The Anti-Black & White Film Brigade
What a perfect response. Those people upset me greatly and it is because of them (stupid modern times) that there is rarely ever new black and white movies.
I can’t imagine a scenario where I would even engage in conversation with a person who would not watch a black & white film. Snobbery has nothing to do with it; it’s just not someone with whom I would associate.
Anyone whose mind is closed tighter than a crab’s ass is not going to waste my time. I mean, how ignorant can people be to deny themselves unilaterally whole decades of motion picture entertainment merely because they don’t like the film stock?
The corollary to this thread might be the question: Can you explain why Michael Bay has a career?
And the answer may well be: to satisfy the entertainment needs of microcephalics who would pass on an opportunity to watch gorgeous films such as Cat People, Freaks and The Thing From Another World in glorious satin shades of black & white.
Amen and pass the potatoes.
Cheers,
Steve
CinemaUprising.Blogspot.com
“Anyone whose mind is closed tighter than a crab’s ass is not going to waste my time.”
I like this sentence. It’s ironic.
I understand completely and yet don’t understand at all. It’s frustrating, but why do you care what other people think? No skin off your back if someone disagrees with you, no matter how ignorant, on most things media.
Now when it extends to realms of intolerance or hate, then yeah, take issue…
—PolarisDiB
Yes, just how closed can minds be? Astonishing. It’s like the widespread assumption about and disdain for “foreign” films- all of them written off! Would these same anti b+w folk avoid all b+w photos, whether at an exhibition of in passing too?
But Polarisdib: the problem of such antagonism affects those of us who are interested- the TV channels play to the masses, so you can get the same juvenile dross modern Hollywood repeats while many older classics never get shown and in the UK anyway “foreign” films are now hardly shown at all, as we live in the dumbed down world of reality TV, viewer voting and makeover programmes
There is an interesting question here, something I can’t quite get my head around. Clearly on a technical level colour contains a lot more information than B&W. Yet, when I watch a B&W film it is beautiful and I feel I’m seeing everything, and colour could not improve it. Indeed, colour is often worse. It may be that in art we don’t want technical excellence – some old, blurred lenses and patchy lights would make better films, as Guy Madden seems to understand. I actually dislike colour when there is not strong aesthetic control over the colour palette and graininess to bring a unity and character to the film, without the colour being bland and ‘perfect’, as though the film maker had got it developed at the pharmacy. Rodrigo Prieto springs to mind (25th Hour, 21 Grams, Amores Perros , Lust, Caution, Brokeback Mountain). Michael Mann does a good job with colour, too.
Black and white IS beautiful. Now many people who dismiss older b+w classics will actually watch and enjoy a film like Raging Bull or Manhattan. They were hardly let down by being in b+w. On the photo gallery thread here i was surprised to find how many of my favourite photos were in b+w, and then by the ravishing colour of some early pohotos. And i wonder why b+w is not used more as a counterpoint to colour in films- each setting off the qualities of the other. Tarkovsky is one of the few directors who regularly used both. Look at the effect when it goes into colour in both Andrei Rublev and Stalker. These things should be used as precious commodities not taken for granted.
Amen. I do not get this. I know a lot of people who just poopoo B&W fo no real reason. I have many times to show them what they are missing. Some of the greatest film ever made are B&W. And you dismiss all the noir films !! And fantastic actors entire history.
I just saw Andrei Rublev yesterday, and at the end when it went red, and showed close-ups of his frescoes, it was stunning. 3 hours of this glorious black and white photography, and then this rich gorgeous colour at the end, the man was a genius (if for that alone, but for many other things).
Le Feu Follet’s right, unless the director can handle colour, I’d much rather watch something in black and white. And since we’re already in the mood for quoting Ebert, “I prefer the purity of black and white to color,” that’s a rather good (if short) summation of my feelings.
As for people that don’t watch black and white, they’re ignorant. They don’t know what they’re talking about, and normally if you can get them to sit down and watch a great film in black and white, that looks gorgeous, and has a great story then they’ll change their opinion. I can’t tell you how many girlfriends I showed The Third Man to in high school, that said they don’t watch black and white because it’s all boring. Then after that movie they quote back to me Orson’s entire cuckoo clock speech. Then we’ll watch Bicycle Thieves, or Grand Illusion, and they in no way think that foreign film, or black and white film, are lesser anymore. It’s ignorance, pure and simple. It needs to be corrected, but if they’re unwilling to correct their failings then there’s nothing to get upset about, more copies of great films for you to hoard before the end of the world in 2012 (we do all believe the Mayans were correct right? Good.).
I just miss B & W as part of the language of film. Seeing the transition to color as simply a logical technical advance with B & W becoming obsolete restricts the breadth of expression in film.
I don’t know who posted it up here but someone mentioned a quote from a film teacher concerning “The Seventh Seal”: “If he had done it in color people would have laughed”.
Well, at least we don’t have that philistine Ted Turner on a “colorizing” crusade any longer.
There’s still Guy Madden, and Bela Tarr Doinel. It’s unfortunate, but I miss silent films as a part of the language of film. As new technology is created we get rid of old technology (it’s not always for the best, but it’s true). I guess in twenty, or thirty years people with be upset that film is no longer part of the language of cinema, that everything is on digital, and there will only be two or three directors using film consistently. It’s part of the evolution of cinema as an art, and if it’s an art then it has to evolve. There’s a beautiful simplicity in the art of European medieval paintings, two dimensions, very restricted, and almost pious (not in subject matter which almost always had a religious connotation, but the way it was painted feels pure, in a sense), but if painting were to survive, and grow it had to evolve past that simplicity, and purity. I’m glad that film as an art is evolving, even if it means that some of my favourite elements will be left behind. The great thing about film is it will be there, as long as there are people who care about it, there will always be copies of my favourite films floating around.
It’s odd that you mention Seventh Seal, I’ve been thinking a lot about that film lately. Just thinking about how every element in the film is so perfect, and how terrifying certain scenes are, and how funny others are (sometimes both in the same scene). The black and white cinematography is certainly one of the best things about the film.
Odd that you mention Madden, Dax. “Branded on the Brain” gets a little too strange for my tastes but I’ve watched it a couple times because he not only films in B&W but he “gets” the silent genre also. He manages to get arrive at something that certainly isn’t an anachronism.
Good point on Renaissance painting. Certainly the opportunities for expression that oil on canvas offered over tempura on board were liberating but the old tempura works still have great power. And contemporary artists return to those works for inspiration just as Madden pays his respects.
As far as the “Seventh Seal”, that opening with the gull floating under the cloud at the start or the dance macabre … just couldn’t do it in color.
It’s funny. My grandmother worked as a piano player and organist for silent movies, and she married the manager of the theater where she worked. But when she got a color tv, she said she disliked watching black and white films anymore. It was like, she had seen the future, she had seen something better and she didn’t want to go back.
Black and white can really make a film look and feel much more consciously artistic — more dreamy and less lifelike. You are dealing more with light and shadows in black and white. That’s why the von Sternberg-Dietrich movies are unimaginable in color. Color films are always more natural, and even when the color schemes and lighting are heightened, it feels more like a triumph of pop art than of, say, Rembrandt or Goya.
@PolarisDiB
Ironically, irony was not my intent, nor was it my achievement. Rather, and perhaps to amplify my response, I am saying that any attempt to persuade or convince an individual whose mind is already made up is an attempt doomed to fail. Therefore, I will not waste my time.
Now, here is where the very real perception of snobbery could creep into the discussion: I feel no obligation to explain film theory or the artistry of black and white films to a person who only wants to watch films in color. That’s his business, just as it is my right to choose who I wish to engage with in my daily life. It’s a matter of preference.
I don’t care in any way whether some people avoid b&w movies. I am saying that if they do so, they are denying themselves a rich vein of untapped entertainment and personal enrichment. They are denying their own intelligence and willingly shutting themselves off from interesting experiences.
Let me be clear: This is not a matter of aesthetic preference like chocolate vs. vanilla ice cream. A person might not like a film that’s in black and white, which is perfectly acceptable. I think Eraserhead is the most overrated cult movie in film history. But I don’t dislike it because it’s in black and white. The film stock is incidental to the fact that the film just doesn’t do anything for me.
And yes, if people avoid b&w films for the exclusive reason that the films are in b&w, then I say they are shallow and closed-minded and I shall not waste my time with such people.
There are more than enough fools to contend with on a daily basis — dim-witted store clerks, customer service representatives at phone banks, Congressmen, ad nauseaum. I don’t have the time or inclination to go jousting at windmills with a whole new group of cretins. It’s their loss if they can’t open their minds to new experiences.
Put another way, if it is really necessary to explain why b&w movies are beautiful and intriguing, the answer probably wouldn’t benefit the individual asking the question.
To paraphrase a great exchange in “This Is Spinal Tap:”
“Why not just make 10 the loudest?”
(long pause)
“This one goes up to 11.”
Serentity now. I think these people can be identified as the culprits in making the video-game industry > big screen transistion a viable commodity. Even my 6 year old nephew can appreciate the Little Rascals. Personally, I would love a comprehensive book to be done on the Art Direction & Costume Design for the b/w era.
I find too many people by far though claiming, ‘they just don’t make them like they used to’ which usually relates to b/w movies.
They used to actually colorize old black and white movies — it was a big scandal back in the 80s. They colorized Casablanca and everything, to show them on TV and be able to get better advertising revenue. I believe Ted Turner was behind it, until he saw the light and did penance with the remarkably unreconstructed TMC channel. They claimed that they did meticulous wardrobe and set-design research to colorize the costumes and sets accurately! But aesthetically it was a failure. Those black and whites ended up looking garish and washed out, and what you missed most of all was the strong sense of artificial lighting — the lights and shadows effects. Instead they became very flat and pastelly. Needless to say, they don’t do it anymore, and colorized films are artifacts. Some may still be available in used vhs copies. Actually, there is a dvd version of Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster with both the original black and white and a colorized version. So, a technological process once meant for Citizen Kane itself has survived only as a way of retouching the “worst director” of all time.
Yes, TED TURNER was berhind it. Greedy…
I recall the hullabaloo over colorization some 20-odd years ago. Turner had a contract with one of the two companies offering the computerized service: Colorization Inc. and Color Systems Technology.
And Lordy be! What a stink was raised.
The Director’s Guild of America called the colorists “cultural butchers” and framed the issue in moral, not commercial, terms. …As if the DGA never mulled commercial considerations.
The Writer’s Guild of America called it “cultural vandalism.”
Not to be outdone, the American Film Institute decried the practice as “a plague on the history of American film” and called a press conference in Washington, D.C., at which people showed up dressed only in black and white as a protest.
I am not making this up.
I saw a colorized version of King Kong (1933) and thought it looked gawd-awful, like Skull Island had been painted in pastel shades by preschoolers. There was no simple solution, like dialing down the color setting on the television, because the colorization process affected the hue and tone of the original black and white.
What helped hammer the nail in the colorization coffin is an amusing story — and it may be apocryphal, but I doubt it.
One of the companies tried to colorize Sinatra’s drug-addiction film, The Man With the Golden Arm. And ol’ Blue Eyes was given computer-colorized…brown eyes.
After the laughter subsided, that was that. I don’t recall too many colorized films after that.
Cheers,
Steve
CinemaUprising.Blogspot.com
Ebert does have a good point: these people shouldn’t be considered as friends — in an ideal world. But what can be done when there are no geniune lovers of film in your area? Just make do with what you got.
I had a friend (no longer! but we parted ways for another reason) who said that he didn’t want to watch Pi at that particular moment, even though he had said that he wanted give something new a chance, because he didn’t “feel” like watching a black and white film. “Maybe another time, just not right now.” You don’t want to watch a black and white film because you don’t “feel” like it? Really? That, umm, doesn’t make any sense to me.
Turner essentially he never recovered from that doozy and actually gave people a moment pause when touting any ingenuity he had in the business realm. Although I despised him previously for never listening to the people outspoken about making his releases pan & scan either, so there you have it. His previous wife could have let him in on some filmmaking trades on how every scene is established, set and blocked. The odds that it could be converted and duplicated correctly are pretty much nil.
I think Kenji hit the nail on the head. Most of these people don’t dislike B&W films as much as they dislike old films because they are slow, they talk funny, blah, blah blah. With commercial or important subject matter and big stars, these same folks will plop don in front of the screen and be happy to watch B&W, as in the case of Schindler’s List.
>>They used to actually colorize old black and white movies<<
USED to? Hell, check out the Legend Films catalogue. They’re busily messing up all sorts of titles, including the 1935 SHE and THINGS to come and Ray Harryhausen’s early titles (with Harryhausen’d help) and a bunch of PD titles like BRIDE OF THE MONSTER and PHANTOM FROM SPACE. Oh, yes, colorizing is very much back. and despite a raft of supposed improvements we still get the same blah pastel blues, greens & browns anf flesh-tones that resemble no living being of any race.
But one tjhing I don’t understand about the anti-monochromists … how many current films are truly in color? So amny that I’ve seen are leeched of color so that they’re a kind of green or blue tinged black & white. Or b&w with splotches of color. Seen SWEENEY TODD? Seen THE SPIRIT? Seen PAN’S LABYRINTH? etc., etc.
I’ll have to look at Pan again to see what you mean, Harry. Monochromatic schemes are very “in.” A random frame from There Will Be Blood could very well resemble a black and white film.
Colorization is cool. I don’t approve of it, but since it has already been done, after watching the original b&w, I like checking out the colorized version to see the choices made by the colorist/computer/TCM intern. I don’t watch the entire colorized version, as it is a different flavor of the same film. Many are also re-edited to shorter running times, which is truly a shame. The originals should be watched first, but remixes are worth a look. Palettes aren’t sacrosanct.
The Crimson Ghost:
Colorized: 
Original: 
In my opinion the colorized version is creepier, since the artificial palette makes the ghost seem even more otherworldly.
No matter what the look on still, this is most definitely going to be the portrayal on my plasma, true black (so it will certainly look fake), nor the envisioning of the creator, which…kinda big for me. The colorizing movement was clearly to make older films they still had (have) royalties and copyrights to for younger audiences. There was no crafting for art’s sake.
@Superstringtheory
You’re right. It wasn’t for art’s sake that another version was hastily prepared. It is still a cultural artifact, even if it was driven by Ted Turner’s bottom line. Check out the hands on the colorized version. They are blurry in a still! I’m definitely not arguing that colorization should continue. It is neither a viable alternative to the original, nor superior in any way. A colorized version is like a lobby card, a still, an extra, a supplemental bit— a color curio from another time. Its value is novel and supplemental. Colorization isn’t an atrocious boogeyman. It is a strange, faded practice. Also, I wonder how much colorization achieved towards its stated goal? Did adding bizarre pastels captivate a younger audience, or were these films still written off as “old” by a crowd who does this to anything older than recent memory? How many channel-surfing teens/kids actually stopped and watched because the palette was changed? Who was fooled? I’m guessing that’s all colorization is: an ineffective attempt to repopularize an older film at the fraction of the cost of a remake, that fools no one, and enrages purists.
How can a cinephile say that B&W is superior to Color?
Anyone who truly understands film knows that they are equals.
You’ve got Dreyer, Welles, Von Sternberg, and Guy Maddin
And you’ve got Powell & Pressburger, Vincente Minnelli, Frank Tashlin, and Wes Anderson.
Stating that one is superior to the other is the essence of film snobbery.
thnx Vellaem. True, I could even understand if they were taking only public domain flicks and experimenting with them to see what they could do with technology, improve upon known flaws etc.
Re: color vs. b &w tangent:
What I love about Ozu is how reactionary he was. He made silent films until the studio dragged him a few years later than other directors into audio. Same thing happened again with color. He used black & white at least 2 years after his contemporaries, until he was commanded to stop. Each time he used the unwanted innovation well (see the orange sodas in “Equinox Flower”).
@Superstringtheory
Yes, using color to fill in broken places or curate an old film is worthwhile if it improves the quality, akin to the same process in painting restoration. But bastardizing something with color in the hopes of making a buck from disinterested younger generations is weak, mostly because it produces a weird byproduct and fails in its aim. Everyone knows that if you want young people to watch, you have to do a big-budget remake that moves far away from the source material, makes ironic jabs at how dated the original is, but still retains the name (i.e. “I am legend,” “Get Smart,” etc). Then, you hope a few of those kids click the “movie connections” link on the IMDB entry or read a film history blog/book, and learn about/seek out/love the original for its old self.
RUS, you’re right of course. Just as I wouldn’t want to see Touch of Evil in color, I wouldn’t want to see Written on the Wind in black and white.
Jason Bacon
Alright, fess up. You know them. You work with them. You live with them. Hell, sometimes you’re even related to them.
They’re the people that think a black and white film has no merit. That there’s nothing creative or memorable there. That a black and white film is not worth investing any time whatsoever in. I actually had a friend jokingly refer to the always amazing (perhaps the last remaining great cable channel) Turner Classic Movies as “the senior citizen channel”. So let’s all shine the spotlight on those individuals who think B&W means boring and weird. Oh, how I pity them.
Once again, Roger Ebert sums it up ever so eloquently. The man’s a national treasure.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081105/ANSWERMAN/811059966/1023
Movie Answer Man
BY ROGER EBERT / November 5, 2008
Q. I was delighted to see TCM playing several classic horror films like “Cat People,” “Freaks” and “The Thing from Another World,” which I DVR’d with the intention of having a night-long classic horror fest on Halloween. But on the big night, all my guests booed the idea of a black & white playlist and left shortly after. Is there something I can do to get people excited about seeing these movies or do I just need to seek out new friends for movie night?
Chris Kelley, Ill.
A. These people are not your friends. Even how you word your question indicates you will never be happy with them. No one who dislikes b&w should be allowed to view a motion picture.