The Third Man - Perfect in Black and White!
Gaslight.
12 Angry Men, and Anatomy of a Murder.
The Exorcist
First time I saw this movie, it was on a black and white television, and it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
“The Pawnbroker” and “Ship of Fools” would lose a lot in color.
Pi would have lost a lot if it had been in color.
Shadows are creepier in B & W.
This is what I came to mention.
Nosferatu! Never colorize Nosferatu! The shadow work alone means it can only work its magic in black and white!
I might be a philistine here, but I could go either way on Metropolis. If they’d had color at the time, they would have used it, and they obviously wanted to put on as big a visual spectacle as possible in this film, so colorizing it could almost be seen as enhancing the all-important visual aspect. I don’t recall any visual effects in Metropolis being dependent on the black-and-white nature of the film. (The plot, on the other hand, was strictly monochrome.)
Old horror, film noir, and I think Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia are best in B&W.
Growing up in the 60s and 70s with B&W televisions [we didnt get a color set until 76, and I had my own B&W tv in my room that I bought with earned and gift money so I still tended to watch Tv in B&W until I bought my first color tv in 84] I still think of a lot of movies in B&W as I normally saw them that way. It can be jarring to see something like the old Jason and the Argonauts in color, because that was a sunday morning staple when I was growing up.
The Little Tramp.
They did have color at the time. It was called Tinting and Toning (and tangentially, Stenciling), and it was done with silent films pervasively (but not necessarily consistently, even within a single title’s distribution).
So some of these color choices weren’t necessarily as artistic as others, but the use of color in movies (as opposed to actual color photography) was not a new thing, even in its very earliest days.
Well technically, yes…but color was only black and white back then. The world didn’t really come into color as we know it about the 60’s or so…and it was a bit grainy for a time.
Since this is the Dope and you guys always demand cites…my cite is Calvin’s Dad.
Right. I meant actual color motion picture film, which existed by 1922 but was apparently too expensive to see any use. My point was that had real color film been available and cheap enough for the people making Metropolis, they would have used it.
Also, tinting and toning doesn’t make an individual scene any less monochromatic. It’s only ‘color’ in the absolute most literal sense of the word. Shadows work just as well in neon blue as pure white. It’s the same visual language.
Paper Moon
To Kill a Mockingbird. Never seen it in color and I don’t want to.
As a kid when we actually had a t.v. we used to love African Queen (Humphrey Bogar/Katherine Hepburn ) which was shown, I think round about christmas, every year .
I was genuinlly amazed when I discovered that it had been made in colour.
Still loved the movie though.
All those 1930’s musicals, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. 1930’s comedies in general. All those slinky satin gowns, jaw-dropping art deco sets, those huge vases of flowers in every room, the swanky nightclubs full of little tables with lamps on each one. Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich all look swell in b&w. (besides, I think I would die from bitter envy if all those stunning sets and costumes were in beautiful color, lol.) I love Technicolor dearly, but that was more appropriate for the garish 40’s and 50’s. The 30’s WERE black and white.
To Kill a Mockingbird (already mentioned)
A Christmas Carol (Alastair Sim version, 1951)
All of them, surely? If a movie was made in black-and-white and someone else intervenes and colorizes, it’s not really the movie we’re watching at all.
(I do prefer contemporary movies to stay away from b&w. There are some I can think of it that pull it off well, but a lot of the time, b&w movies made in recent years feel false.)