Color Me Grey: A Passionate Defense of Black and White

Black and White has me bewitched, but colorization just leaves me bothered and bewildered.

When Ted Turner began the colorization craze back in the 1980s, the late Roger Ebert had this to say: "There are few issues in the area of film preservation that arouse more anger than the issue of colorization. That is because it is an issue involving taste, and, to put it bluntly, anyone who can accept the idea of the colorization of black and white films has bad taste. The issue involved is so clear, and the artistic sin of colorization is so fundamentally wrong, that colorization provides a pass-fail examination. If you 'like' colorized movies, it is doubtful that you know why movies are made, or why you watch them."

To play devil's advocate for a moment, Ebert's words came from a time when the process was in its infancy, back when blurry pastel colors were inconsistently painted on videotape transfers of black and white material. Classic films like Casablanca and Yankee Doodle Dandy were among the earliest movies colorized, and the results were less than spectatular. Such early examples of colorization are completely unwatchable by today's standards, but it must be said that the process has come a long way since then. Companies like Legend Films can nowadays put a greater range of colors onto digital transfers of black and white film, and are able to apply a much greater degree of detail onto each frame, the outcomes being far more convincing (yet ultimately no more realistic) than those done three decades ago.

But my "praise" for the process ends there. While interesting when applied to historical war footage, such as the attack on Pearl Harbor for instance, the use of colorization has primarily been applied to the world of entertainment. And that's where things get prickly. Many of those creatively involved with the making of classic black and white film and television are no longer with us, and many who are still around have universally denounced the process from the getgo. Prominent Hollywood figures like George Lucas, John Huston, Anjelica Huston, James Stewart and Woody Allen were among the loudest of those against the process, as was critic Roger Ebert.

The advent of DVD and digital technology caused the issue of colorization to rear its head once more to a severe degree. Fox's library of Shirley Temple films were recolorized for DVD, as were perennial classics like It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. Fortunately, in those cases, the studios also included restored black and white versions. The same thing also happened in 2007 when a number of vintage The Three Stooges shorts were issued by Columbia Tri-Star.

“The best thing about this DVD release is it gives the consumer the ultimate choice,” said an executive about The Three Stooges DVDs. “They can watch the very best, the finest restored image of the black-and-white version, or watch the new colorized version and switch instantaneously between the two.”

Not that everyone (myself included) saw it that way. Director Sam Raimi, a long time Stooges fan, was unimpressed. “I don't think they should mess with black and white," he said. "I think they should just leave it as they are and try to preserve them as best they can. I feel like it’s an artistic interpretation that’s not anybody’s right to make except the director’s.”

George Lucas concurred about the Stooges, and suggested that color would ruin the humor. “Would color distract from their comedy and make it not as funny anymore?” he said. “Maybe just the fact that they’re in black and white makes it funny, because their humor is dated...by putting it in black and white, it puts it in a context where you can appreciate it for what it was. But you try to make it in full living color and try to compare it to a Jim Carrey movie, then it’s hard for young people to understand. Because you’re then thinking you’re comparing apples to apples, when you’re not. You’re comparing apples to oranges. I’m saying it’s not fair to the artist.”

Stefan Kanfer put forward a similar theory when discussing the unsurpassed legacy of Lucille Ball and I Love Lucy. "The comediens to whom Lucy has been compared, those who achieved iconic status worldwide...all capered before the Technicolor era. Even Bob Hope, who was still filming into the 1980s, is best remembered for his pre-color work in such films as My Favorite Brunette and the Road pictures. The clowns who came to prominence after 1960, when color became the norm rather than the exception, have by and large been supernovas, glowing brilliantly - and then vanishing into the void. There is something incompatible about humor and color; the palette calls attention to itself, instead of the jokes...Lucy stays eternally comic because of the vital, frenzied, ireeproducible years when the Ball of Fire got it all down in black and white."

There is great truth in what Kanfer writes. Fans of Lucille Ball will of course be aware that her television career carried on for nearly three more decades after I Love Lucy ended its run. From 1963 onwards, her shows were filmed in color, and were broadcast in color from 1965 onwards. Yet as funny and wonderful as The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and her color films and specials were, they're hardly responsible for her legendary status today. Ask any casual fan what they remember Lucille Ball for, and the response will be this: I Love Lucy. It isn't her movies we reflect back on day to day. It isn't her subsequent television shows, both of which are rarely seen on television anymore, that sustain her in our memories. It's I Love Lucy in all it's black and white glory that keeps her burning eternally in the minds of her audience.

Which makes the prospect of colorizing this most sacred of sitcoms all the more troublesome. To date, three episodes have been colorized at different times, and all three of which will be available this fall on a new DVD set. Proponents of the process argue that it's necessary in order to sustain her legacy for younger generations, many of whom have shown reluctance at watching anything in black and white. But if we're going to go so far as to add artificial color to every episode in order to appease the masses, why stop there? Many people still may hesitate to watch it because they're not familiar with the time period or actors involved. Should every episode be remade with Kim Kardashian as Lucy and Paris Hilton as Ethel in order to really draw in the younger crowd? It's a fine line that is more than likely to be crossed (give them an inch, they'll take a mile), so best not to mess with it at all.

A colorization proponent recently tried to argue with me by saying that viewers will still have a choice to see it in black and white if they so choose. That may be entirely true, but eventually, if colorization takes off even more, that choice will become all the more difficult to make. Whereas many releases include both versions in the same set, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment took a different approach when releasing the early seasons of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, issuing alternate b/w and colorized sets that had to be purchased separately. All well and good, except that the black and white releases eventually vanished from store shelves entirely, with only the color copies remaining. True, those black and white sets are available from online retailers, but that's about the only place they remain available. Try streaming those early seasons online: colorized only. Try buying the complete series boxsets for both shows: only the colorized episodes included. And good luck if you live outside the United States, where only the colorized versions were released. Where's the choice in that, I ask you? There's almost no way to view those episodes as filmed and intended nowadays without putting effort into it, and it shouldn't have to be that way. If there were truly a choice involved, both would be available equally. But that is not the case.

Even in situations where color reference photos and footage exist, and surviving costumes/props are still around for additional reference, opponents of colorization argue that it's still a bogus process. Costumes, props, set coloring and makeup were not chosen for black and white projects based on their color, but rather how they photographed in black and white. Roger Ebert even went so far as to say that, were colorization artists truly concerned with matching colors as closely as possible, that actors faces would be colored light green in order to match the makeup necessary to photograph fleshtones more accurately in black and white. There is also the question of the lighting differences for black and white vs. color.

"Black and white movies present the deliberate absence of color," argued Ebert. "This makes them less realistic than color films (for the real world is in color). They are more dreamlike, more pure, composed of shapes and forms and movements and light and shadow. Color films can simply be illuminated. Black and white films have to be lighted. With color, you can throw light in everywhere, and the colors will help the viewer determine one shape from another, and the foreground from the background. With black and white, everything would tend toward a shapeless blur if it were not for meticulous attention to light and shadow, which can actually create a world in which the lighting creates a heirarchy of moral values."

Even when the technology improved, Ebert remained one of the staunchest opponents, and his two basic arguments remained the same. "1: Black and white is a legitimate and beautiful artistic choice in motion pictures, creating feelings and effects that cannot be obtained any other way. 2: 'Colorization' does not produce color movies, but only sad and sickening travesties of black and white movies, their lighting destroyed, their atmospheres polluted, their moods altered almost at random by the addition of an artificial layer of coloring that is little more than legalized vandalism."

And despite such improvements, there is no doubt that colorization still looks, and will always look, artificial. No matter how much time invested, and no matter how talented the artists involved, it will never be able to accurately reflect the way color is filmed.

In the end, it's all about money, just like everything in show business. But what is popular seldom lines up with what is right, and people have a habit of making bad choices if given alternatives. The simple fact of the matter is that there shouldn't be any choice to begin with. If someone has an issue watching black and white, that's their problem. And when people have a problem, the thing to do is work on it. Take the time and let someone explain why black and white is beautiful, and learn to love it for what it is. Don't expect the entire world to constantly bow down and alter everything to suit your limited taste. Entitlement and narrow-mindedness run rampant nowadays and such attitudes should not be reinforced.

I'm all for progress in the world of society and civil rights and what have you. But this is different. This is art we're talking about. Art that is a reflection of its time and needs to be respected as such. Learn to love black and white. Open your eyes and absorb its beauty. And if you truly can't stomach watching something the way it was filmed and intended, then you have no business watching it at all.  

Sources:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_colorization.

 

Ebert, Roger. "'Casablanca' Gets Colorized, but Don't Play It Again, Ted." Web. 11 Aug. 2013. http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/casablanca-gets-colorized-but-dont-play-it-again-ted

 

Kanfer, Stefan. "A Marx Sister." Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Print.

 

Riding, Alan. "Film Makers Are Victors In a Lawsuit on Coloring." N.p., 25 Aug. 1991. Web.

 

"Stooges DVD Revives Colorization Debate." TODAY.com. Associated Press, n.d. Web. 11 Aug. 2013. <http://www.today.com/id/5651949>.