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THE COLOUR OF IT
PENNETHORNE HUGHES
The mechanisation of entertainment increases constantly in scope and in detail. There are new "mediums" and new forms of these mediums. Usually both forms of novelty are greeted by the serious if rather ineffective criticism of disinterested authorities, as well as by the fulsome praises of their promoters ; but one case, that of the colour film, has been overlooked by most of the critics. Dispirited, perhaps, by the odds of vulgarity against them, sober writers, despite the machine-gun rattle of advanced dilettantism, the intermittent thunder of literary disapproval, and the discovery by the Sunday newspapers that all that flickers is not gold, have never sufficiently considered the eligibility of this new commercial phenomenon, which is still seeking to smear the world with "All Colour" programmes. It is curious, because talk and colour in films are both aspects of the same increased realism of technique, and whilst one has been discussed ad nauseam, the other has been practically passed over. Yet whilst a properly comprehended and controlled colour process might conceivably have good qualities, the present injudicious monstrosities are as extravagantly unsatisfactory as the spate of inferior dialogue which produces such deserved storms of critical repulsion.
Colour in films is not really new. There was a luscious Siege of Calais before the War, and films like The Glorious Adventure and Fairbanks' The Black Pirate were often successful. For years, too, there have existed those parodies of Switzerland and the Rockies, in picture post-card polychromy, which represent a sentimental journey with a camera and a paint-box. Indeed, since the earliest days, most films have been uniformly tinted one shade or another. Cowboys pursued dusty romance against an appropriate yellow; Germans crowded epically upon a meditative grey, Frenchmen gesticulated patriotically through a haze of blue vignetting, and incendiaries internationally succeeded behind palls of luridly crimson
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