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It’s the name of a dye-transfer process, but the word
evokes a state of mind, if not an entire aesthetic universe.
Some have called it garish or even vulgar, particularly during
its initial “three-strip phase,” and many have called
it unreal. Which is beside the point. The movies have certainly
veered in the direction of ever-increasing realism. Which has
only made the vibrantly poetic luminosity of Technicolor, particularly
between the mid-40s and the late 50s, that much more striking.
Technicolor was phased out of Hollywood film production in 1974,
and while IB prints (IB stands for imbibition) have proven more
stable than prints made with other color processes, they won’t
be around forever. Here is a small, glorious selection of films
presented as they were meant to be, in bold, living color — Technicolor.
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Albert Lewin was a singular figure in Hollywood — an
aesthete, with a taste for film material of a distinctly
literary pedigree. What he lacked in vision, he made up
for in passion. This remarkably beautiful romance, a reworking
of the tale of the Flying Dutchman set on the Spanish
coast, ranks with The Night of the
Hunter and Wanda as
a stand-alone masterpiece, with a throbbing intensity
that Lewin never matched before or after. It is also as
visually exquisite as anything made during the period,
conceived in deep, dark reds, greens, blues and blacks,
suggesting the lustrous velvet folds in Titian or El Greco.
In fact, when Martin Scorsese was a young man seeing Pandora for the first time, he thought that it was a Powell-Pressburger
film. With James Mason as the Dutchman figure, and Ava
Gardner as Pandora.
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FRI
SEPT 2: 2:00 PM
FRI
SEPT 3: 7:00 PM |
For many, Technicolor is synonymous with the series of films Douglas Sirk
made at Universal in the 1950s with cinematographer Russell Metty and producer
Ross Hunter. The lush saturation of those images of suburban America became
touchstones, templates for filmmakers of the future, from Fassbinder to
Lynch to Burton to Haynes. It's a toss-up, but it may well be that the
greatest of these films is the 1956 Written on the
Wind, now regarded as
one of the great works of American cinema. Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, Dorothy
Malone and Lauren Bacall give a quartet of great performances, as characters
trapped in a melodramatic intrigue that, according to Sirk, approaches
the surrealistic. Which was accentuated, according to the director, by
his use of color. "I avoid what a painter might call the sentimental
colors — pale or soft colors," an understated Sirk told James
Harvey about this film. "Here I paint in primary colors like Kirchner
or Nolde, for example. Or even like Miró. I have the flashing red
of a car and I want that to be just as red as possible."
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FRI
SEPT 2: 4:30 PM
SUN
SEPT 4: 2:00 PM |
The suspense mechanics and philosophical implications of Hitchcock’s
still mind blowing 1963 film, about an unexplained bird attack on Bodega Bay,
are so rich that its extraordinary visual beauty and sophistication can be
easily taken for granted. Like all of Hitchcock’s color films, The
Birds has a very smart “look” — the image here has the cool, air-brushed
feeling of contemporary fashion mags, and seems to have been designed to offset
the icy chic of Tippi Hedren. It also makes the destructive force of the birds
themselves that much more formidable: who, or what, would want to destroy a
world this serenely pretty? The DVD now in circulation is faithful to the master’s
carefully controlled use of color and light, but The Birds is still best appreciated
on a big screen and in Technicolor. With Rod Taylor, Suzanne Pleshette, a young
Veronica Cartwright, and the great Jessica Tandy. Bird sounds (created on a
synthesizer) “supervised” by Bernard Herrmann.
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FRI
SEPT 2: 6:30 PM
SAT
SEPT 3: 2:00 PM |
"Huston and I did so many odd things with filters on Moulin
Rouge that the laboratory people disclaimed any responsibility," said cinematographer
Oswald Morris, who was later Huston’s partner in crime on the equally adventurous
Moby Dick. The pair (along with production/costume designer Marcel Vertès)
studiously went about re-creating the visual effects of Toulouse-Lautrec’s
paintings, like the kaleidoscopic brightness and the washes of pure color.
The visual scheme of the film may overwhelm the drama of Lautrec’s life
from time to time, but what a visual scheme it is. José Ferrer is never
less than touching as Lautrec, but the movie belongs to his director. A tour
de force if ever there was one.
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FRI
SEPT 2: 9:00 PM
SAT
SEPT 3: 4:30 PM |
Technicolor brought a beautiful sheen to science fiction — the
gleam of metal and the darkness of space never looked so
vibrant. This 1955 classic, about a scientist (the inimitable
Rex Reason) recruited to help the dying planet Melaluna to
survive only to find himself a pawn in a scheme for world
domination, may be the most visually beautiful of sci-fi
classics. “This Island Earth has everything against
it,” wrote Raymond Durgnat in his famous appreciation
of the film. “It's a fantasy, it's science-fiction,
it's slanted at adolescents, it's a routine product from
a studio with no intellectual pretentions, it has no auteurs,
it's artistic 'texture' is largely mediocre — and for
all that, it has a genuine charge of poetry and of significant
social feeling. It's not a cliché; with its sense
of inner tensions, of moral tragedy, it's myth."
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SAT SEPT 3: 9:30 PM
SUN SEPT 4: 4:00 PM |
One of the greatest color films ever made, in its original IB glory. Aside from the fact that itís one of the most enjoyable and exuberant films ever made, it is also one of the most innovative and, as if that werenít enough, one of the funniest satires of Hollywood moviemaking. Everyone from Jean-Luc Godard to Peter Wollen (who looks at the film in his BFI Classics monograph in light of the leftist sympathies of several of its creators ó Gene Kelly, Betty Comden and Adolph Green) has sung its praises, and it continues to appear at the top of international criticsí polls. Why? ìAlthough Singin'
in the Rain has been on video in various versions for a decade and is often seen on TV, a big-screen viewing will reveal a richness of color that your tube may not suggest,î wrote Roger Ebert. ìThe film was photographed in bold basic colors ó the yellow raincoats are an emblem ó and Donen and his cast have an energy level that's also bold, basic and playful. But is this really the greatest Hollywood musical ever made? In a word, yes.î
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SUN SEPT 4: 6:00 PM
MON SEPT 5: 2:00 PM |
Most westerns are about loners crossing
vast expanses of desert psaces. Tourneur's neglected 1946 classic
is set in the lush forests and fields of Oregon, and is centered
around a community. Dana Andrews is the owner of Jacksonville's
general store. Brian Donlevy is the amiable but weak-willed
banker who siphons off his depositors' gold dust to pay off
his gambling debts. Ward Bond is the outsider who carries a
grudge against Andrews, and Susan Hayward is Donlevy's fiancÈe;
who slowly falls for Andrews. This is a movie of extraordinary
visual beauty, shot in goreous, dark-hued Techinicolor (by
cinematographer Edward Cronjager), with emotional shadings
to match. The set pieces ó an Indian massagre, a barn-raising
ó are as thrilling as the relationships are carefully drawn.
With Hoagy Carmichael singing his immortal "Ole Buttermilk
Sky."
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SUN SEPT 4: 8:15 PM
MON SEPT 5: 6:15 PM |
Perhaps the greatest of the Hammer films, this is a rare
chance to experience the film’s beautiful visual scheme — lurid,
dark-toned, somewhere between garish and elegant. The Hammer
films, along with Roger Corman’s almost contemporary
Poe cycle, brought something new to the horror genre — startling
flamboyance, raw sexuality (embodied by Christopher Lee’s
vampire), and eye-popping color. As Tony Williams put it
in Senses of Cinema, “Terence Fisher's direction, Jimmy
Sangster's screenplay, Jack Asher's colour, semi-expressionist
cinematography, Bernard Robinson's set designs for the interior
of Dracula's castle, and James Bernard's pondering, oppressive,
quasi-Wagnerian score featuring a repetitive ‘leitmotif’ for
the Count, collaboratively contribute to a sense of the cinematic ‘return
of the repressed.’" |
MON SEPT 5: 4:15 PM
MON SEPT 5: 8:15 PM |
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