Pants

Pleas listen to the My Fair Lady commentary track to here Gene Allen confess his sins, apologize for being involved, and admit that the technology was inferior and didn't create a good looking final product.

Falc04

I believe the answer to this was financial reasons. RKO produced the 1st two films, while cheap-o studio Republic made the last. For Fort Apache, RKO employed many top stars of the time, so a lot of the budget went to salaries. She Wore A Yellow Ribbon had only John Wayne's big salary (he pretty much carries the film on his shoulders), so they had enough left in the budget for Technicolor processing. And, Rio Grande was made by the king of skin-flints, Herbert Yates, so it was going to made for as little as possible.

But with John Ford directing, regardless of budget restraints, they all became masterpieces!

ivantod

A funny thing... TCM has at least once mistakenly shown a colorized version of a B&W movie. It happened to me with "The Trial" (not the Orson Welles movie, the Glenn Ford movie) which has been shown in B&W many times before and since on the same channel. This one was actually reasonably well done.

(a side note having nothing to do with colorization: here in Switzerland, TCM makes numerous mistakes in their schedule such as: mixing up the movies with the same names, giving out wrong info about whether the movie is subtitled or in multilingual version, etc.--though they always seem to end up showing the correct movie, it's just the web schedule that seems to be out-of-whack ocassionally).

I

flixtime

First off, I regret that I couldn't continue this conversation sooner than just now; I appreciate everyone's comments.

Dimension X, thanks for posting that article. It was an interesting read and one would be in an unenviable position to try and debate against it.

Pants, true, I probably should have cited other films in trying to better get across my viewpoint. I suppose I contradicted myself with the 2 aforementioned films in that they seem to be obvious example of Directors choosing black & white for stylistic reasons. I suppose all I can say on the matter is that the artistic appeal of filming the 2 films in black & white was lost (not fully appreciated) by me. I would prefer a colorized version as I feel it enhances more than detracts from the film. Citing Flynn's Charge of the Light Brigade as an example, I don't value as highly that colorizing the film is such an affront to Director Michael Curtiz's artistic intent for the film (the color palette for a film like this is fairly predictable). Though I do accept the argument that any such decision should be his to make (and if he were alive he might want to kick my a** for supporting the colorization of his film), I prefer the colorized version.

As a follow-up to DVDTalkers Steve Phillips and rennervision posts, for what it's worth, I prefer the colorized versions of Gilligan's Island (Ginger has got to have the red hair).

DVDTalker Falc04, thanks a lot for the info. on Ford's cavalry trilogy. Based upon your information, citing the cavalry trilogy would have been a more viable option for me to use in better relating why I prefer colorized versions of some films. Naturally, the article posted by Dimension X can be cited to refute my stance on this issue but I do prefer the cavalry trilogy in colorized form. I accept that people don't want to manipulate and artists original work but for many of the films I like (John Wayne/Errol Flynn), I simply prefer the colorized version. Plus for a lot of the war films I prefer, the colors are pretty standard (imho choosing uniform colors, landscape colors, etc. in doing a colorized version of a war/Western film is less of an intrusion than let's say choosing the colors when colorizing a musical). Yes, noir films like Out of the Past are better served in black & white, and getting Sinatra's eye color wrong is a foul-up of the highest order.

So while I readily accept that my pro- (aka not-so-against) colorization stance is on many (if not all) levels "wrong", I still can't help but say that I do prefer the colorized versions (in most cases) of War and Western films (probably a few others too). I'm certainly not anti black & white but if they were showing They Died With Their Boots On in black & white on one channel and in colorized form on another channel, I'd watch the colorized version (and I sure wish both versions would be made available on any future DVD release of the film).

Just thinking out loud here, but I wonder if some of these now-gone Directors/Artists would - if the technology were available (and cost-effective) in their lifetime - have had the itch to go back and tinker with their films (colorizing or in other areas). Guys like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have done it, I wonder if any of the classic Directors would have done so (excluding Orson Welles, among others, since his wishes were stated in the article). Although it's not the same since one is a case of an artist altering his own work whereas the other is a case of outsiders changing an artist's work. I just wonder that's all.

And to throw something else out for discussion, what about dubbing of films? I'm not familiar but do Directors have final say in the dubbing of their films for foreign markets? Or is dubbing also a case of outsiders changing the nature of a film? On first thought, I think dubbing can more significantly alter a film than colorizing. I watch a fair share of foreign films with subtitles and now find it difficult to handle a poor dub vs. reading subtitles (which has become somewhat second nature to me). Yet I do feel that if dubbing opens up a film to a wider audience then so be it.

Dimension X

Chaplin added sound to The Gold Rush.

http://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/G/GoldRush1925.html
Edit: Here are a couple of threads that discuss the changes made to The Gold Rush:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=289853

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=279417

inri222

That still didn't prevent a colorized version of The Magnificent Ambersons. Played a couple of times on TNT.

danol

I am 56 and was forced to watch B & W TV until about 1964, you younger people don't know what relief it was to see color in TV, Stereo in TV was first used in 1985 I had bought a MTS stereo set to box to get plain old stereo from Radio Shack. So when Turner started colorizing movies I had always wondeered what they would loook like if they were in Color.

I own 16 colorized movies nd if the DVD comes out in B & W I will not even consider buyng it. My best watched movie is just coming out in gross B & W called The Thing from another World 1951, only mine has Arness in a navy blue uniform of astronaut.


The world has gone backwards instead of forwards, for Jaws 3 was 3D Dementional. All you have is flat screen TV without no depth at all. 3D which first used in the late 19th century around 1888, and in 21st Century all techiques IMO were lost or deliberately lost.


I will keep buying VCR for the collecton I have and if technology ever remembers how to make colorized or 3D movies I will at that time be buying the title I have now but not before.


Hate how I think but don't hate because I had to go through a colorless age forced upon me from age 5 to age 19. High school pictures and my 1965 yearboook were in crappy black and white, not a colored picture to be seen.



I won't buy DVD "The Thing from Another World for it's made industry standard 1.33:1 same as VHS. I have 2 back up copies I never opended all in great color
which most all of you had all of your lives but I did't. I hate it because it was forced on me, like a generation gap between children and their parents.

Steve Phillips

I want to see black and white movies in black and white.

I want to see color movies in color.

I want to see widescreen movies in widescreen.

I want to see non-widescreen movies in non-widescreen.

I want to see 3-D movies in 3-D.

Cameron

thought i would open this one back up for discussion. I know there has been alot more releases, and talk on this board...so if anyone has any other online links to resources for these (side by side photo's or video clips) any listing of tuner's movies specifically, or any other insight I appreciate it.

some links to other threads for refrence

Hewlett Packard to restore "King Kong" (1933) and "re-invent" Cinerama

black and white movies in color on dvd?

Mark of Zorro (1940) Fox, Special Edition New Release?

CNN article on The Three Stooges in color DVD

Night Of The Living Dead - New Release Today

Do people get fooled by "colorized" cover art of B&W films?

Reefer Madness....in DTS (& Color)!!

Shirley Temple Collection, Volume 1 08.30.05 from FOX Color Only warning inside

Rad14

I recorded Howard Hawks Red River off TCM once and it turned out it was a colourised version.

I agree with what most people are saying here -B&W should stay B&W/Colour should stay Colour, but I must admit this colourised version (I think it was by computer) looked very good indeed.

Anyone else seen it?

SINGLE104

The strong opposition to colorize original black & white movies encouraged a great impact for the discontinuation of prospect. Personally, films that were artificially colorized, was not the same experience, as viewing the movie in it's original visual presentation as intended.

movielib

Except for this one:

Cameron

^yah but the thread is a few years old since that post^

i had heard disney was swapping copies for free for a while

rennervision

I don't think I've ever received a response over two years later before! Not realizing this was an old topic, I found myself completely agreeing with someone's comments. Then I realized the post I read was mine!

movielib

I didn't realize the thread was that old either so I apologize for my somewhat sarcastic "correction" of your decrying the lack of a B&W Absent-Minded Professor.

Matto2t

To renaldow:
I strongly agree with you on this. As for being seen on TV, colorized movies went away by the mid 90s. The process was, as you said, made such classic movies unwatchable, and their true B&W beauty was greatly diminished. If any classic B&W movie was presented in colorized form, the movie would look far more like a movie that was made a few years ago instead of many years ago. The color was off, phony, one-dimensional, and was a real eyesore to people (like me) who prefer the original B&W versions. Colors that were truly dark would look neutral (not light or dark) and ones that were truly light were more pastel-like. Even black and white (as colors) were badly affected as well. Whatever was truly black would look more like off-black--faded black--(or dark charcoal, dark gray), and what was truly white would look more like off-white, or dingy white. The original B&W is more appreciated, and true to the era in which such a movie was made. The quality is dream like, multi-dimensional, rich and vibrant; colorization makes it less enjoyable, and the viewing experience is not positive. Therefore, I strongly prefer the original B&W versions, and I would stay away from the colorized counterparts. The same thing applies to TV shows that were shot in B&W.

Hokeyboy

Well that's peculiar. An 11 year time-span between renaldow's post and Matto2t's response. Is that a record for this place, or are we just flipping the proverbial bacon-trampoline here?

rexinnih

Well it will take me the better part of a decade to figure out what a bacon-trampoline is.

inri222

He should recolorize them teal & orange for the modern age.

PhantomStranger

Some people come across this forum for the first time when they search on Google for a specific item. They might see a posting and not realize the conversation is more than a decade old. Unless you specifically narrow the time range, Google often returns very old page hits for obscure topics.

covenant

I just wanted to post in the same thread as Danol!

Jaymole

Turner would probably convert them to 3-D now.

Why So Blu?

Ash Ketchum

Not only is this the oldest thread I've ever popped in on, but it has some of the longest posts I've ever seen. Did you guys check out page one?

The Valeyard

It was back when we actually had discussions here and exchanged information with one another.


Also, the chick in that Black Lagoon picture has some funky ass legs. 2/10. Would not bang.