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In Reply to: Great in Black & White posted by Bambi B on February 09, 2003 at 07:43:41:
*****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
Follow Ups:
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
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