Not Just Black And White

Hello there

I started this so long ago.  Before I was poorly last year, so it’s been months.  It got shelved when I was off and the threat to finish it is now over, because I have.  I can’t even remember why I started writing it, but it’s here now rather than me being irritated every time I saw it incomplete on my desktop.

For today’s written post, I wish to have a little chat to you about something which certainly rubs me up the wrong way.  Something that I think about often, but have never really been able to put into words.  So I’m going to have a go at it here…

I do not now understand, nor do I think I ever will, an aversion to black and white films.  Simply don’t get it.

Perhaps those with this particular (weird) aversion will consider my contrary stance to be equally baffling, but they would be wrong, and I shall attempt to tell you why in this post.  Not that they would read this post. We know what they are like.

I’ve had a few people in my real life (and periphery), who voice their displeasure at a lack of colour.  Not just in my personality, but specifically in TV and movies. There is the caveat that some of these folk may well have been doing it purely to irritate me, as it’s a bait I can’t help biting at. I do get genuinely grumpy about it, which I am sure they found terrifically hilarious. Ed used to do this a lot about Laurel & Hardy, describing it as “All that old stuff”, and I’m sure that was a joke.  On the other hand, rememeber when Dodds disparagingly declared Richard Herring’s audience, without a trace of irony,  to be the sort that would “like black and white films”?

Both of these occasions, whatever their motivation, made me balk.

So, let’s start with a scenario of bliss for me, just so we can get a baseline lay of the land on my side.  A darkened room, restrained candlelight maybe, and The Twilight Zone on the television.  The original Twilight Zone obviously, given the subject matter here. There is a place for the gaudy eighties remake, and the more recent reboot, but neither of them are in black and white. They would have been better if they were, but that wouldn’t have been allowed of course.

If a mad inventor declared that they could successfully colourise the original Twilight Zone, so it looked like it was properly filmed in colour (not like the short-lived colourising craze/vandalism of the eighties), I would say to them “Hey, that’s a great idea…let’s go over here to this room, away from everyone else, and you can tell me all about it”.  Then we would go to the room, and they would be all excited that somebody appeared to be well into their idea, but when the door closed, they would realise that I had lured them into a soundproofed room where I would proceed to punch them in the face and spit at them. I would probably break their hands as well, so they couldn’t work their computer.  I could go on, but in the interest of decency and not making anyone feel like they should have me put on a watchlist, I shall remain restrained here.  I wouldn’t remain restrained in the soundproofed room though.  I’d kick them loads as well.

I would put forward that anybody championing the idea of colourising Black & White movies, is a culturally corrupt philistine, who would struggle to read a book that didn’t have pictures in it.  I really do feel this strongly about it, and I’m not alone in that.  When Ted Turner (founder of CNN and general media mogul bloke) went through a period of being seemingly infatuated with the idea of colourising Citizen Kane, there was a well-deserved outcry.  Even Orson Welles is reported to have sought assurance that, in the event of his death, the film wouldn’t be coloured in “with crayons”.

My main objections to this process (and it irks me that many of the Laurel & Hardy DVDs include the colourised versions, which are frankly ghastly), are that it panders to a lowest common denominator in perceived audience requirements, and that it completely dismisses the fact that these film makers knew full well they were shooting in black and white.  In vintage cinema they obviously had no choice.  Ergo, the prep that goes into what’s being put onto the screen, was carried out according to that format.  They aren’t lit for colour, they’re lit for black and white.  All the design choices are tailored to it.  Colour it in, and you’re making a proper fine mess.  Every film that has been colourised certainly has been yet another of these fine messes.

This choice of production to accommodate the black and white footage gets forgotten so often with the tinkering. In more recent (ish) examples. The Elephant Man and Young Frankenstein were obviously made in a time where black and white was no longer the norm.  Actually, let’s stick with Young Frankenstein for this, as I find The Elephant Man terrifying. I think I watched it when I was too young, and it’s just stuck with me.  Phil Fletcher, incidentally, has the same thing, and you only need to say “The Elephant Man” for him to start trembling. The sinister aspects to that film are exceptional, and would that have been as effective in colour? Not a chance. It’s a vital component.

As it was with Young Frankenstein. Colour had been around a while then, and the decision to make it black and white was pretty much frowned upon by the studio (even though it was clearly homage/parody to films that were in black and white, and to have it in colour would fundamentally ruin that).  Everything in the film was designed for black and white, and shot on B&W stock (as changing colour footage to black and white still doesn’t quite get the exact effect). In fact, the studio attempted to pull a fast one by claiming they would release in black and white but it had to be shot in colour so they could release it in Peru (as apparently Peru will only show colour films…don’t know if that’s even true).  Mel Brooks stood firm on it, and no colour version exists (there are colour stills, but they’re from a set photographer).

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (I promise this isn’t subliminal advertising for upcoming Etsy prints. Did I mention my forthcoming John Merrick portrait? That’s a joke.  And I know you’re not meant to put full stops in brackets but what you gonna do?), was originally to have begun in black & white before changing to colour, as homage to the Wizard of Oz.  Now, strictly speaking, if it was homage to Wizard of Oz it should have been shot in B&W and then sepia-toned.  I’m sure we are all pointing that out right now, but neither thing transpired.  There are conflicting reports as to how this would have panned out.  Some say it was meant to be black and white until Frank N Furter appears, and then is lips would have been red (who knows when full colour would kick in after that), and others have said it’s when the doors open to the hall in the Time Warp (which would make far more sense).  The Blu-Ray release of TRHPS adds the option to watch the original B&W opening (I presume, retro-fitted), but it turns into one of the most frustrating occurrences as the movie is really working in B&W.  I guess I am saying that I’ve no issue with decolourising, just colourising.  I’ve checked to see if I can take colour off my telly and apparently you can’t anymore.  Which seems unnecessarily churlish.  There’s every chance I’m just looking in the wrong place though.

The aesthetic comfort of B&W is the major sell for me.  There may be some residual influence from the fact I had a portable B&W TV in my bedroom for years as a kid, and I liked the hue it gave to the room.  I had that TV into my adulthood until an ex-girlfriend stole it, and I was cross about that right up to the analog switch-off which would have rendered it officially obsolete anyway. I did love it though.  It had its own retractable aerial and everything, and my grandad had written the channel names on the dial (you had to turn a dial to tune into channels…they said I would speak like this when I got really old).

I will often announce my intention to watch a B&W movie.  Not my intention to watch a specific movie, just one that is in B&W.  It’s invariably something from the old Universal monsters, which I would fight tooth and nail to argue the credibility of, or Twilight Zone.  Twilight Zone is certainly the most re-watched series in my house.  I love that it has been remastered, and looks crisp and sharp, but if that ever got taken to the point where it was also coloured in, then there would be a rampage.  Maybe I’m like one of those folk who demand the original cuts of the Star Wars films be released but want them with digital sound and in 4K. I mean, I don’t want that, but you know what I mean?  Picking and choosing my upgrades…

When I went to see the play of The Twilight Zone, I really loved that the importance of B&W in mood setting had been considered.  All the set was monochrome, and there were no costumes that weren’t black, white or grey.  This is the crux of B&W for me.  Of course, it was a necessity when there was no colour film, but that necessity led to stylistic choices that still hold up today.  I think there is often an attitude of – as Ed joked – it being old stuff, as though it were a hindrance, and something you just had to put up with if you wanted to see those films/TV shows.  The reality is, at the risk of sounding repetitive, that it was as considered a palette as anything that now shoots in colour, and I couldn’t imagine making the choice to not see something because it was in B&W.

I stand with black and white.

Don’t get me started on subtitles though…we do not go to the cinema to read, thank you (this is a joke).

Hope you are having an amazing week over there.

Much love to you

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