MovieChat Forums > Ivan Groznyy. Skaz vtoroy: Boyarskiy zagovor (1959) Discussion > Color process

Color process

posted 18 years ago by mfisher452
11 replies | jump to latest

Does anyone know what process would have been used to film the color scenes in Ivan the Terrible II? I understand that at least some of the film was made using captured German film stock, which may be the explanation of how a color film was shot in the USSR in wartime. I am also guessing that the manufacture of ordinary film stock in the USSR may have been based on processes acquired from Western companies in the 1920s or 1930s.

Note that when the film switches from black and white to color, it also abruptly switches from brilliantly lit to quite dark, as if Eisenstein used the same lighting for the much slower color film as he did for the black and white film. He must have been aware of the difference. Perhaps he used it deliberately to give the color scenes more of a film noir look.

Finally, could it be that in some of the film, particularly the banquet scenes involving the playlet derived from the Book of Daniel, Eisenstein was influenced by Japanese kabuki theater?

[–] Sccrream97-1 18 years ago

Why did Eisenstein do the color scenes?

[–] xav-jim 18 years ago

1. A murder take place in the final scene ... so this is an artistic argue to color and especially the RED one
2. Historically, USSR and USA were in competition in movie...I mean that propaganda was important. When Eisenstein went to Mexico and USA and Europa, his "mission" was to take informations to know what Occidental people were doing with the sound effect and the loss of MUTE MOVIES.

So why did he use color ?
1. because he was interested, as an artist
2. because he was forced by the authorities (Stalin in fact got all the authorities in his both hands !)

[–] wadetaylor 17 years ago

I think basically the Russian soldiers found it in Germany, brought it back to Russia (which did not own any color film at the time), and the color film stock was given to Eisenstein since he was the most notable Russian director. He used it just because he had it, I don't think those scenes were necessarily written to be in color, it just seemed to be a good place to use the color stock that he had been given.

[–] clive-ihd 17 years ago

It probably would have been better to shoot the whole film in black and white, especially as the colour scenes are very dark in tone.

[–] mfisher452 16 years ago

(Thinking out loud) Wouldn't it be more complicated than just capturing some color film? You can't just subject color film to the same development process as black and white film, so it wouldn't be enough just to bring back color film; you'd have to be able to reconstruct an entire processing lab to develop it. They must have brought back more than just film stock; they must have brought back either a lot of equipment or detailed instructions on chemicals and processes.

[–] chuck-526 12 years ago

Although I've heard elsewhere this same idea that only a little color stock was available and its use was more-or-less accidental, I don't buy it. Specifically what I don't buy is the claim that "those scenes were [not] ... written to be in color".

What I saw was a very marked difference in the blocking and staging and scenery etc. in the B&W scenes and in the Color scenes. The color scenes included some obviously choreographed dance routines, but I didn't notice even much fast character movement (let alone a dance routine) in the B&W scenes. The B&W scenes use "shadows" extensively, but I didn't notice even just one shadow in the Color scenes. Also, every so often in the B&W segments there's a long shot, but if I remember right the Color scenes are entirely middle and closeup shots. B&W scenes are frequently composed with a lot of props and grand architecture almost dwarfing the characters, but the Color scenes don't contain any architectural shots at all (in fact they contain little scenery of any sort). And in the B&W scenes the costumes are richly patterned and beaded and jeweled so they present a lot of contrast, whereas in the Color scenes the costumes are quite plain cloth but of many different color shades.

[–] altyn 16 years ago

I'm diving in my memory, because I studied it over 20 years ago... what I recall is that the color film was indeed from Germany and the color scenes had always been meant to be colored, but the present excessively red tone is due to some technical error in color film development or film conservation. Hope I'm not completely wrong, but I gave away my Eisenstein books years ago, so cannot do a fact-check.
Altyn

[–] armin-25 16 years ago

The color is not from real color film. The film is supposed to be black and white couse of the dark atmosphere. If they would want colour film they would just bought one from US.That would not be a big problem even in those times.
The last thing Stalin would like to do is to use captured german material to do epic russian movie....

The real thing with those color scenes is they were hand coloured. Imagine that. The colored scenes are the masterpiece of the film and should be in color. In those times it was like big bang for russians to see those scenes in color. Several people worked on this coloring frame by frame. today a computer can do it but in those time it was possible only manualy. You can call it special effects in those days :))))

[–] chuck-526 12 years ago

Hmmm. Could you please point me to some specific evidence supporting this theory?

(Compared to hand-colored things I've seen, this color is much finer and has a lot of gradations. Hand-colored frames usually look rather like old-fashioned cartoons, with large areas of exactly the same color. These don't look that way.)

[–] cmgj_law 16 years ago

Agfacolor, from film stock captured from Nazis.

[–] ltarex 15 years ago

Eisenstein wrote a lot of theoretic work about the use of colour in films in his later years, which he found really interesting and worked a lot on the subject. I think he was more than happy to get at least a small chance to try out his theories in an actual film.

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