Chromatic Cinema

Chromatic Cinema

Color permeates film and its history, but study of its contribution to film has so far been fragmentary. Chromatic Cinema provides the first wide-ranging historical overview of screen color, exploring the changing uses and meanings of color in moving images, from hand painting in early skirt dance films to current trends in digital color manipulation.

In this richly illustrated study, Richard Misek offers both a history and a theory of screen color. He argues that cinematic color emerged from, defined itself in response to, and has evolved in symbiosis with black and white. Exploring the technological, cultural, economic, and artistic factors that have defined this evolving symbiosis, Misek provides an in-depth yet accessible account of color's spread through, and ultimate effacement of, black-and-white cinema.

Auteur

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.

Texte du rabat

Color permeates film and its history, but study of its contribution to film has so far been fragmentary. Chromatic Cinema provides the first wide-ranging historical overview of screen color, exploring the changing uses and meanings of color in moving images, from hand painting in early skirt dance films to current trends in digital color manipulation.

In this richly illustrated study, Richard Misek offers both a history and a theory of screen color. He argues that cinematic color emerged from, defined itself in response to, and has evolved in symbiosis with black and white. Exploring the technological, cultural, economic, and artistic factors that have defined this evolving symbiosis, Misek provides an in-depth yet accessible account of color's spread through, and ultimate effacement of, black-and-white cinema.

Résumé
Chromatic Cinema Color permeates film and its history, but study of its contribution to film has so far been fragmentary. Chromatic Cinema provides the first wide-ranging historical overview of screen color, exploring the changing uses and meanings of color in moving images, from hand painting in early skirt dance films to current trends in digital color manipulation. In this richly illustrated study, Richard Misek offers both a history and a theory of screen color. He argues that cinematic color emerged from, defined itself in response to, and has evolved in symbiosis with black and white. Exploring the technological, cultural, economic, and artistic factors that have defined this evolving symbiosis, Misek provides an in-depth yet accessible account of color's spread through, and ultimate effacement of, black-and-white cinema.

Contenu
List of Plates ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

1. Film Color 14

Coloration in Early Cinema, 18951927 14

The Rise of Technicolor, 191535 25

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

Technicolor Is Natural Color: Color and Realism, 193558 35

Chromatic Thaw: Hollywood's Transition to Color, 195067 41

2. Surface Color 50

Color in European Film, 193667 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, 196675 77

3. Absent Color 83

Black-and-White as Technological Relic, 196583 83

Black-and-White Flashbacks: Codifying Temporal Rebirth 89

Black-and-White Films, 19672007 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, 196883 132

Cinematography and Color Filtration, 197797 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, 19892000 155

Digital Color Aesthetics, 20009 164

Conclusion: Painting by Numbers? 179

Notes 181

Bibliography 195

Index 210