Another Bergman film: Persona
I am not sure I agree with that Social Studies teacher, however (but that’s because I do not think hypothetical situations are adequate for making the sort of judgments that he/she made and because I never think Bergman is laughable).
I’d say Down By Law and Stranger Than Paradise both utilise black and white really well. Both films are very melancholy and colour would take away from that.
Double post.
All films would benefit from being in black and white.
I was happy to see sound come in, but color ruined everything.
If there were no black and white films there would be no film noir and what a horrible thought that is. Any film in black and white benefits from being in black and white. I can’t even imagine them in color, Nosferatu, M, The Third Man, Dracula, Citizen Kane, Double Indemnity, Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, Casablanca, The Big Sleep, Night of The Hunter, The Maltese Falcon, Sunset Boulevard, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, The Fallen Idol, The Spiral Staircase, Raging Bull, Dr. Strangelove, etc. etc. Although I wouldn’t go quite as far as MMOORE, Lawrence Of Arabia looks pretty good in color. Then again, it would probably look pretty cool in black and white too.
The Elephant Man, Pi, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lake of Fire, Psycho and Schindler’s List come to mind, but Soybean hit on my Numero Uno: The Third Man.
Bergman himself said that “all [his] films can be thought in terms of black and white, except for ‘Cries and Whispers’.”
Soybean, I agree with you when you say you can’t imagine any of the black in white films in color. One that I’ve been thinking about a lot was It’s A Wonderful Life, especially after seeing the colorized version. Films that were shot in black and white should never be colorized, it ruins them. I disagree with saying that color ruins films, though. There are many great films in color (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Ran, Rear Window). I really love the old Technicolor films, such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Rear Window. I think they’re beautiful.
All the great films of the 40s, 50s, and 60s before everything had to be made in technicolor, cinemascope, with massive, sweeping vistas. All these films look better in black and white – thank goodness the use of colorization of these was short-lived. Where would be without those murky, shadowy, high-contrast black and white shots from all those cinematographers who knew how to use the medium so effectively? Colour eventually started to take over, but black and white suited the gritty films coming out everywhere in the early 60s from Japan, Italy, France, England, and Eastern Europe. They seemed to have more life and substance than their more expensive, colour American cousins. It is appropriate that many of the best American films, those with the most heightened sense of realism, were also filmed in black and white during this period (the early 60s): To Kill a Mockingbird, The Misfits, Faces, A Patch of Blue, etc.
I like it when a director such as David Lynch in Eraserhead and Elephant Man purposefully uses black and white or when Bela Tarr is still using it in a film made in 2000 – Werckmeister Harmonies.
Double Indemnity and all the films of the same style………
Casablanca
Oups, someone had already said it
Last Year at Marienbad
Vampyr
geez… MMoore, how old are you?!
Casablanca goes without saying, and I’d add Body and Soul and almost every film noir and Port Of Shadows, L’Avventura and 8 1/2 of the too numerous to mention foreign films.
The Sorrow and the Pity. Never has the use of B&W been more apropos. Imagine if it was in color?
@Corduroy Suit,
Resnais’ Night & Fog about the death camps was in color, and was all the more powerful by avoiding convenient historical and esthetic “patina” and “nostalgia”.
B&W must-or-busts:
Sunset Boulevard
Hiroshima mon Amour
Last Year at Marienbad
Exterminating Angel
12 Angry Men
Psycho
La Dolce Vita
8 1/2
Vivre Sa Vie
The Misfits
The Appartment
The 400 Blows
The Secret of Veronika Voss (this film has the sharpest whites I’ve ever seen)
In Cold Blood
Night and Fog was a mixture of B&W and Color.
It is a mixture indeed, but I remember the color as a sinister reminder: evil is banal – not something past or distant.
The Last Picture Show
Tales from the Gimli Hospital
Psycho!
The Bad And The Beautiful
Dreyer in color anyone? Not for me thanks.
has anybody seen these new colorized versions of the earth vs flying saucers and such, the new editions are cool and the b and w versions have been remastered and look great so the dvd’s are worth it but i cant imagine watching these in color same with night of the living dead.
as much as I disliked it, there was Sin City. though I hardly consider that a proper film in this context.
my opinion on the matter is that black and white died along once digital became standard. Digital has its pros but it still definitely cannot produce that organic and warm feel that celluloid can offer.
La Jetee
Ryan
I was having a discussion with my Social Studies teacher today about the Seventh Seal, and he said that had it been in color it would have been laughed at. I thought about that for a while, and I agree with him. It’s a very serious film, but I think in color death wouldn’t have seemed so ominous. And with the actors and the village, it would have been too colorful, and I think that would have taken away from the film. I’ve been trying to think of other examples, but I can’t think of any others. What do you guys think about this?