In the late 1970's and during the 1980's, an ominous process began to take shape with old black & white films, which looked like it could lead to having them computer-colorized. This trend, which had media mogul Ted Turner as its antagonistic symbol for many a folks, produced a strong condemnation from high-profile film-makers, such as Martin Scorsese. Colorization presents a philosophy that color image -- in these cases, a yuckkingly over-saturated color scheme featuring people with Umpa Lumpa skin -- is somehow inherintly superior to watching black & white. B&W is seen as something inferior, something that is limiting. The movie buff counter-argument goes basically that monochromatic films were designed to be viewed in that particular way, and that B&W ought to be treated as its own unique thing, possessing features that is as good as color imagery is, but in its own right. Colorization as a process is perhaps analoguous to dimensiolizing 2-D films into stereoscopic 3-D (as is the case in the re-release of the Star Wars films and Cameron's Titanic). But those of us who're not on the totally puritanical disposition, colorized cinematic art does indeed offer some perverted pleasures of its own. This blog entry is dedicated to give a hint of these relishes.
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The Special Edition DVD of the twisted crackpotty anti-marihuana propaganda opus Reefer Madness (aka Tell Your Children!) has a new colorized version provided by Legend Films. This version, clearly justly created with tongue firmly in saliva-filled cotton-mouthed cheek, features several different color tones for the marihuana smoke, each color-coded, depending on the severity of the character's addiction to the Devil's Weed (rooted in Hell).
This brings to mind a heart-warming memory of a Bela Lugosi B-mystery chiller The Death Kiss made in 1932 - it was on late-night Finnish television about a decade ago, and was broadcast for some reason in a n obscure colorized form - a scene showing a fire breaking out in a projection room had an added surreal touch as the smoke was colored orange for some nutty reason!
In 1963, a rumour began to circulate that the last movie before that Lee Harvey Oswald saw before he committed his ungodly deed was the Frank Sinatra vehicle Suddenly, from 1954, which depicts a planned assassination of a U.S. president - Sinatra again dived onto similar territory later with The Manchurian Candidate. In 1986, a colorized version became available, and the neat thing about this is that, "Ol' Blue Eyes" was given a Brown Tone to his Windows to the Soul in an inadvertently subversive touch!
The afore-mentoned Legend Films corrected this flaw in their colorization re-issue of the flick.
Skull Island does acid.
Aaaah... the original King Kong. We all know that the monochrome version was great, but experiencing the flick with psychedelic-looking dinosaurs is a real treat, I tells ya! This one is a real corker. What in God's Name were they thinking when they did the colorization?!
In the monochrome original, there's a strange sort of plausibility going on with Kong as a character, but this is just utterly artificial, making the poor creature look like the clumsy puppet that it is. It's a distancing device. Hurry! Someone colorize a Bertolt Brecht movie! Yo, Adrian...!
An apotheosis of the 1980's colorization controversy came with the rumor that Ted Turner's company would colorize Orson Welles' seminal Citizen Kane. An elderly Welles complained about this to indie director Henry Jaglom:
"Don't let Ted Turner deface my movie with his crayons!"
Welles' original unusual RKO contract containing unusual creative freedom finally did it for Kane, and the colorization never took place.... Alas, not so for Welles' mutilated Kane follow-up, The Magnificent Ambersons, slightly less accomplished in terms of craftsmanship, but more human. It got mutilated to another degree with a colorized Turner release.
OK, finally fellas, let me make my stand clear: colorizing B&W films generally makes as much damn sense as -- cue a Noam Chomsky-like drawing of an unexpected analogy -- re-releasing Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert in black & white.
The act of colorization possessing artistic integrity is not an entirely impossible concept. The best example that pops up is the 1935 fantasy film She, which was originally intended to be shot in an early experimental color stock, and the entire production was constructed with this in mind -- but RKO studios at the last moment called it off, and the end result was a monohrome flick. Some years ago, Legend Films (the company that obviously is some kind of warped hero of this blog entry) under the supervision of Ray Harryhausen, the legend himself, colorized the film in order for viewers to experience what She would look like in color. This was further a propos by the fact that 1930's color film stock possessed a similar faded, pastel quality that colorized imagery has.
Originally in the 1980's, some film-makers were actually enthusiastic about the technology, including Frank Capra, who wanted to colorize some of his classics, like the excellent study of individual vs community, It's a Wonderful Life, but was barred from the colorization booth when it emerged that the films were in public domain. This led the bitter Capra join with the anti-colorization brigade.
On a general level, colorizing old films might be a dumb idea, but if you do do it - then go the Reefer Madness way, and actually be crazy and creative with it, and have fun!
Aaaaah, an' one final quickie nugget:
Roger "The Man" Corman's The Little Shop of Horrors - in its original monochromatic form, veeeery innocent and tame kiddie fodder; but GodDaaaaamn the way the more gory moments start to look in the colorized version - this is beginning to be quite heavy stuff, all of a sudden, soon it's kissing cousins with Blood Feast. I was shocked. No wonder almost all gore films in cinema history have been in (blood dripping) color... ?
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