Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Black and White in Colour
posted @12:46 p.m. by Richard Kelly
Our loyal contributors RAVI HOLY and TIM HEANEY have been engaged in an interesting dialogue over on the recent Stevo King best-of list comment board, this to do with the best movies shot in monochrome in the years since colour became the industry standard and black-and-white was reduced to an increasingly rarefied art-house taste. (Off the top of my head I would put the dividing line here somewhere around 1966-67.) Ravi and Tim share a great many tastes in this field so I'm going to run Ravi's list below and add here that Tim also spoke up for LA HAINE, PI, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, and THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. For the sake of form I can also say I fondly remember WINGS OF DESIRE, EUROPA, RUMBLEFISH, portions of MISHIMA, NOIR ET BLANC by Clare Devers, BLACK RAIN (by Imamura, not Ridley Scott...), and others that are now a black-and-white blur...
10 best black and white films of the colour era
By Ravi Holy
1 Manhattan (1979)
Obviously black and white photography (still or moving) looks gorgeous so many of the best modern directors have done a b/w for that reason alone. Woody did it...
2 Raging Bull (1980)
Marty did it...
3 Dead Man (1995)
Jim did it...
4 The General (1998)
John did it...
5 The Elephant Man (1980)
David did it for period feel...
6 Ed Wood (1994)
As did Tim...
7 The Man who wasn't there (2001)
As did Joel and Ethan...
8 Clerks (1993)
Kevin did it cos he couldn't afford not to...
9 Schindler's List (1993)
Steven did it with one very prudent splash of colour
10 Sin City (2005)
And Robert and Frank did it with a few more splashes of colour but not enough to make it a colour film (unlike American History X which would be on this list if there were fewer colour scenes. But the b/w ones are great.
Comments
I agree with Richard that a 67 start point makes sense and so 'The Last Picture Show'(71)deserves a place on the list as the first big film after that to use b&w (and it's a great film). I love 'Young Frankenstein' so I would certainly argue it deserves a place too but I have to admit I haven't seen 'Dead Man' or 'The General' so can't say whether they are better than 'La Haine' and 'Pi' - both of which I think are excellent. I left 'Schindler's List' and 'Sin City' off because of the splashes of colour -I was perhaps being a bit purist with 'S's List' but 'S City' actually has quite a lot of colour so I would probably stick to my guns over that.
Haven't seen LPS (started watching it once and found it too slow for the mood I was in. Must try again some time...) and I don't really like YF (not a great Mel Brooks fan: don't really like Saddles either and Men in Tights was worst film EVER seen). Of the other two, Pi was both v original and pretty good. Hadn't really thought of it TBH. La Haine I didn't care for.
Maybe the best criterion is whether the film was best served by black-and-white. Often it's clearly been a question of 'feel', and not just period 'feel' but a kind of mood... Black and white is 'austere'. But then Woody Allen has loved to use it for comedy, as have his imitators. B/W was a low-budget film-student format for STRANGER THAN PARADISE and SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT, yet the lab costs are also reckoned to be expensive. BTW, mention of Spike Lee reminds one of another clear Best in B/W contender, Charles Burnett's KILLER OF SHEEP (1977).
Ravi - Obviously 'Men in Tights' is pants but I'm amazed you don't like YoungF or BlazingS!
Yes, I would have thought that a man who had grown tired of Blazing Saddles ("The, ah, Camptown LADIES?") - or indeed of Young "Fronckenschteen" - had grown tired of life...
What can I say... The weird thing is, on the whole, I love Jewish humour: Woody Allen, Rob Reiner/Billy Crytsal, Larry David etc but Mel Brooks has never really done it for me...
Can I put in a shout for Alice in the Cities as the perfect Wenders b&w film - Wings of Desire uses colour to differentiate realms - ? Apparently Wenders shot early sequences of Alice in colour but found that the characters bled into the background too much and reverted to b&w.
Bela Tarr's Werkmeister Harmonies and forthcoming Man From London look stunning in monochrome.
I think that the period feel for Ed Wood, Schindler's and Man Who Wasn't There makes sense as genre homage - interesting that Hudsucker Proxy wasn't shot in B&W, although somebody told me it looks great if you switch off the colour.
What about a list that may have been better in Black and White - or may as well have been in B&W (e.g. Naked)?
Haven't seen 'Alice in the City' I'm afraid Andrew but it sounds interesting so I've added it to my Lovefilm list!
I'm looking forward to 'My Winnipeg' (though I'm not sure if it's all in b&w).
Just watched Alice in the City. Doesn't make it on to my Top 10 B/W films of the modern era but well worth watching - thanks Andrew. Incidently no mention in the interview with Wenders about starting in colour.
Just watched 'The Addiction' which would now be included in my ten.
Your thoughts