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I have a couple of friends who categorically don't like B&W, presumably because it doesn't look realistic to them (I never asked
them why). I find this rather odd since I have always liked both B&W and color, finding it very natural in doing so.
Has anyone run across a similar situation? How do you feel about
B&W? It seems that by disdaining B&W, one misses out on an important
aesthestic, particularly in regard to the Expressionistic School of Filmmaking,
e.g., film noir. - AH
Follow Ups:
I personally can't imagine watching Citizen Kane in color...
I used to work with a woman that refused to watch a B&W movie. Of course, her favorite movie was "Point Break" with Keanu Reeves too . . .Personally, I'm a colorist. Life is in color and I love oversaturated colors and the peculiar cast that man-made light makes, especially at night. reality can be heightened by color too. Take the recent film "Bandits". Yeah, it's an OK Hollywood actioner, but the color cinematography and the meticulous use of color keys and complimentary colors makes the movie a real pleasure for me. This aspect of the film was totally overlooked when it was released, but remember this if you ever see it again.
Lots of great films in this thread already mentioned which would be all wrong if they were in color, no argument from me. "Touch of Evil", "Sunset Blvd", "3rd Man" etc just GOTTA be in B&W. But how many of the B&W movies of the 30s and 40s would have been shot in color had the process been available (or affordable)? Classic pop culture films like "Bringing Up Baby", "Laura" or "Miracle on 34th Street" would have been much better in color IMO.
The recent Coen Bros movie "The Man Who Wasn't There" is a sharp noir homage with some beautiful B&W cinematography.
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...missing out on some of the greatest films of all time: Citizen Kane, Rules of the Game, M, The Lady Eve, The Third Man, Modern Times, Beauty & The Beast, My Darling Clementine, The 39 Steps, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Alexander Nevsky, Seven Samurai, Treasure of Sierra Madre, The General, Seventh Seal, Dawn Patrol, The Gold Rush, On the Waterfront, The Apartment, Tokyo Story, Sullivan's Travels, Notorious, Casablanca, the Italian realists...plus fun stuff like Frankenstein, Cat People, King Kong, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Sunset Boulevard, Fred and Ginger musicals, the Marx brothers, the Thin Man series, on and on and on. Most movies before the fifties , in fact. Not to mention more recent films like The Last Picture Show, Raging Bull, Manhatten, Dr. Stranglelove...and yes, German expressionism and film noir.Not like black and white??? It's just too *absurd*!
Find new friends.
are missing out on, as B&W swings throughout the entire spectrum
over to the Realist pole. As you said, absurd, but also sad, very
sad. - AH
Black and white is art...colour is the copy of the real...One could say...
At the beginning there was some romantism in the colour cinema industry....but it lost its way....For coming back in more recent films..
AH,B&W has an amazing quality that of reinforcing the abstraction and artificiality of movies. When it is well done, there is a sense that colour would somehow disrupt an important part of the atmosphere. Just a few movies that would be destroyed by colour:
"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" - and sound would ruin this movie!
"Nosferatu" 1922- compare the much less fightening Herzog colour remake
"Son of Frankenstein"- the dramatically shadowed expressionistic sets
"The Third Man"- the B&W communicates the bleakness of post-war Vienna
"The Wizard of Oz"- the B&W communicates the bleakness of pre-war Kansas
"Touch of Evil"- one of the best photographed movies
"Manhattan"- the B&W communicates the bleakness of Woody Allen's emotional life
"Stranger than Paradise"
"Pi"- the very hard, high contrast B&W suits the inner tension of the main chcarcterFilms that I would like to have been in B&W:
"Fanny and Alexander"- I would do this reverse to "Wizard of Oz" where the film becomes B&W after the father's death
"Tout les Matins du Mond"These definitely acquire much of their qualities from the B&W.
After I post this, I will think of a hundred more.
B&W is like a magic window that reminds us we are looking through a frame to a remote world.
Cheers,
Bambi B
Casablanca, anyone? Breathless? Bob le Flambeur?
*****B&W has an amazing quality, that of reinforcing the abstraction
and artificiality of movies. When it is well done, there is a
sense that colour would somehow disrupt an important part of the
atmosphere.*****Agreed, B&W should be considered as an aesthetic that stands fully
on its own, and not viewed as a "lack of color", as incomplete. - AH
AH,Good point, and I would second the views that not all B&W film that we think are great movies could ONLY have been in B&W. There were great ones that were in B&W because that was the technology of the time.
There were many great plots, dialogue, acting, scenes, and directing that might have been more powerful in colour.
"Double Indemnity" and Casablanca" were film noir - more or less- but did not benefit from great B&W photography. Sacriledge, but "Wild Strawberries" too.
BB
Bambi,You mentioned B&W accenting the bleakness of pre-war Kansas.
Didn't the film change to color when Dorothy hit Land of OZ? If so,
don't you think that change was good, in that it brought out the
vividness and fantasy elements of OZ more so than B&W could have
done. If above if correct, then the movie was photoed appropriately,
IMO. - AH
AH,Yes, I thought the change from B&W when Dorothy opens the door into Munchkin Land was an absolutely brilliant concept. The austerity of Depression era Kansas suddnly dissolves away into this magic land "over the rainbow".
And imagine the impact in 1939 when there were so few movies in colour- it must have bowled people over.
I saw "W of O" eight or ten times -on a B&W televsion machine- so it wasn't until my parents had a colour set in 1975 that I saw the change into colour! This shocked me as it might have to a 1939 audience.
With "Fanny and Alexander" I thought that the wonderful, rich family life of F&H was amazing and appropriate in colour, but when their father dies and they are relegated to the life in the austere Bishop's palace and later the strange furniture dealer's house/warehouse, it could have been fun to do a "reverse Oz" and change to B&W to show the emotional and physical austerity.
When Dorothy returns to Kansas -and B&W, I kept thinking even as a kid- here she was a saviour/heroine to a race of happy, clean, materially wealthy, leisured people "start work at 11, lunch from 12-2 and then we're done- tra-la" who would have made her leader of the whole country but she blew her magic powers to go back to Aunt Em to shovel pig shite in Kansas. And Aunt Em struck me as a tired, bitter, irritable old bag.
That delicate moment when nobility turns into raw stupidity.
As Wilde said, "...that's what makes it fiction!"
Cheers,
Bambi B
is the same director of Dead Man....You should check it out :o)
mp
t
dm
is Dead Man with Johnny Depp.
Stunning B&W images.
I've posted about this film before, and it is a must see for any serious film viewer.mp
a surreal movie...other b&w's worth mentioning...
The Apartment
Young Frankenstein
a matter of taste. I can't stand 99% of the musicals out...I'm sure some would find that I'm missing out on some mighty fine entertainment!True story:
My first year of teaching, I was having a discussion about what school was like in the past....a student said "you mean when the world was black and white" I was enchanted, I wanted to hear more about this student's philosophical ideas, so I asked him to elaborate. He said "you know, like the three stooges. I have the video at home."
Well, he was only eight after all.
mp
It may be that color distracts, or that B&W is easier to manipulate by the director/cinematographer, I don't know. But there are many movies that I can't imagine being as good in color.
"There is a pestilence upon this land, nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress in this period in history."
and vintage B & W negatives contained silver, which made for beautiful gradations of visual tone. "Modern" (post 1970's) B & W film uses different dyes which eliminate most of the silver; and aren't anywhere near as good as a result. I think many of Bogarts films would look terrible in Color!
Eric
Tokyo
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