Focus: A Film Review (1950-1951)

200 A Positive Approach to the Cinema, No. 12 Colour: Boon or Bane? By J. J. CURLE The introduction of colour into a film usually provokes one of two very definite reactions ; either the watcher delights in the mere fact of colour with its sensuous appeal and associations, or the artificiality and harshness of the colour used repels him. But the real issue for those who believe in the film as an art form lies far deeper than this. Technical processes will no doubt improve with time, though commercial interests may keep the improved methods at bay for a few years. Yet, even if they do improve, the advance will be towards naturalism rather than art. The film image will become as nearly lifelike as it is possible for anything to be which is distorted in scale, limited by the bounds of a screen and gazed at steadily by an eye that does, not move. These limitations are, however, in themselves substantial. To alter scale, as anyone knows who has looked through a magnifying glass, is to alter both the relative and the absolute values of the colours and shapes seen. Look at life through the wrong end of the telescope and it becomes sharp, neat, tidy, quite unlike the sprawling dusty affair we know. Took at it through the right end and you are perpetually living in the heightened atmosphere of close-up without being able to take the unemotional long view which puts a scene in perspective. So too with the bounded screen and the static eye, the image is distorted from its resemblance to life. The eye in contact with nature knows no limits and therefore does not have to compose what it sees. It roves about taking in cursory, simplified “impressions” such as Monet and Pisarro captured in their paintings and, before it is sated — or if it is jarred — it moves on. But looking at the screen we see the whole of what appears on it simultaneously and even a change of camera angle does not give us the same effect as moving our eye, for either it is made too seldom (the eye being accustomed to pass from angle to angle with lightning speed) or else, if it is made continuous as in a panning shot, the contrast between the moving scene and the static border of the screen makes us physically uneasy as if looking out of a moving car through field glasses. But, granted that these limitations were not vitally important, would the successful imitation of natural colour satisfy us in the cinema ? Frankly I doubt it. If we want to look at nature we go into a park or a garden or take a trip to the country, but we go into the cinema as men have gone into every playhouse from the earliest times, to purge our emotions by living through others fuller, finer, more shapely — or at least more exciting — than our own. We want a human story in which man stands out as the dominating feature of his environment, or at least a story in which that environment seems to reflect human moods. In the black-and-white film this was possible because its light and shade correspond in some way to the light and shade of man’s nature. The skilful cameraman builds his pattern of mood in light just as the composer of the accompanying music builds it in sound. To strengthen the power of these moods as artistic unities he may also compose his individual pictures in terms of mass like a painter creating a satisfying unity on canvas. In addition he can alter the emotional effect of his shots by altering their range, pace and definition. But with colour the cameraman’s resources are far more limited. Man photographed in colour against a natural background at once shrinks to less than lifesize, to the position of a mere “extra” in the picture. If he does manage to stand out it is only because of the colour of his shirt, not because of the power of his emotions or personality. Nature in colour can