THE COLOUR FILM

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4346, 4 January 1938, Page 7

THE COLOUR FILM

A LEISURELY REVOLUTION

An American firm’s decision to make all future films in colour and the release of recent American and English feature films in technicolour have not set either the film industry or the fil.mgoer bustling so busily or so noisily as did the 4 Singing Fool ’ in 1928, says a writer in the 4 Manchester Guardian.’ Sound came on film-making like a thunderclap; colour has been creeping in (and out) since the hand-tinted films of the ’nineties, and is still a rarity. But there has been in the last two years a more determined, more rapid, and less fitful increase of colour in the Cinema. ‘ Becky Sharp,’ ‘ The Trail of the Lonesome Pine,’ and other films were commercially successful enough to cover the increased cost of production, and the recent announcement is a symptom of a more widespread willingness on the part of the industry to make serious use of colour processes. For two or three years colour has been increasingly used in short films, and it is rare now to find black-and-white cartoons and a commonplace to see the übiquitous travel film in every variety and quality of colour reproduction. In England 4 Wings of the Morning/ the first English feature-length film in technicolour, has been released and well received, and the technicolour and Dufay pictures of the Coronation proved that grey English weather is more kind to colour film than the hard sunlight of Hollywood or Bali. Technicolour laboratories have been opened neai London, and shooting begins shortly on 4 The Beggar’s Opera ’ in chemicolour, an English process first seen publicly in parts of 4 Pagliacci.’ TECHNICAL EMPROYEMENIS. This increased interest and production activity may be said to mark the end of a stage of tentative experiment in colour reproduction. The past i ear has seen a rapid technical xmpxo\efnent in most of the colour processes—and particularly in technicolour, the most suitable process commercially that has both lowered the cost ot production and made the results more realistic and acceptable. Yet with all this activity and with all the increased accessibility ot sufficiently agreeable colour reproduction there is still no sign of such an overnight revolution in film-making as made films all-taking and all-singing less than 10 years ago. The film magnates who embrace colour are overwhelmingly explicit ; colour is the crowning glory and the black-and-white film is dead. But the many others give no reason toi their abstinence. They continue to make black-and-white box-office successes, and they and their public are satisfied. So far as English studios arc concerned this half-heaitedness might be explained by financial reasons. Since the crisis of six months ago the British film industry finds backing only with difficulty; to many producers the extra cost of colour stock and processing might make it an impossible luxury. But the American industry is powerful and wealthy, and could afford easily enough to make all its films in colour This is, in fact, a paradoxically possible explanation. Sound had been shelved by a flourishing industry until a company, financially embarassed, made a commercial gamble of it. The American industry to-day needs no _ such financial gamble, and the British industry has the incentive but not the technical resources. But mainly the producers’ attitude to colour is a reflection of the public’s. The recent full-length colour films have been modest successes compared with the first sound-films; 4 Becky Sharp ’ did not empty cinemas with black-and-white programmes as did 4 The Singing Fool ’ those with silent films. This may be partly because sound sprang fullv grown from the secret laboratories of ‘America, whilst the public have grown used to and sceptical of colour in its 40 years of open experiment and only qualified success. THE PUBLIC CONVICTION. Then, too, it appeared—perhaps erroneously—to both public and producers in 1928 and 1929 that no film could be other than improved by sound. Nineteen thirty-six and 1937, _ besides witnessing a revived interest in colour, have also seen a series of popular successes of a kind that would appear still to bo inappropriate vehicles for the use of colour. The rare fairy tale— 4 Green Pastures ’ or parts of 4 The Lost Horizon ' —might gain by the tactful use of colour, but oven the film-going public, avid of new things, fail to see what colour would help sophisticated, wisecracking comedies such as 4 After the Thin Man, 1 1 Libelled Lady,’ or 4 Mr Deeds,’ the gangster film, of such unclassifiable films as 4 The Informer,’ Wiuterset,’ or 4 Louis Pasteur.' Colour in cinema is still rare enough to be obtrusive and to be used obtrusively, and a colour film is a colour film first and only secondarily, if at all, a witty, or a poetic, or an exciting film. (Only Disney, who abides few questions, has gracefully absorbed colour.) So long as public taste for wit or poetry or excitement outweighs the taste for colour there will continue to be black-and-white box office record-breakers, and the coming of colour will remain a slow and gradual process. There is little doubt that the colour film will eventually become universal—it is widely held In the industry that the competition of television alone will be an overwhelming argument to all producers—but the slowness of development is no bad thing. So far coloured films havt been lavish musical comedies, period pieces such as 4 Becky Sharp,' or films such as 4 Trail of the Lonesome Pine ’ and 4 Wings of the Morning,’ in which bright settings are of primary importance and plot, dialogue, and characterisation all matters for tolerance. A colour revolution to-day would mean at any rate a temporary sacrifice of social comedy. The gangster film, and films of real people in drab settings to song and dance, cloak and sword, and the Colorado canyons. BUSINESS FIRST. Major technical changes in film proproduction are exploited by business men first and by creative workers only after much argument and experiment. This was clearly demonstrated in the changeover to the sound-film. For long enough sound was used for sound’s sake rather than for cinema’s. Even now the imaginative manipulation of the sound-track is sufficiently rare to provoke admiring comment from the tour-

ists and bewildered resentment from the general. Too* rapid a conversion to colour would mean another sterile period in the cinema similar to that which followed the introduction of sound. There were hints in Rouben Mamoulian’s ‘ Becky Sharp,’ two years ago, of an emotional and imaginative use of colour, of colour contributing something to the moving, talking picture that was otherwise unobtainable. But these were only hints and there has been nothing added or developed in the coloured films that have been produced since then. Colour has been simply an added titbit, not a now integral part of a growing art form. Every technical innovation in cinema—sound yesterday, colour to-day, stereoscopy to-morrow —is an approach towards greater realism, and realism piles up aesthetic problems for the film-maker. Limitations breed virtuosity, and as each limitation is conquered by the technician there is a time-lag while the creative worker gets the fool of a new or a modified medium. The time-lag that followed the innovation of sound was filled with films that signified nothing ; it is well that the time-lag after the first coming of colour should he a period in which the old order remains vigorous.