Chromatic Cinema

Richard Misek is a film-maker and Lecturer in Screen Studies at the University of Bristol, UK. He has been published widely in film journals, and his short films have been shown at festivals including Cannes, Raindance, and Clermont-Ferrand, and broadcast on BBC2 and Channel 4.

List of Plates ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

1. Film Color 14

Coloration in Early Cinema, 1895–1927 14

The Rise of Technicolor, 1915–35 25

Chromatic Cold War: Black-and-White and Color in Opposition 29

“Technicolor Is Natural Color”: Color and Realism, 1935–58 35

Chromatic Thaw: Hollywood’s Transition to Color, 1950–67 41

2. Surface Color 50

Color in European Film, 1936–67 50

Chromatic Ambivalence: Art Cinema’s Transition to Color 57

“Painting with Light”: Cinema’s Imaginary Art History 65

Unmotivated Chromatic Hybridity 68

Monochrome Purgatory: Absent Color in the Soviet Bloc, 1966–75 77

3. Absent Color 83

Black-and-White as Technological Relic, 1965–83 83

Black-and-White Flashbacks: Codifying Temporal Rebirth 89

Black-and-White Films, 1967–2007 97

Nostalgia and Pastiche 111

4. Optical Color 117

Cinema’s Newtonian Optics 117

White Light: Hollywood’s Invisible Ideology 122

Darkness Visible: From Natural Light to “Neo-Noir,” 1968–83 132

Cinematography and Color Filtration, 1977–97 139

Case Study: Seeing Red in Psycho 147

5. Digital Color 152

Crossing the Chromatic Wall in Wings of Desire 152

An Archaeology of Digital Intermediate, 1989–2000 155

Digital Color Aesthetics, 2000–9 164

Conclusion: Painting by Numbers? 179

Notes 181

Bibliography 195

Index 210