I was watching Summer and Smoke in TCM this morning for the second time in 48 years. That means I first saw it in 1961 at the time of its release. I could have sworn that this was a black and white movie. Is it possible that it has been colorized?
Thanks a lot to anyone who can clarify this little trick of the memmory.
Original is Color (Technicolor) according to IMDB pro. The film has a pale color palette and a "washed out" look with soft lenses which gives it the appearance of a colorized film. I suspect the color choice was intentional, meant to convey a certain "mood".
On a side note: TCM boasts of showing its films original and uncut. The only real changes they ever show are when films have undergone restoration. You can pretty much guarantee that TCM wouldn't show any of the "colorized" versions of any of the unlucky films to suffer at the hands of Ted Turner's crayons. Besides being unpopular, the process is too expensive to make them look "right" as sets for black and white films are lit differently than sets for color films. Improvements have been made in the colorization process, but the cost outweighs any theorized benefits.
Oy vey. No, it was never black and white except on TV if you had a black and white TV. It was printed in IB Technicolor and was never pale or washed out - the color wasn't garish, but if you look at the recently released Olive DVD you'll see a fairly decent presentation with excellent color.
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