The first time I watched Advise and Consent I checked out a copy from the library and it was in Black and White. The IMDB page says the movie is a Black and White movie.
The second time I watched the movie was in a college course and my professor showed us a color version. When did the color version come out? Did they have to "colorize" it to make it that way? Were there any other changes made to the "color" version? Does anyone know what I am talking about?
Yuck. What form of brain damage does your professor have?
Advise & Consent is an excellent example of a wonderfully photographed black and white widescreen film, photographed using early Panavision lenses. I have no idea why someone would want to what a colourised version.
Agree. To this day, the B&W version maintains a certain charm and charisma to it.
shareWORKS BETTER IN COLOR.
Let's just say youve got a friend, a powerful devious friend
Like hell it does -- not to mention that the colorization job on A&C was even worse than most colorization. Fake, phony, false, like all colorization. And anyway, it's not the way the movie was made. So who gives anyone the right to screw around with a film to suit their own taste (or, in this case, lack thereof)?
shareI respect your right to your opinion.
I think It was done to attract youth.
I wish they would film all 33 of drury's novels.
its an abomination to colorize films. I have CASABLANCA colorized dvd and trust me its awful
Hah, I remember it being black and white, but I think it was a few years back that I saw it. Also, from my college professor back at IC. I really enjoyed this movie, being such a political junkie. Still seems pretty relevant today.
/slash moo
I kind like the color version. Too bad Mr Preminger didn't make it in color. And thank goodness somebody did it.
shareSomebody didn't "make it in color". They colorized it. There's a huge difference.
A film is designed and shot for either b&w or color. You can't just slap a few phony and inaccurate computerized colors on a black-and-white film and claim it's just as it "would have looked" had it been filmed in color. It's not. Besides, the "color" in the colorized version of A&C is particularly lousy.
No one has the right to change another person's work. If Preminger had wanted it to be in color he would have filmed it that way. He specifically chose to shoot in b&w. If people can't watch something without changing it in some way (fake colors, new music, changed dialogue, computer-altered scenes, etc.), they shouldn't watch the movie. Or go out and make their own version.
The technicolor was quite expensive in the early 1960s. Remember, all color television broadcasting was not pervasive until the late 1960s. I grew up in the black and white television. There are still plenty of us around. But we shall be goner soon in a few decades. Already the generation that grew up before television is dying out. By the year 2030 there won't be any left around [my mother, she is almost 90, is one of them]. What will happen when all the generations that grew up with the black and white tv are gone, and there are still too many old black and white movies around? Dump them to the waste basket because they were not in color? Some stupid old movies not worth to watch I wouldn't mind, but many classics we watch like "King Kong" of 1933 and "Citizen Kane" are black and white. The law forbidding colorizing movies made in the late 1980s is the stupidest of laws. And I don't consider most movies "works of art". There are just for entertainment, of course you can learn something but don't take it too literally, and some forms must be done to keep them for future generations. I have seen "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Miracle on 34th Street" colorized and look much better. Funny, in the 1960s people wanted color tv broadcasting, and now they want to keep the old black and white movies "black and white". But I fear a decades from now with a future generations that grew up only watching color movies and tv.
shareYou and I sound about the same age. I grew up with b&w TV as well. So I'm really surprised someone from our generation would so like colorization.
Technicolor was definitely not expensive by the 60s. Hundreds of movies were made in color each year. Once Technicolor, Inc., had lost its exclusive patent in 1953, and other color processes could come in, color exploded across the big screen.
At the time he made A&C, Preminger himself had just shot Exodus in color, and his next film, The Cardinal, was also filmed in color. In fact, color had supplanted b&w as the preferred film medium in the mid-50s. But a couple of years later, there was a b&w renaissance in filmmaking, and from around 1958 to 1966, many of the most prestigeous films were shot in b&w. In fact, it was the introduction of all-color TV broadcasting (in 1966) that helped herald the end (more or less) of b&w filmmaking (though occasionally a few films are still shot in b&w). But this was a commercial decision, to compete with television.
Colorization, no matter how "advanced" it gets, is still not real, and it's not accurate. You think the colorized versions of It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street look better?! I always tell people who think a colorized movie "looks good" to compare it with a movie made around the same time that was actually shot in real color. After making the comparison they always agree that in fact fake colorization is vastly inferior to real color. (And if you take a closer look, the colorization of both those movies is in fact pretty poor, particularly 34th Street.)
Frank Capra fought for years to prevent or get rid of the colorization of It's a Wonderful Life. Virtually every filmmaker opposes colorizing. Woody Allen's films cannot, by contract, ever be colorized or otherwise changed. Neither can Citizen Kane. You mention King Kong. Have you seen the colorized version? Have you seen any colorized film noirs -- which basically destroys the whole point of such movies? These are all esthetically and technically terrible, beyond the desecration, which is something you don't see anyway.
Colorized colors do not show reality. They can never have the same depth, nuance and variations found in real color. For example, they smear a broad, uniform green over tree leaves, which is not what you see in nature. They never colorize distant or background objects. They never colorize things that really were (or appear to be) black and white (such as, say, a telephone or a car), which means that these objects don't look the same in the film as the colorized stuff around them. Skin tones are always off and have a plainly visible underlying shade of gray. Uncolorized teeth look gray. Eye color bounces around a person's eyes and is also obviously unreal and inaccurate. And apart from never being able to match real colors with anything like reality, the fact is that in the vast majority of instances the colorizers have no idea what the actual colors of things were -- they just make them up. Colorizers simply slap fake colors on objects that usually bear no relation to the actual colors of these things, and in any case are nothing like the truth.
This is the kind of crap you prefer?
Whether you consider movies works of art is irrelevant. They are so considered, and protected as such. Yes, they're for entertainment. So what? So are paintings, or books, or music. Is it all right for someone to change a Picasso or Rembrandt because he'd prefer it if it looked different? Is it okay to add or delete passages from books to make them "better"? (This has actually happened, with self-righteous individuals changing Mark Twain, for one, to suit their own whims and prejudices.) Can we just alter recordings to make them more "modern"? How about colorizing Matthew Brady photographs of the Civil War to make them look "contemporary"?
And if you think colorizing movies is just fine, then what about making other changes to them? An updated music score to replace the old one? Altering or deleting dialogue? Digitally inserting new elements into a film, or removing ones already there? Changing "objectionable" aspects of the plot to fit current sensibilities? All this is now possible, and in fact, has happened. If changing a film by colorizing it -- robbing it of the way it was deliberately supposed to look, altering its very character -- is okay, then any other changes must, by logic and consistency, be okay too.
As far as future generations go, I really don't care whether some people are so dense that they can't watch anything in black & white. Too bad. It's their loss, and if they're that stupid, they wouldn't appreciate what they saw even if it were colorized and changed in other ways to make it seem "new" to them.
Black & white films won't have to be "dumped in the wastebasket" in the future, and they won't be "saved" by colorizing them. I don't happen to agree that most people won't watch a b&w film. Some idiots resolutely stick to that, but as I said, that's not my problem. No one has the right to alter a film from the way it was made. Remember: How a movie was shot is as integral to its nature and worth as any other aspect. There is no such thing as "simply" colorizing a movie. Doing so imparts significant changes to the very character and substance of a film. Only boobs with a moronic prejudice against watching anything in b&w, and fast-buck artists who don't give a damn about the films and only colorize stuff to make money off such fools, welcome colorization.
Oh, and yes, people did clamor for color TV in the 60s, but that has nothing to do with wanting to preserve b&w films today. The one has absolutely no connection with the other. They are totally different subjects. No one in the 60s wanted to see b&w films in color. They just wanted to have color television. Old b&w TV programs continued to be shown for decades afterward, and still are. Today, even many commericals are being filmed in b&w, to make them stand out.
Say all you want. I don't mind. My concern is only what will happen to all these black and white classic movies and tv shows [I don't mind seeing "I Love Lucy" colorized] when the last of the generation that grew up with black and white television is gone by the years 2040-2050. Will they survive or dump as "old and useless? And most people watch movies and television just to be entertained. Not to get "intellectualized".
shareSay all you want. So you're worried about preserving the past -- about not having it "thrown in the wastebasket" after mid-century? You can't see that it's people like you who are blindly complicit in destroying that past -- by changing it into something it isn't, wasn't and was never supposed to be.
Colorization, its flaws and failure aside, is not preserving these films and TV shows. It's changing them -- obviously. It's not the show or movie that was actually made -- it's someone else's conceited attempt to remake it into something he thinks it should be. By doing so he robs it of its artistry and reality...or, since you have an aversion to being "intellectualized" (whatever that means), he's obliterating the past.
By encouraging colorization, you're helping to lose the very past you claim you want to see preserved...except you're not "preserving" anything. In changing it, you're creating something new, and inferior. And as you didn't comment on any of the other kinds of changes that can now be made by computerized means, I can only assume you have no problem with altering films or TV shows in those ways, either...all in the name of "preserving" them, of course.
So congratulations -- you've just endorsed tossing all these things, not in the wastebasket, but down George Orwell's Memory Hole.
This isn't some abstract "intellectual" debate. It's preserving the integrity of the works. It's keeping them the way their creators made and intended them to be. It's retaining their whole point. Which, obviously, you either don't care about, or just plain can't grasp.
Funny, As far as I know this guy George Orwell never made a movie. Of course some of his writings ended up in movie versions ["1984" twice, and "Animal Farm" once, in case there is another one]. I tell you what: when colorizing the classics, we put the original one in black and white and let the viewer decide.
shareUm, sorry, what does the fact that Orwell "never made a movie" have to do with anything? I was referencing a device he conceived for "1984", that's all. That's like saying that the guy who invented the wastebasket (an object you introduced into the conversation) never made a movie.
Actually, in a limited instance like this, I am not in favor of freedom of choice. Art should never be tampered with, be it books, plays, paintings, sculpture, or film. Even if the original is still around. It's a matter of principle.
Anyway, this discussion seems to have run its course. Just understand that colorization is not intended as a means of "preserving" b&w films or TV shows. It's a commercial move, pure and simple.
A few con artists realize there's some money to be made from brain-dead simpletons who insist that everything has to be in color, no matter how fake or inaccurate or lousy...which they wouldn't understand anyway. "Wow! Color!! At last I can watch it!!!" So some untalented slobs smear a few fake colors over a film not designed for color, and pass it off as "new", "exciting", and, most dishonestly, "the way it was supposed to look".
Fortunately, the colorized version of A&C long ago bit the dust. The old colorized VHS is rare and unwanted, the DVD is in b&w, and it's rarely if ever shown on TV...though a few coloized films sometimes still are. But if you think the colorized versions of films such as Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, King Kong and dozens of others are good, let alone better than, the originals, a lot more is wrong than simply a concern for "preserving" these movies for the future.
Oh, there are two versions of Animal Farm as well: a 1955 UK cartoon version which completely altered (read: ruined) the ending from the book, and a made-for-cable 1999 version that was poorly received. Both versions of 1984 also failed to live up to the novel, and interestingly, the British version of the 1956 film also changed the ending to a more "upbeat" or "hopeful" one from the novel's, while the American version retained the downbeat tone of the book. Since you don't mind altering movies to make them appeal to later audiences, I guess you have no problem with such changes...or altering them again to suit yet another generation.
Only black and white to color. Against freedom of choice? Too bad we still got plenty of neanderthals who want to dictate the public. But I will never changed a book already written. That's differently. Of course whether I read it or not, that's another question.
shareOkay, you only endorse changing b&w to color. That's just your attempt to "dictate" -- and limit -- one particular change you find acceptable, which may relegate you to Cro-Magnon rather than my so-called "Neanderthal" status.
The problem is you can't control such things. If colorization becomes widespread, making other changes will follow. As I've said, you cannot with any logic say okay to one and not to others, or certainly prevent them.
I'll close by saying that you think when you watch a colorized movie you're seeing it just the same as ever, only now in "color". (It's not real or accurate "color", hence the quote marks.) But colorization changes the entire feel of a movie, its atmosphere and intent. It's not just looking at something in color as if it's exactly the same as in the original b&w. For instance, I've mentioned film noirs before. Being in b&w is an integral aspect of making such films what they are. Putting fake and inappropriate colors on them negates a crucial and inseparable factor that makes these movies what they are. They are not the same.
I'm sorry, you just don't get it.
Let me ask you this: how do you feel about showing a widescreen movie in "pan and scan" -- what's also called "full screen"? Advise & Consent was shot in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. If you've seen the DVD you'll see how it's supposed to look. But the original VHS versions (including the colorized one) showed it "full screen", so that there were no black "bars" at top and bottom...meaning that to have the picture fill up your TV screen they have to zoom in on one section of the film and lose the rest -- about half the film's full picture. When we were growing up, the common practice was to show widescreen movies on TV that way. Are you okay with losing half a film's picture?
I'm also from the generation that grew up with b&w TVs and I agree with hobnob. Colorization is horrible and never should have happened. The colorized movies I've seen look terrible. The color is faded and often looks totally inaccurate. When they colorized "Suddenly" Frank Sinatra's eyes were BROWN!!! Anyways colorization seems to have pretty much disappeared. I don't see them releasing old b&w movies colorized anymore in DVD or Blu-Ray. Also I never saw the colorized "Advise & Consent" and don't want to! Seriously--how could it "help" the movie?
shareThanks, preppy. Of course, a few old b&w movies have been released on DVD in colorized versions in the past few years -- usually "toggled", so that you can switch to b&w if you choose. Digital technology, obviously, makes this possible. The Mark of Zorro (1940), the three Ray Harryhausen films from Columbia in the 50s, Shirley Temple movies, the 1951 British A Christmas Carol, a few others. But I think you're right, it's dying if not quite disappeared, but the fact that it's now possible to do both colorization and b&w on one disc may be a problem. Luckily, a lot of b&w films are now coming out on MOD series that appeal mainly to collectors, for whom colorization would have no appeal, so that may help stamp it out.
shareI didn't realize they were making discs with color AND b&w versions on them. I have no problem with that:) The only films I have heard that did that were some Shirley Temple films--but at a cost. The colorized versions looked great (washed-out color aside) BUT the b&w versions looked terrible with jumps, splices and sometimes inaudible sound! I heard they stopped making those a few years ago because of complaints of the varying quality between the two versions. I guess we have Ted Turner to "thank" for the colorization crap that we had.
shareYes, I think Ted has been uncharacteristically silent on his role in almost destroying films 25 years ago.
A joke at the time concerned the movie The White Tower, a 1950 RKO film Turner owned. It was shot in color mostly on location in Switzerland (it's about a group of people trying to climb an impossible mountain), but every 16mm print made for TV in the 50s and 60s was in b&w, and it was thought for a time that the color original had been lost. (It wasn't, and began being broadcast in the late 80s.) Anyway, when RKO began releasing most of its library on VHS, some of it eventually was colorized by Turner. But while he wound up adding fake color to many b&w movies, the tape version of The White Tower, a film actually shot in color, was in black & white! It never has been released in color, or on DVD, though TCM recently ran it twice in less than 24 hours, in color.
The late Ray Harryhausen participated in the colorization of his films It Came From Beneath the Sea, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and 20 Million Miles to Earth, as well as "supervising" the colorization of films he had had nothing to do with, such as She (1935) and Things to Come. He was initially enthusiastic about it, for some reason, but once he saw how they had colored his octopus and the "Ymir" -- both solid green, no shadings, and not the colors they had actually been -- he became critical of the process...though I wonder, (a) what he expected, and (b) where he was during the colorization process he supposedly supervised.
I actually got the first two of these films (the only colorized discs I've bought), not because of the colorization (which I've barely looked at), but because the prints were letterboxed and had the Columbia logos back on (these were not the case in the original b&w discs). If they couldn't be "toggled" to b&w, I wouldn't have bought them. (The original 20 Million DVD did have the studio logo and was widescreen, so no need to get the colorized version there.)
Granted, having a colorized disc you can shift to b&w is better than not having that option, but it's still not the same -- or called for.
Yeah--I couldn't believe it when Harryhausen said he was OK with the colorization of his films! I saw "It Came..." in color and I was horrified--and not in a good way:) Actually I was FOR colorization at first but then I saw my first colorized film--"It's a Wonderful Life"--on TV and I was disgusted. It didn't work at all! I can understand u buying the colorized discs because of the letterboxing and the original logos. I'm the same way:)
shareGlad to know I'm not the only one who's concerned about such niceties! Thanks.
shareIt's not the Mona Lisa! The director probably also never envisioned the film being viewed on television, or on I-phones, or in other formats. As technology advances, there may be high quality colorization techniques, 3D and all kinds of new and promising ways to make this film more interesting to younger viewers or people who would like to see it in a different way. I agree that there is something charming and pristine about seeing a film in the way the director originally wanted it, but let's not be so pretentious about it. It's just a movie.
shareFew paintings are the Mona Lisa. Does that mean they're not art? "Pretentious"? Saying "it's only a movie" is ridiculous, and part of the problem. Of course film is an art form. (And your aside about how or on what medium a movie can now be seen is a completely irrelevant observation.)
I don't care about making a movie "more interesting" to someone who's so stupid or closed-minded that they can't watch a black & white movie. We're not here to rearrange movies to suit someone "who would like to see them in a different way". How many ways and how many times are we supposed to change a film to make it suit someone's personal whims? So it's okay to randomly and incessantly censor, colorize, change the dialogue, put in different music, digitally alter, remove or insert different elements or people in a movie? If you change a film you're making it into something different, which pretty much negates the point of seeing it in the first place.
This is why the Library of Congress preserves films each year.
If you don't like what a film is, don't watch it. No one should be able to alter someone else's work. In that, film is in fact no different from the Mona Lisa.
Before I begin, I must state that I LOVE old b/w films - they're pretty much my preference. I agree that colorization of classic b/w films is a bit like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa. But I'm not so intolerant that I reject it summarily. I can appreciate the art and technology that went into it. It's more like drawing a mustache on 'a print' of the Mona Lisa. The original still exists, no harm done. I don't really think anyone should make big profit from it - unless (far-fetched) the original producer or director should actually commission it. True, some of the early colorizations were abominably bad. As a graphic designer/photo retoucher, I hate it when someone asks me to colorize a b/w portrait - especially if I don't know what color eyes, skin tone, hair color, etc. But ... I must admit, if a colorization is effectively done, I do get a kick out of watching it (in small doses). Recently, some I Love Lucy episodes were very expertly colorized along with a handful of other classic TV shows. Masterfully done. Looked almost real. I got a kick out of seeing them, but didn't really want to watch whole episodes - and that was apparently due to my subconscious preference for the originals. Had the same reaction to another one, Laurel & Hardy's The Music Box. Cool to see "color footage", but I still prefer the original b/w versions. I don't know if "novelty" is the right description of the experience, but it's close. A more acceptable form (which drew few complaints) is Warhol's Marilyn Diptych. He didn't take the original photograph, but he colorized the heck out of it for his purposes. And surely, it's a bit more elevated art than colorized films. But it's no more or less disrespectful of the original.
shareWell, I guess I am intolerant and do reject it summarily.
The original still exists, no harm done.
I don't really think anyone should make big profit from it - unless (far-fetched) the original producer or director should actually commission it.
As a graphic designer/photo retoucher, I hate it when someone asks me to colorize a b/w portrait - especially if I don't know what color eyes, skin tone, hair color, etc.
To colour a film that was shot in black and white is
A CRIME
A CRIME
A CRIME
It is OUTRAGEOUS.
I just purchased a copy of this from a video store, a used VHS copy and I was planning on watching it this afternoon and then I saw it was the colorized version and I am so irate. I was looking for this movie for a while and was excited, but now I'm nauseous. If anyone wants this, e-mail me and I'll send it to them because I have no interest in this colorized version.
shareAs I recall, the only way this was available on VHS was colorized. That professor might have had no other choice if he was showing it on video.
Now that it's available on B&W on DVD, I'll finally pick it up.
Five of Preminger's independent productions are owned by his estate: THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, THE MOON IS BLUE, SAINT JOAN, ADVISE AND CONSENT, and THE CARDINAL. In the late '80's, the rights to these films were sold to Hal Roach Studios, a company that did not actually have a direct tie to the old Hollywood producer but owned many of his shorts, along with other old movies. HRS also had close ties with a company called Color Systems Technologies, which was one of the two large companies adding color to B&W movies. (The other, Colorization Inc., was almost wholly owned by Turner Entertainment.) HRS released many colorized films on their label, mostly public domain material, but they also did create a color version of ADVISE AND CONSENT since they had rights at the time. To their credit, HRS did license proper B&W versions of ADVISE and SAINT JOAN on VHS and to Image Entertainment for laserdisc, along with THE CARDINAL. THE CARDINAL was even letterboxed.
In the late '90's, the Preminger films left HRS and were resold to Warner Bros. for home video. Warner released all five films on VHS, and ADVISE was also given a letterboxed transfer.
Basically, if you are looking for a VHS copy of ADVISE, make sure you get the WB VHS edition; a Hal Roach copy may inadvertently stick you with the colorized version.
Actually, it's not true that a b&w version wasn't available. My brother had a b&w VHS copy of this film that was also, surprisingly, in wide screen. Perhaps the library from where the movie was obtained did not have a B&W copy in stock.
shareI guess I never came across it, which is just as well as I can buy it on DVD.
share"As I recall, the only way this was available on VHS was colorized"
That's true. Videosmith (an excellent video store) got the colorized version and tried to send it back. They were told it wasn't available in b&w on video at all. This was back in the days when everybody thought colorizing was a great idea (it isn't of course). The DVD that came out a few years back though is in b&w.
When I come across a colorized film and have no other way to view it, I simply turn down the contrast control. I'm pretty sure it was the contrast control.
Instant black & white.
as Orson Welles once said, "keep you and your damn crayolas away from my movies."
myspace.com/letsclash
Actually, Hal Roach did release a b&w version of A&C that was pan and scan, not letterboxed, but it got a much more limited release than their colorized version and soon disappeared. The colorized version was the only one available for years until the later widescreen VHS version put out by Warner, now on DVD. With luck, colorization is dead (dying anyway).
shareI agree with the proposition that b&w films should not be colorized. I've not seen the colorized version of Advise and Consent, but I've seen the colorized version of It's A Wonderful Life. That was awful. One film maker--I think it was Frank Capra, but I'm not certain--once said that watching a colorized version of a film he had made in b&w was like being forced to watch his child being molested.
shareAround the time "Wonderful Life' was being colorized, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert said seeing a colorized movie was like looking at "embalmed corpses standing in front of pastel wallpaper." I watched some of the colorized ADVISE & CONSENT on TV many years ago and it looked terrible even by the lousy standards of colorization.
(Of course, Capra could have avoided the whole problem with "Wonderful Life" if he hadn't stubbornly refused to renew his copyright of the film in 1974 -- he was fighting with his son about something entirely unrelated, and wouldn't listen to him when the son also reminded him that he had to renew. That's how the film fell into public domain for twenty years, where it became prey for the colorizers.)
[deleted]
I never saw this one in color, but I just gotta pipe in on the subject... The '80s colorization was pretty gawdawful. The very worst that I ever saw was when Lucille Ball died, they kept showing these colorized clips from "I Love Lucy" where her hair was fire-engine red and everyone's flesh was dark peach. Most of the colorized films looked horrible because the technology wasn't very good at the time -- it was like they were using "crayons" to color over the picture, and often times the colors moved where they shouldn't have. That's all since changed. Legend Films has been colorizing films for a number of years now, and their catalog is quite impressive -- plus they issue their discs with two versions of the film: a black-and-white and a color print. If you didn't know that their color films were originally released in black and white, you wouldn't know.
http://www.legendfilms.net/
There are times when colorizing would be considered complete blasphemy, but there are lots of films that probably would have been filmed in color if it weren't so much more expensive. Unfortunately, Ted Turner truly gave colorization a bad name...
Sorry, but some of us can always tell when something's been colorized, even without knowing that the original was in b&w (although most of the time we do know, of course!).
Yeah, colorization has "progressed", if I may be forgiven for using such a word in this connection, since the 80s, and it is true that a lot of it today is less bad (does not = "good") than stuff 15 or 20 years ago. But that's all entirely beside the point.
Colorization is fake, phony, and inaccurate. It is impossible to ever know, imitate or capture the true colors of people or objects in a b&w film. And even if it could be done, which it cannot, a colorized film is not the film as intended, and I'm fed up with the colorization minority citing some filmmakers and claiming they would've shot their films in color if they could have afforded it.
Maybe some would have; most wouldn't have. But that too is beside the point.
The only salient fact is that a b&w film was in fact shot as "intended" -- in b&w. Period. End of story. It apparently never occurs to colorizers that because films are specifically designed, lit, and photographed differently for b&w or real color, the process involved in daubing phony colors onto a b&w film necessarily destroys the integrity of the original print and changes the entire base of the film's appearance. Smearing fake and inaccurate colors onto a b&w film does not equate with shooting it in actual, honest, natural color. It can never be the same, and no advances in the technology can ever begin to reproduce the richness, the subtleties, the nuances, the tones, visible in actual color.
This also leaves aside the issue of anyone's artistic right to mar a film from its original.
If you like colorization, why not change the music tracks or sound effects or cut out scenes you deem offensive? People do these things too. Colorization is exactly the same kind of thing: it alters the film as it was shot and meant to be shown.
Leave the damn films alone! If someone can't make his delicate sensibilities bear the sight of a black & white film, then don't watch it. Colorization is, by defintion, a fraud and a lie.
Whether one thinks colorized films look good or bad is essentially beside the point. The point is that they are tampering with, changing a piece of art into something different, adding phony color (and colors, since they almost never know what color an object in any scene actually was and can't duplicate real color in any case), and this opens the door to other changes in films -- soundtrack, dialogue, whatever. No one has the right to do this. Whether some movies would have been filmed in color but for the expense or whatever is also irrelevant -- the fact remains, the films were NOT shot in color, and colorizing is NOT color.
share