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Siskel and Ebert hail black-and-white filmmaking

Gaith

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Just had to post this awesome video from back in the day:



While I too am totally opposed to colorization, appreciate certain old black-and-white movies and think that some certain contemporary ones (The Good German, The Mist) should definitely be in grayscale, I can't say I'm as big a fan of b&w as these fine critics are. But their arguments concerning The Lady Vanishes, Notorious and the Marx Brothers movies are surely unanswerable.

In short, a fun and illuminating clip. :)
 

Kevinicus

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Gaith said:
Just had to post this awesome video from back in the day:

[youtube:1o6y3uip]


While I too am totally opposed to colorization, appreciate certain old black-and-white movies and think that some certain contemporary ones (The Good German, The Mist) should definitely be in grayscale, I can't say I'm as big a fan of b&w as these fine critics are. But their arguments concerning The Lady Vanishes, Notorious and the Marx Brothers movies are surely unanswerable.

In short, a fun and illuminating clip. :)


I find their arguments pretty weak. Their examples have FAR more things different going on that change how it comes across than just the color vs. black and white issue. In fact, whether or not they are in color is about the least different aspect of the examples that they showed.

Black and white does have it's place, and is certainly warranted at times, but it's not some super wonderful option that color just can't compare to.
 

Gaith

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They make a lot of arguments during the segment. Is there any particular one you take issue with? ;)
 

Kevinicus

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Gaith said:
They make a lot of arguments during the segment. Is there any particular one you take issue with? ;)


I'm mostly referring to the first few clips they showed really. I did not get a chance to watch the entire video. But they were showing BW/color comparisons, but there were major stylistic differences between what they showed for b&W and for color. It's one thing if the shots/background, etc. were all extremely similar, and only the color was the difference, but it's not, and that is actually far down the list IMO of what makes the scenes they used for examples different.
 

zeppelinrox

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The comparison is easy when looking at the Fred Astair & Ginger Rogers comparisons.

The B&W clip looks crisp, clean and timeless.
The colour one looks old and dated.

Since you didn't watch it all, the point is that B&W brings out that you are watching a fantasy world where anything can can happen.
Colour makes it more realistic and in a sense, more boring, since it has to do more to get the viewers mind into that world.
 

Gaith

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^^ Agreed on the Astaire and Rogers bit. In fact, I agree with pretty much everything they say except for the wish for much more contemporary b&w. Now that color manipulation has become so sophisticated, I think the number of movies that would benefit from grayscale has diminished to a very modest number. Still, some do persist, and the '07 film The Mist is a perfect example of that.
 
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