B+W and not Colour?

I believe that Sirk himself regretted the fact that the film´s budget didn´t allow for colour photography (in the Sirk on Sirk book, which is made up of interviews by Jon Haliday). When I was rewatching the film today (it does get better with repeated viewing; the restored w/s dvd helps) I was thinking that maybe somebody should colourise this one (even if I don´t like the process per se), instead of films that should always remain in b/w...

The black and white projected well the sense of claustrophobia the character felt.

People hungry for the voice of god
Hear lunatics and liars

If you can't tell the story in black and white, color's not going to fix it. At the time, color was really expensive for films. It can also be an artistic choice. Nearly 15 years later, Psycho and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane were filmed in BW and were blockbusters. True, I understand that with Psycho, it was a combination of budget but also knowing the film would have a lot of problems being released in color with all of the red blood. Remember, too, that TVs at the time were all BW. Seeing a BW movie wasn't that big of a deal.

The color would have brought out the lush interior decor designs that producer Ross Hunter prized so much, but in the end the B and W worked as this is a rather noirish soap opera melodrama and MacMurray's house and family are ultimately a prison he's unable to escape. Sirk and Metty make the most of using black and white in this one.

Never saw it before, until tonight when it was on TCM. I wasn't surprised to see it in black white, as I thought it was an attempt to recapture the magic of the film noir "Double Indemnity", with the reuniting of Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. I think the B&W captured the mood of the story.