Relationship

Colorized Films: Time for a Second Look

There was a time when the term “colorized film” was so derogatory that it brought a scarlet flush of anger to the cheeks of movie purists.

Oh, it sounded like a great idea in the late 1980s… until I picked up THAT VHS tape of It’s A Wonderful Life and discovered that Jimmy Stewart’s face was as green as a Roswell alien.

Stewart even wrote a letter to a 1987 US congressional panel looking into the issue, saying the film appeared to have been given “a bath of Easter egg dye.”

And dance diva Ginger Rogers didn’t like what she saw in the colorized version of 42nd Street, telling the same panel: “All those beautiful girls on 42nd Street suddenly had the same orange face, the same legs oranges, the same green suit”. and the same blank stare.”

Stewart and Rogers were right: those colorized versions were HORRIBLE. The same goes for childish retouching in another classic film, the 1951 British version of A Christmas Carol, starring Alistair Sim. Did they really wear purple coats in Charles Dickens’ time???

My eyes assailed by all this, I swore I’d never buy, or watch, another colorized movie.

I finally fell off the colorization bandwagon around Christmas 2006, when 20th Century Fox mailed me a special edition review copy of Miracle On 34th Street that featured the black-and-white original AND a new colorized version.

I’d pat myself on the head if it didn’t look fantastic: natural skin tones and inner and outer skin tones that looked perfect. I just couldn’t say it wasn’t shot in color in the first place.

I barely had time to start reconsidering my take on colorization before famed special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen roundly endorsed it in 2007. The 87-year-old sci-fi film legend said he always imagined that the movies in which he worked were in color, but there was no budget 50 years ago

A couple of years ago, the folks at Legend Films in San Diego asked Harryhausen to take a look at their computer colorization techniques, and he was sold. Quickly, Harryhausen classics like 20 Million Miles to Earth, It Came From Beneath The Sea, and Earth vs. The flying saucers have been given the coloring treatment and look great on the new special edition DVDs.

But the icing on the Christmas cake came just a few weeks ago when Paramount released a new colorized version of, you guessed it, It’s A Wonderful Life. Again, the work of Legend Films is impressive. Jimmy Stewart’s face now looks real and Bedford Falls looks like an old postcard. Even opponents of colorization have admitted on online forums how much better this looks than a) the colorized version above and b) the digitally remastered black and white original, which is also included on this 2-DVD edition.

Now, I’m not saying that all old black and white movies should be colorized, and neither is Legend Films. Please leave the gorgeous shadows and gray tones of Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and The Third Man alone.

But we have to be honest enough to admit that to a new generation raised exclusively on color movies, black-and-white movies seem like museum pieces. When I put one on my kids, who are now 20, I raise my eyebrows and say, “How old is this?”

OK, I’m still sticking with them, but it’s a losing battle.

I’m open to coloring on these terms: Technicians dig into studio archives and hit on colors for costumes and sets AND consult with surviving directors and producers if possible, for approval.

We have the technology. Let us use it selectively and with integrity.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1