if ever a movie screams out to be colorized, this one is it. I think they have the technology in place to do a first rate colorization job. I definitely agree that there are certain movies that shouldn't be touched, like Casablanca and The Third Man. But I think if they'd have had the budget, this one would have been filmed in color, and the scenes in Ireland would benefit immensely from it. Please don't crucify me for this opinion!!
shareif you understand the concept that there are films "that shouldn't be touched, like Casablanca and The Third Man" then why on earth would you justify colorization of ANY film that was shot in black & white???? Should we paint a new hairdo on the Mona Lisa to spruce her up a tad..?? Films are made by artists (well at least they USED to be) and the artists intended for their work to be viewed a certain way. To colorize films is artistic rape any way you look at it. I'd rather know they were doing another bad remake where you can see all the wonderful colors of the day than to see them mess with this beautiful work of art.
Tom
I guess what I should have said was - I wish they had filmed this in color in the first place.
shareok - I'm with you now! ;)
Tom
I'm with bigtommyboy 100% about the evils (and worse) of colorization. (And by the way, CASABLANCA was colorized in the 80s and it looked awful, i.e., typical of all colorization.)
Anyway, they've restored the green tint in the Irish scenes on the DVD -- first time it's been seen in its original form in 60 years -- but alternatively it might have been nice had they filmed just the Irish scenes in color, leaving the impersonal New York scenes in black & white to heighten the contrast between the two lifestyles. They did this in the other film on LUCK's DVD in the Power set, I'LL NEVER FORGET YOU, where the scenes set in 1784 were filmed in Technicolor while the 1951 scenes were in b&w. I think this would have worked well in LUCK. But that's not what Fox chose to do, so....
No to colorization!
Just to muddy up the waters a bit I personally feel that in the 40's and early 50's whether a movie was filmed in black-and-white or color all came down to the subject of money. If there was money in the budget for color it was filmed in color; if not, then it was black-and-white. Looking back now we attach too much importance to what the director intended during that period when the decision was not in his hands. The studio heads made those decisions.
And on the subject of colorization: if you like it, watch it; if you don't, then don't watch it ..... but don't comdemn others of either persuasion. Who of us knows what something looks like through someone else's eyes?
You and I rarely disagree, neighturboy, but I don't go along with you about colorization. It isn't simply a matter of watch it or not, as you prefer. Movies are art forms that shouldn't be altered.
Colorization is more than simply faked colors. Color films are shot using film stock, lighting, costume and set designs, and so on, specifically designed for color. Similarly with black & white films. You cannot simply smear false "colors" onto a film designed to be photographed in b&w -- it can never look correct or natural. That aside, almost all the colors computerized onto a b&w film are guesses -- what some technician arbitrarily thinks something should be colored. Even in those few instances where they have an approximate notion of what color something really was, they can never match what it actually looked like. Further, colorization has no depth or diversity -- the colors are just big smears, without the shadings, gradations, nuances of actual color. Add to this the sloppiness in leaving distant objects uncolorized, the impossibility of laying on fake colors that duplicate real colors, and the question as to who has the right to mar another's work, and colorization is a crime as well as a farce.
Besides, if you say colorization is acceptable, by rights you cannot object to changing music or dialogue, digitally altering pictures, editing things someone finds "objectionable", or otherwise changing a film. This isn't theoretical; it's already been done to a number of films and TV shows. If tampering with a movie in one form is permissible, there is no logicallly consistent reason why other forms can't be.
As to your thesis that budgets alone were the deciding factor in whether a film was shot in color or b&w in the 40s and 50s, this simply is not true. Colorizers have often claimed that they're showing a movie "the way the director wanted it", which is bull. In fact, seldom was a film shot in b&w solely because of budget reasons. Most filmmakers back then preferred b&w. Some kinds of movies -- notably film noirs -- could not possibly have been photographed in color -- it sort of negates the whole point of the film, its mood and tone.
That aside, black and white is a much more expressive, more intimate medium than color. Many kinds of b&w films simply wouldn;t have worked well in color. That's another strike against colorization: it changes the intended "feel" of a film, makes it into soemthing else, misses the whole point. This is why the kinds of movies that were filmed in color back then were mainly westerns, spectacles and musicals -- films that had great scenery or were bursting with colorful sets and costumes. Yet some dramas, comedies, and science fiction films were in color as well.
And color actually wasn't all that expensive back then. Technicolor was the most expensive, until their patent lapsed in 1953, but hardly out of reach. But other color processes existed, and many very low-budget movies were shot in Cinecolor, a cheap process that resembled the old two-strip Technicolor of the 20s. By 1954 color was cheap. But well into the late 1960s a lot of films were shot in b&w because the filmmakers preferred it.
The fact is most of the films made back then were shot in b&w from artistic choice, not budget. There are exceptions, of course, but very few. And I never heard of a producer or director so angry at not getting enough money for color that he made a big issue out of it for years afterward. In almost every instance, b&w was deliberately chosen.
Since you weren't alive and working for Zanuck, Warner, Hughes or Mayer your statements are only conjecture, and unprovable. Movies weren't always considered an art form, it was just a way to make money. Art form, film noir, etc. are all terms that were created later by people like yourself, and were never intended when the films you now hold in such high esteem were originally created. All of the high esteem came later, with the advent of television, videocassette, DVD and Blu-ray media ..... and oh!, the chance to make more M-O-N-E-Y!
shareExcuse me, you stated with undiluted certainty that budgets were the only reason movies weren't made in color. Where is your authority for that? I'm not aware you were working in Hollywood back then either. Talk about unprovable conjecture.
Besides which, you're conflating two separate topics: one, why most movies through the 50s were shot in black & white; two, the merits, or lack thereof, of colorization. The "art form" argument has nothing to do with decisions to film in b&w decades ago; that pertains solely to colorization arguments. I agree that few considered films art back then. By mixing that argument in with the reasons why most filmmakers didn't shoot in color to begin with you're either not paying attention to what I wrote or deliberately misstating it.
In fact, when colorization first came in in the 80s almost all the directors, stars, technicians and others who were still around from the 40s and 50s condemned it. That's "authority" enough for me on that question. As to why most filmmakers went with b&w rather than color back when, read interviews or biographies or other works about them, and whenever that subject comes up most say they preferred b&w to color. It's true that color would have cost more and occasionally this was an issue between whether a film got made in color or b&w. But based on the records we have this was the exception, not the rule.
To mention something I said before, do you really think a director making, say, a film noir in 1947 would have opted for color if he could have? The notion that every movie back then would have been made in color but for budgets, which is what your statement implies, is preposterous -- baseless conjecture and completely unprovable.
And now that I've gotten that off my chest, I'm surprised and disappointed at the nasty and personal nature of your reply. You want to disagree, fine, but the snide remarks were uncalled for. I said nothing of that kind about you or your views, and in fact went out of my way to try to be friendly toward you and about our disagreements on these subjects. Our previous exchanges have always been friendly and enjoyable, which leaves me even more puzzled.
I detest colorization, for the simple reason it looks like shyte. "Red River" and "The Longest Day" were both shown on British tv in insipid colorised versions and I couldn't concentrate on the story, I was too busy cursing at the hatchet job they had done with the original movie's quality.
"The internet is for lonely people. People should live." Charlton Heston
I didn't know they'd been colorized. Back in the late 80s when Ted Turner was busy colorizing everything he could, he tried to colorize Citizen Kane, only ot learn he couldn't because Welles (his estate, by then) controlled the film completely, so no changes could be made to it.
The quality issues aside, colorizing a movie changes it into something else. (Obviously; otherwise why color it?) Pro-colorization fans never seem to understand this, or worse, care.
Yes, interesting observation. It really does need to be in colour.
A real error in judgment not to film this in colour, or as mentioned, part of it in colour.