia made much about their extensive restoration process, so that film would not have been red shifted.
There seems to me to be a very high proportion of film actors who have bright blue eyes. I think they probably film well, and that’s why the actors are chosen for starring roles.
I’m prety sure that Peter O’Toole wore quite heavy eye-liner in Lawrence of Arabia, which would certainly highlight his eyes. This was just the reflection of what is a common practice in the desert, as the eyeliner (or whatever it is) helps to keep sand out your eyes.
C K Dexter Haven: Sorry to go off on a tangent, but your remark reminded me of something I read in an Old West history once. Apparently there was a belief in the Old West that vicious killers tended to have blue eyes. I don’t remember which book I read it in, but I think it was a biography of Hickock.
Has to be something with the filmmaking of the era in general. There were other movies with the same effects, and most, by far, did not take place in deserts.
Makeup and photography was used to emphasize the blueness of Peter O’Toole’s eyes as emblems of his charisma and his “otherness” from the Arabs he led. Cinematographers did the same for those other blue-eyed wonders Paul Newman and Jeffrey Hunter in the 1950s and 1960s.
Color shift cannot be blamed in Lawrence of Arabia. It was photographed in Technicolor, and color does not shift in Technicolor. Unlike most color print-making processes, which used inherently unstable photochemical dyes, Technicolor (until 1975) used metal-based dyes to create its prints, akin to dyes used in reproducing color in books and magazines. For more on the history and process of Technicolor, see this this site.
How far back does your moviegoing experience goes when you refer to “early color movies (the 1960’s are just my approximation).” The first color features were made in the 1910s; the first feature in full color was made in 1935. In 1939 (the year of The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind) the Motion Picture Academy established a separate category for best color cinematography. By 1954 the majority of U.S. features were made in color.
I thought they used eye drops to moisten their eyes, thus creating the effect of “puppy eyes” (forgiveness…scared…loving…care)
Walloon, what color movies from the teens can you name?
While not from the teens, The Phantom of the Opera (1925) contained two-strip Technicolor in the ballroom scene. I know, but don’t have a cite at hand, that there were some hand-tinted films.
The Durbar at Delhi (1912)
The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1914)
The Gulf Between (1918)
Cupid Angling (1918)
Those are all feature length. Many more color short films were made in the 1910s.