I think it's total B.S. when people claim that colorizing a film ruins the film. Besides being over-dramatic, think abou
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SinemaGirl — 15 years ago(November 26, 2010 06:11 AM)
The film looks crisp and clean in black and white because that is what it was filmed in. The colorized version looks choppy and messy.
Abolutely agree! Several years ago, I saw "Miracle on 34th street" in the cinema, and was greatly impressed by the crisp B&W cinematography. It truly was an art in its own right.
The colorized version I saw had poor definition, and in many shots, the color was only applied to the main elements; some of the large scenes were B&W in the background. Very sloppy. After seeing the movie at its monochromatic best, there is no way I can watch
that
colorized version. The newer colorization of "It's a Wonderful Life" seems surprisingly good. I might be willing to give "Miracle" another chance if it looks as good as the other movie.
But the story involves reality vs. fantasy. IMO, color in a 1947 movie, whether it was shot in Technicolor or was colorized after the fact, tends to remove some of the reality and bestow an aura of fantasy. So already, in color, the story tips greatly in favor of fantasy (to me). The movie in B&W (the choice of the "realistic" dramas of the day) keeps the fantasy element in check, making Kris Kringle's identity more in question than it might have been otherwise.
I'll stick with the original version, but if the colorized version brings more people to this wonderful movie, I'm at no place to try and oppose that. -
PillowRock — 15 years ago(December 02, 2010 02:03 PM)
in many shots, the color was only applied to the main elements; some of the large scenes were B&W in the background.
The newer colorization of "It's a Wonderful Life" seems surprisingly good.
One of the issues that I remember is that one or two of the often seen apartments in
Miracle
have extremely busy paisley-ish wallpaper. That was a nightmare scenario for colorization, and they didn't even try (just left it in gray scale). Off the top of my head, I don't recall any similar colorization process nightmares in the set decoration of
It's a Wonderful Life
. -
joystar5879 — 13 years ago(December 11, 2012 10:06 PM)
Dear PillowRock
I remember the colourisation of IAWL very well. More "grey scale" garbage, was that with any character who had grey or white hair, it was left untouched. The hairline of the b/w hair didn't connect with the pinkish face, and had a weird sort of "shimmer" wherever it touched the colour.
I also remember how the original 1937 TOPPER was butchered. I say "butchered", because there were documented descriptions of costumes and props available from the actual film. Constance Bennett's Batwing evening dress appears as white, with crystal beads on b/w film. In reality, it was pale grey, with silver lined beads, in order for it to photograph properly.
When the film was "colourised", the dress was bubblegum pink, and her hair was painted egg yolk yellow.
To see the work of Artists like Adrian and Travis Banton, and Set Designers like
Cedric Gibbons, "crayolaed" is the same as putting Maybelline on a Greek statue.
They called it "THE SILVER SCREEN" for a reason!
"I do hope he won't upset Henry.." -
walcaraz — 15 years ago(November 25, 2010 08:30 AM)
It was indeed possible to film in color at the time. Look at when "Gone with the Wind" was made, and it's full color. Even before that, in 1922, the first full-color movie was shown. The only thing is that it was extremely expensive to film in color in the 1930s and 1940s so that's why studios used black-and-white film.
Now, even back then, some directors were using the black-and-white canvas of film to their advantage. Case in point, "Citizen Kane". Orson Welles used black-and-white to his advantage in his cinematographic techniques displayed in that movie. Various camera angles, lighting, and facial close-ups would not have been as powerful if the movie was in color. -
gosh717 — 15 years ago(November 25, 2010 11:36 AM)
I am a HUGE fan of old black & white movies. I admire the use of light and shadows to create atmosphere. And I have never watched a B&W movie that I wished had been filmed in color or colorized.
That being said, "Miracle on 34th Street" is the ONLY movie in the hundreds and hundreds I've watched where I can say I actually prefer the colorized version to the B&W.
Maybe the copy I have (VHS)of the Fox Classics special color edition is the exception, but I think the colorization in it was done extremely wellvery natural and nothing garish about it. In particlar, the beautiful Maureen O'Hara is even more so when you can see her red hair and green eyes. As someone mentioned, the parade scene and the art deco Macy scenes are very vivid and evocative of the 1940s time & place.
I'll continue to object to the colorization of B&W classics, but for some reason, I really love my color version of this one. -
PillowRock — 15 years ago(December 02, 2010 02:08 PM)
I think the colorization in it was done extremely well
When I watched some of the colorized version once on a TV broadcast, there were entire scenes where I didn't actually hear any of the dialog. I was too distracted by Kris' red lips "floating" around in his non-colorized white beard. They just didn't track all of his head movements very well, especially in the longer (full body height) shots where they might not always have had great boundary definition of the edges of the lips in the original frame. -
kgclement — 15 years ago(December 17, 2010 07:16 PM)
Well, its clear that you are not an artist. It takes very different lighting technique, camera angle etc to make great films in black and white from what is needed for color. Cinematography, lighting design, set design and much more is involved to get the film to the end result. When you come in after the fact and colorize the film you change the mood and loose overall dramatic effect of lighting and shadow to mention only two.
Would you think it acceptable for someone to come in and re-color a Van Gogh or how about an Escher? He did lots of work in black and white. And, what about Ansel Adams? Maybe the times and technologies had an effect on what was possible but that impacted the mood and feel of the final product. By this kind of thinking, paint by numbers has the same value as the work of the masters.
Cropping movies to fit a screen size has a similarly negative effect. Please let me see what the film crew had in mind from the start. Please don't mess with someone else's art!
Respectfully -
johnmouse — 15 years ago(December 18, 2010 05:28 AM)
Wow, where do I even begin? The colorization of "Miracle" is awful. The colors are more pastel, or faded, than being vibrant as they would be in technicolor. Perhaps a very lame attempt to "age" the film as though it was originally filmed in color?
Hitchcock filmed "Psycho" in B&W. Color film was certainly around in 1960. Hitchcock relied on the viewers' imagination to create the extreme tension and horror. "Judgement at Nuremberg" (1961) was also filmed in B&W. "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) also B&W. And there are many more.
"Now at least if you see a film or scene done in black and white you know
for a fact that the director did it for artistic emphasis."
And there you go. There's no reason to colorize. It does not add anything, but rather, is a distraction.
There also is no reason to remake or update classic masterpiece movies. Other than giving the screen writers guild something to do, since they have no original ideas of their own. -
Chesterfield_Invincible — 15 years ago(December 18, 2010 05:50 PM)
A bit OT I know, but a fine example of distraction in a colorized version is in the Alistair Sim version of "A Christmas Carol" (1951). In the b&w version, we see Young Marley say to Young Scrooge "Isn't that Old Fezziwig?", and then we see Scrooge watch as Fezziwig rides off, without saying a word. In the colorized version, our eyes follow Marley into the warehouse after he says his line, and by the time we realize we're suppose to be looking at Scrooge, it's too late for the scene to make its full impact on us.
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VegasNanny08 — 15 years ago(December 20, 2010 11:02 AM)
I largely dislike colorized movies based on nostalgia.There are not many B&W movies that I watch, but Miracle and To Kill A Mockingbird are my top two. I have never seen colorized versions of either movie, although I do own a colored copy of Miracle. I bought it 2 or 3 years ago as a 2 DVD set. Part of what makes the movie special is because it is B&W. The other reason I won't watch it is because I would find it distracting.
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mercury4 — 15 years ago(December 20, 2010 04:24 PM)
I prefer the original myself. The colorized version is on TV now. I'll watch it, but I really wish they would also show the original black and white version. There was a time when they would show It's A Wonderful Life in color on TV. That stopped. It's just not the same. I would never want to see It's A Wonderful Life in color.
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KongKongAGAIN — 15 years ago(December 26, 2010 05:44 PM)
Suprise, surprise: look at all the posts in this thread
Anyway, black-and-white does have a purpose in this film, in the sense it was shot in black-and-white. It's thus reasonable to expect it was conceived with the format in mind. Crayolaing in the thing to make it more appealing to a handful of people (and less so to a likely greater number) doesn't accomplish much.
That said, yes, it is an overstatement when people exclaim a movie's been "destroyed" by being colorized, at least if the process has been carried out with competence on a film that's not unsuitable for it. -
SinemaGirl — 15 years ago(December 28, 2010 02:09 PM)
It was nice to see that AMC ran the original B&W version in addition to the colorized one. FWIW, the colorization looks old. It can be done much better now (not that I necessarily condone it), but what aired this year is what I remember from years ago. Skintones look off, and the entire color palette just seemstarnished. Not all that appealing to me. Watching it in crisp B&W was very refreshing and made it a much more enjoyable experience.
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neighturboy — 15 years ago(April 02, 2011 07:34 PM)
It would be interesting to see the demographics (age and sex) of all posters on this thread to see if there's a pattern to their preference. Are black-and-white purists older, and will that preference die off when they do?
One thing that's never mentioned is that when studios made films like this in the 40's there was very little after-market once the film was initially released. There were reissues if the film warranted it, and in the case of this one, and It's a Wonderful Life, the coming of television resuscitated interest in both films, as well as many others. But, initially there was no thought given to the future earning power of a movie. The money it made on it's initial release was the main concern of the studios in the 40's. Many studios were just cranking out movies to make money, not to make an artistic masterpiece with each release. In the case of "Miracle", as mentioned before, Zanuck had no faith in this movie; that's why it was released in July, five months before Christmas. I think we accord too much status to old films when the main concern, at the time, was just to make money.
Also, we all see the world through different eyes, adjust the colors on our TVs to suit ourselves, some wear glasses, some don't .. who's to say how we individually see anything? If you like it in color watch it in color, if you don't, then don't. I'll watch it in color, colorized, whatever .. forget the semantics. -
stevenvh — 14 years ago(April 23, 2011 09:06 AM)
There is no reason for the film to be in black and white.
Aesthetics is a good reason. When I take photographs I do so in black and white (despite colour film being in existence since decades) and most people like them better than the occasional colour images.
They were not meant to be filmed in black and white, there was just no way to film in color.
So they
were
meant to be black and white. A black and white film is not just a colour film with the saturation set to zero. Set design and costume design for black and white are completely different from colour design. That's why colourizing doesn't always result in a good colour film.
Rome. By all means, Rome. -
Thor-Delta — 14 years ago(June 02, 2011 08:29 AM)
I'm just curious, has this been colourised in a way that looks like Technicolor film of the period?
I was once watching an old TV show and while the episodes were colourised, they were done in a way that looked like a colour film stock of the period (probably using the later "in color!!" seasons as a guide). Quite cool.
I wonder why something like that isn't done more often.
Two Belding's in one building, one of whom is balding!