Colorized Movies...Your Opinions...
 

I've personally never cared for them.But I watched a colorized version of the original 1951 THE THING and wow was it nicely done...added a new dimension to the movie.

I'm sure that the technology for this process has come a little way since I last watched one. But, I think B&W preserves many things that make great movies great.

Modern movies are sometimes shot in B&W for effect, of which I'm sure there are many opinions as to why.

I don't think any great B&W movies gain anything from being colourized (Colorized for you Yanks). Shooting B&W was very different then shooting colour, and the look they went with just wouldn't work in colour.
i mean, can you imagine The Third Man in colour?

Also, another problem is the fact that they really don't know what colour a lot of things really were. I guess the most famous example is Frank Sinatra being given brown eyes....

The Third Man in color ?!? Oh, Dear God...Say it ain't so...

Or 12 angry men or ace in the hole.

Can't imagine any of my beloved classic film noir movies in colour. :no:

only if done with crayons...

The filmmaker did the film in B&W for a reason - whatever that reason might have been. I think it's just monumental arrogance to mess with someone else's art by assuming the film will be "better" in "color". All the colorized films I ever saw looked like pure D shite. Can you imagine Dr. Strangelove, A Touch of Evil or Casablanca in that crappy chalky so-called "color"? I cringe at the mere thought.

Hate 'em, don't mess with a good thing. Also hate the fully restored color films. Both attempts make the image unreal.

Two thumbs down for the colorized B&W classics.

No Mr Lime would not look right in color.

Great black and white:
Paths of glory.
Spy who came in from the cold.

I was looking for a copy of Hitchcocks "Strangers on a Train" could only find colourised, refused to buy it

Other memorable B&W movies that would gain nothing and lose a lot from
colorization:

To Kill a Mocking Bird
Psycho (the real 1960 thing)
The Elephant Man

Another example of a basically useless technology that is trying to make money
for its inventors...

Urgh. Many years ago, when it was the new thing, I was only able to find a film I wanted to rent in a colourized videotape. Some adjustment to the TV controls and I had it back to black and white.

Leave 'Em Be!
 

I distinctly remember an acquaintance making a stupid remark walking out of the theater about how he didn't like Schindler's List because it was filmed in B&W. I never understood that guy.

:screwy:

I agree film noir shouldn't be touched. Also agree it's a completely different art form than shooting in color, I mean just look at the crazy light sources making those super-dramatic angled shadows in a masterpiece like Cat People. You flat-out couldn't colorize that pic without serious compromise of artistic vision.

But I don't see a need to be overly curmudgeonly. I bought a 2 DVD set of It's a Wonderful Life for two reasons (other than that fact my wife and I love it): one, the print you end up seeing around Christmas on TV is almost always an old crappy one, I wanted to see it in better quality that usual; two, disc two contains a colorized version, and I am really curious to see how it turned out.

Just curious, you understand. I don't expect great things. But if I see it and I like it and the artistic vision is not besmirched, it's fine with me.

IIRC, Spielberg used a few color elements very sparingly in his movie,
again confirming that for at least 50 years the choice of B&W has
been an artistic one.

I am generally against it, but its not like it is forced down my throat by decree. Well actually, The Third Man in color would not work. It just would not.

I have a thrift store copy of Miracle on 34th Street (yes the original) and it has been colorized. I actually got a kick out of it as it added a rather surrealistic aura to an old chestnut. The copious amounts of Celebration Ale probably helped a well.

At the end of the day, its trying to make something into something that it is not.

Personally, I never cared for colorized movies.:thumbsdn: I equate colorized movies to "electronic stereo" versions of monophonic sound recordings. The results can be impressive, but rarely realistic.

Coloring a black and white sometimes produces disastrous results; garish unnatural looking pictures. Moreover the use of black and white at times accentuates certain aspect of a picture; e.g drabness of East Berlin in "Spy who came in from the cold".

I remember seeing a cartoon once that showed a fellow standing in front of St Peter at the Pearly Gates. St Peter looks up from the books at the fellow and says "You colorized Casablanca, how unfortunate"...

My reaction -

:thumbsdn::thumbsdn::thumbsdn:
:thumbsdn::thumbsdn::thumbsdn:
:thumbsdn::thumbsdn::thumbsdn:

Lash the Colorizers (or Ted Turner at least)!

Colorization should be punishable. Both for the stupidity inherent in the idea of doing it, and for the arrogance in taking someone else's long-finished piece of work and thinking they will improve it.

The medium IS the message: you react to B/W differently than you do to color for many reasons.

May Orson Welles come back to haunt them.....:tresbon:

C.

The effects and what the director is shooting for in b&w is totally lost when the print is colorized. When one comes on the tube, I hit the color controls and go to b&w. Sadly a color tele does not do b&w as well as a real b&w set and the colorization destroys a lot of the beauty contained within the original print.

I hate them...

It's a travesty. Just as bad (worse?) is pan and scan/cropping. letterbox rules.

Use the following to search for DVDs:

www.dvdpricesearch.com

You can get that title, not colorized, for less than $10 delivered (in the U.S.), though if you want the Special Edition, it will be a bit more.

That is because in the colorization process, they play with the contrast. You cannot get back to the original by just turning down the color on your TV. Basically, once a film is colorized, it is ruined. You simply need to get a copy that has not been colorized if you want to view it properly.

The only one I ever saw that I HALFWAY liked was a Laurel & Hardy 2 reeler-The one where they were trying to move the piano up that LOOOOONG flight of stairs-It didn't suck, it actually looked like it was in color, rather than some joker takin' a pastel Magic Marker & going to town w/it.

You're pulling our leg right?? :scratch2:

I could be wrong but I thought that the Wizard Of Oz was shot in color except for the opening and closing scenes in Kansas :scratch2:

The Wizard of Oz was shot in color for all the stuff that took place in Oz. The opening and closing were done in B&W on purpose. If the opening and closing were colorized, it would mess with the movie's tone I think.

I don't care for colorized movies, especially ones that were done in B&W for artistic purposes. "stereoized" mono is also a travesty of similar proportions. I have a Benny Goodman recording with Sing Sing Sing that was processed this way. Luckily I can hit the mono switch and negate about 90% of the horrible echo effect, but its still irritating.

If you've never seen a classic B&W movie that is colorized, don't knock it. Some have been redone very well and it adds a whole new dimension.Casablanca was great! What's wrong with having both versions?

As a general esthetic principle, I oppose to any modifications carried out by third parties on works of art (literature, music, cinema, etc). These are the work of artists expressing themselves freely and there is no need for somebody (usually not an artist) to "help" them with claims about what would have been best for those artists if conditions would have been different.

All the best

Let's convert Shakespeare into modern-day language, too. That will make it more accessible. We also have some new color mixtures available since Picasso and Matisse were around. No problem fixing up those paintings a little, either, right? We're not going to disrupt the integrity of the originals, just add a little more color here and there...

Good grief...this has got to be one of most ridiculous thing to argue over...as far as cinematic arguments go!
First of all, no black and white movie is ONLY available in a colorized version! When Ted Turner's lackeys began this craze they always did extensive restoration work on the original film before colorizing it. This resulted in new fgmp (fine grain master prints) of films that had been long neglected. And, of course, nobody was actually coloring the original negative/positive filmstrip anyway (that hasn't really been done on a large scale since the silent days of Pathe and Gaumont).
Second...I watched Wizard of Oz, Gone With The Wind, and The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T at least 6 times before I ever knew they were fimed in color. Why? My family didn't have a color TV till 1971! Amazingly enough, I enjoyed all those films (and more) without knowing what I was missing. Dangit...the Venus De Milo doesn't even have arms but I know it is a beautiful bit of sculpture! This same "enjoy it even though something is missing or added (color)" theme is directly related to aspect ratio: ALL OF US learned to love movies with the help of television...and ALL OF US loved those movies on a 4:3 screen...no matter how they were originally filmed.
Third, and this is a big one to me, is the fact that most director's give little honor to source material. If Peter Jackson can hack up and distort/reinvent Tolkien's source material then he could never, ever complain if his (Jackson's) work was released only as a 4:3 dvd (or only a black and white version). Why? Because in disregarding the original work how could he complain if his version was altered in any way.
I've had too much coffee, folks! Sorry 'bout the rant.

Colorization: :thumbsdn:

Candidate for uncolorization: Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948) This one would be more convincing as a B&W film, IMO.

Wow, Mystic, THAT is a great idea. Great movie choice, too. My choice would be a british 1960's horror movie that I cannot remember the title of (even though I have the laserdisc of it). It about a bunch of stranded mariners on a foggy island. The residents have to walk across the seaweedy bay by means of snowshoes and balloons!!! Anyway, saw it on my old b&w tv and loved it. Later got the laserdisc (with its original color) and was kinda bored with it.

I remember that miniseries, "Ike" starring Robert Duval. Obviously in color as it was well into the color era. But to save some bucks, they used vintage WWII battle footage. And they colorized it! The explosions were purple. Looked more like a battle in that place where HR Puffenstuff lived.