MovieChat Forums > All Quiet on the Western Front (1979) Discussion > The Color of the Uniforms

The Color of the Uniforms

posted 18 years ago by camicale
2 replies | jump to latest

I hadn't seen this movie since it was first broadcast on TV. I remember it being a big deal, because of Richard Thomas' huge Waltons fame. In recent years I've become fascinated by WWI and have been reading as much as I could. I've just begun watching the movies, the last one being Paths of Glory (excellent cinematography during the battle scene I thought).

I was so interested in seeing a WWI movie that was in color, so I rented this. I was excited and disappointed when saw how the uniforms looked. The Germans were in brown uniforms with green helmets, and the French seemed to be iridescently glowing blue in theirs. In general, some of the colors were over saturated. This is even commented on in Goofs section of this movie.

Having some experience in TV and advertising, I remembered that not all colors translate well when broadcast and have to compensated by being “color corrected for television”. I’ve seen this too while watching broadcasts being taped. An actors green shirt may appear dark gray or even black on the tape. I think this may have been the case with this movie, as it was shot for TV. You may even notice that German soldiers in the background look like they have gray uniforms on, but the soldiers in the foreground have the brown ones on. The transferred movie to DVD may not have accounted for this, and this may explain the inaccurate color of the uniforms. This is just a theory I have and I don’t know if this can be applied to any other made for TV movies, because we’re not sure what the colors of the actors clothing should be, whereas here we have historical information to reference.

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[–] marlarkey 11 years ago

In the version I saw the colours were not oversaturated.

The German uniforms were a muted brown. And the French uniforms were a muted blue-grey, teal colour.

[–] Conagher_1880 10 years ago

The field gray of WWI German uniforms was more green than the field gray of WWII. The French uniforms by about 1915 were a color called "horizon bleu" in French...very close to the sky blue of US Army trousers of the Civil War through 1880's era. Overall, the uniforms of both the Germans and the French were pretty accurate...although the Germans should have been using the M1915 Bluse, and I'm not too sure what pattern was being used in this movie. Well, actually, I am...it was the Bavarian pattern Die Bluse, which makes no sense, since those soldiers weren't Bavarian. Oh, well...it was still a good movie.

"It's a hard country, kid."