I watched a DVD of the 50’s sci-fi classic “Them!” (about the giant ants) and was surprised to see, at the beginning, that the title of this black & white movie was in color. The letters, T H E M ! are red with blue drop shadow.
This got me thinking about other films which are primarily in black & white but feature some color. Like:
The Tingler
Mighty Joe Young
The Phantom of the Opera ('25)
Raging Bull
Spellbound
Are there others?
Pleasantville of course. I didn’t see it but isn’t there a little bit of color in Schindler’s List (a girl in a red coat or something)?
Rumble Fish
The Wizard of OZ was just the opposite. It started (and ended?) in B&W, but was mostly in color.
Can someone clue me in- I don’t recall where the color was in Raging Bull?
Just like in the case of “Them!”, the opening title “Raging Bull” is in color against the B&W image. The letters are red.
In the scene where they show Jake’s home movies. The home movies are in color.
Some 8mm home movies in color of the LaMotta family were used between scenes in the otherwise B/W Raging Bull.
Other B/W movies with color scenes:
• Portrait of Jennie (1948). The final scene of the portrait.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). Scenes of the portrait.
• The Secret Garden (1949). Scenes inside the garden.
• The Broadway Melody (1929). The musical number “Wedding of the Painted Doll”. Academy Award winner for Best Picture.
• The Ten Commandments (1923). The Exodus and the Parting of the Red Sea.
• The King of Kings (1927). The Resurrection and a few other scenes.
• Ben-Hur (1925). The Nativity, the Triumphal Parade, the Last Supper, the Trial Before Pilate, and a few other scenes.
• Irene (1940). The musical number “Alice Blue Gown”.
• Kid Millions (1934). The “Ice Cream Fantasy” musical number.
• The House of Rothschild (1934). The climactic scene.
• The Cat and the Fiddle (1934). Final scene of this musical.
The Women contains a color fashion show sequence
The Picture of Dorian Gray - the picture is shown in color
Portrait of Jennie - there’s a tidal wave scene that was tinted green and the completed portrait is shown in color.
There’s also a movie I can’t remember the name of (it starred Ray Milland) that had a scene in color. All I can remember is the woman was wearing a blue dress.
Ahh, that’s the movie I was thinking of!
My wife ,the Kansan, always has insisted that the ENTIRE movie was in color. I thought she was joking.
The first time I ever saw rural Kansas it was in the dead of winter. In the dead of winter, Kansas does look pretty much like its primary colors are black and white.
Even worse looking than the dismal area of Nebraska they built I-80 through.
Schindler’s List
Memento
Sin City counts, I think.
The Phantom of the Opera has the Bal Masque sequence in early two-color Technicolor, and the scene atop the Opera House had the Phantom’s cape colored in red via some other process. The intertitkles during these sequences are in color, too. Not all versions have this, however (I never saw the red cape until the recently-restored DVD came out, even in copies with the colored Bal Masque). I’ve been told that the color sequences were shot separately, later, and weren’t present during the initial release. But I’ve also watched both black and white and color versions side by side – the action looks the same, and the perspectives are slightly different. It sure looks as if they were shot at the same time, to me.
Mighty Joe Young, also mentionmed by randwill, isn’t partially in color =-- it’s just printed on color stock. Lots of films did that, like the silent version of Peter Pan, but I wouldn’t count it as “partly in color”.
The 1923 color scenes in The Ten Commandments are hand-painted, and pretty clearly so. That took a lot of effort. I’ve seen other early hand-colored films, including one or two of Windsor McKay’s pre-1920 cartoons. I’ll bet a lot of the other old silents listed in this thread were also hand-colored.
The War of the Colossal Beast had the very end in color. They bragged about this on the movie posters, and when they did this film on MST3K it brought out a lot of ribbing.
I understand that there was an animated version of The Wizard of Oz that preceded the famous MGM version that also had the Kansas sequences in black and white, and the Oz sequences in color. I haven’t seen it, but it’s on the recent special edition DVD of the MGM version.
No, all of the silents listed in this thread, inclding The Ten Commandments, were filmed in two-color Technicolor, just like the Bal Masque scenes in The Phantom of the Opera. For more on early Technicolor, see:
The American WideScreen Museum: History of Technicolor.
Then that can’t be true of all copies of the film – the copy of The Ten Commandment I have is unmistakeably hand-colored. You can see the coloring going “outside the lines” and flickering from shot to shot. It certainly does not look like the Bal Masque sequence I have on my several copies of Phantom. Moreover, I’ve seen the same sequence on a Leonard Maltin piece on hand-colored silent movies. It’s news to me that a Technicolor version exists.
Walloon, the second site is a fascinating one (I can’t open the first). I had no idea that so many color sequences from that early exist.
But still – the 1929 Mysterious Island was filmed in all color? This is the first I’ve heard of that, and I’ve seen that film several times and read about it. I’m similarly surprised about Way Down East and The Sea Beast (which I haven’t seen, but read about). This is the first I’ve heard that they had color sequences.
Hell’s Angels (1930) is partly or completely hand-tinted. It’s been a long time since I saw it on TCM. I remember night scenes being deep purple and other scenes in bright orange.
What looks like hand-coloring is that print of The Ten Commandments is because you’re seeing artifcacts of the print-making for Technicolor Process 2. The fringing comes because two prints were glued together base to base, leaving two emulsion images (red and green) existing on two different planes of focus. Add to that the problem of inferior color dyes used in Process 2, which have faded unevenly, leaving a mottled, flashing appearance.
These problems were cured with Process 3, which used a dye imbitition to print with stable metalic dyes on one strip of film.