He and Urban had a special Kinemacolor program at Madison Square Garden on 11 December 1909 and claimed that ‘their invention is based on a solid foundation of established scientific truths’. However, their invention was widely recognized and industrialized into three-color systems by Gaumont in 1913 and the German Agfa Company in 1915. The first actual two color-sensitive emulsions were brought by Eastman Kodak around 1915 and shortly afterward marketed under the trademark Kodachrome.
But the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation brought the real revolution in terms of natural colors in cinema. Herbert T. Kalmus, W. Burton Westcott, and Daniel Frost Comstock founded the company and continued their experiments based on the additive synthesis of two colors but these weren’t successful according to their expectation. Howard Mitchell’s (1928) ‘The Love Charm’ is an example of the two-color Technicolor process. Later they changed to three tacks and continued their experiments by using the principle of subtractive synthesis and the result was outstanding that changed the history of color in cinema.
They became the pioneer of color in the film industry and their system remained the major coloring process for professional filmmaking throughout the 1930 and 40s. One of the key examples of the first true feature-length colored film by Technicolor is ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘House of Rothschilds ‘or ‘La Cucaracha’ (1933) is the first full-color short film.
On the other hand, there was applied coloring process, that color was applied to the film positives. The system of applied coloring was the main coloring technique for the film in the silent era. Like early sound, color was incorporated with the black-and-white image through a variety of processes like tinting, toning, hand coloring, and stenciling.
Hand coloring: In this form of coloring, the color was applied directly onto the print. Here only parts of the image were colored using dye. This process required a special bench fitted with an apparatus, which was the size of a single frame. The image itself was lit from below and viewed via the means of a magnifying glass. A foot pedal was used to advance the image frame by frame. An aniline dye was applied to the image by the means of a tiny brush and when the foot pedal was pressed, the next frame would appear. This process would continue until the scene was finished. The film was then rewound and another worker would work on a different area of the film with a different dye. The earliest known examples of this kind of coloring in silent films include films like Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895) and Les Dernieres Cartouches (1896), A Trip To Moon (1902), Les Parisennes (1898), Metamorphoses Du Papilion (1904).
Stencil Coloring: Compared to hand coloring, stencil coloring was a much more mechanical process. Stencil coloring basically involved two steps. The first was cutting a different stencil for each color that applied that color to the positive print via the means of a machine. A film normally required three to six stencils. At first, the cutting was done manually which was a very laborious and time-consuming affair. Then a semi-automatic device similar to a sewing machine replaced manual cutting. The cutting needle was operated by an A.C. electromagnet. The second step was applying the color. In most coloring machines a sprocket system matched the matrix to the black-and-white print. All the copies of a particular scene were matched with the stencil, which rotated in a continuous loop. The aniline dye was applied by means of a loop of velvet moving in a direction opposite to the advancing film. Films like Virginian Types: Blue Ridge Mountaineers (1926), Danische Landschaften (1912), Cascades Of The Houyoux (1911), Cyrano De Bergerac (1923), L’Amour D’esclave (1907), L’exode (1910). However, the Pathe Company mainly brought the invention of the stencil coloring technique. But it didn’t succeed in the long run since the process was comparatively more lengthy and expensive than the other coloring process.
Tinting was a method of coloring where instead of coloring specific areas of the frame, the entire print was brushed with color. In this method, the density of the dye often varied on the print. The color was applied on the emulsion side of the film using aniline dyes in a solution of water. Film toning is the process of replacing the silver particles in the emulsion with colored, silver salts, by means of chemicals. This was achieved by immersing the film in a chemical bath. This dyed the darker areas of the image leaving the rest of the gelatine completely transparent. The toning method made it possible for a more sophisticated range of colors to be achieved in the film. Tinting and toning was the most common practice for the silent-era feature film. It was relatively easy and cheap and was also aesthetic enough to support the film narratives. To draw a comparison, Yumibe (2012) states that,
“while the stereoscopic color projection of hand coloring and stenciling works well during the cinema of attraction, its theatrical obtrusiveness becomes problematic in narrative films, for it has a tendency to distract rather than enhance narration. Tinting and toning, by contrast can be more readily manipulated to function unobtrusively in the background-both figuratively in the sense of being a relatively unnoticed component of narration an literally as having a particular affinity for enhancing the mise-en-scence of the narrative against which the action takes place.’
However, one of the important aspects of applied coloring techniques mainly for hand coloring and stencil coloring industries is the involvement of women workers. Since it was mostly an indoor job therefore women worked in this coloring business for a long turn. It allowed women to apply their imagination and creativity in the coloring process during the silent era of cinema.
To me Color is not something that one can talk about conclusively; everyone knows how important it is, and how it can deeply penetrate our psychology but how it plays within us is almost unknown. As Wendy Everett (2007) mentions Mausfeld and Heyer,
“the problematic identity of color is something that has preoccupied philosophers, scientists, and artists for more than 2,500 years, and the work of thinkers as diverse as Demokritos, Galileo, Descartes, Locke, Newton, Berkley, Hume, Kant, Goethe, Hegel, Maxwell, and Wittgenstein, for example, gives some indication of the long-lasting obsession the subject has inspired, and illustrates the on-going desire to establish some sort of formal boundary between its physical and psychological identities”
The aesthetic part of color is being studied since the 18th century. For instance, for Goethe colors were scopophilic in nature, Immanuel Kant talked about color in his ‘critique of Judgment’ and said that color only adds ‘charm’ to the artwork, whereas beauty derives from form (essential design). He also stated that “colors may no doubt, in their own way, enliven the object for sensation, but make it really worth looking at and beautiful they cannot”. In addition by becoming too visceral and too sensual, he stated that color can generate primal emotion, which can overpower the core aesthetic, which is the beauty of the form. For him to obtain pure aesthetic judgments we should restrict the power of color. Here we can bring the David Batchelor terms “chromophobia” the fear of colors and this also remained a key topic of discussion during early color cinema production and reception. Too many uses of color created the question of physiological tolerance, whether it can damage the eyes or optic nerve.
At the very beginning of the film coloring process, color was used to suggest some dramatic situations to accelerate the film narrative. Films were made in mixed colors. Each and every color had a precise connotation. Such as bright amber for a daylight situation or candlelight atmosphere, red for a fire or passionate scene, blue for night, dark, mysterious scene, and green suggestive of rural life. As an example of these colors implication, we can mention films like The thief of Bagdad (1924),
where we see that the film was tinted with sepia like yellow, blue, magenta like purple, and greenish color. Each color was precisely used for a particular space, such as for inside of the palace it was magenta like purple, for outside it was bright sepia like yellow, for the night scene or sad scene it was blue, the scene with fire was bright red and so on. Every scene was following the color of its preceding inter-titles. However, the purpose of applied coloring was mainly to attract the large number of audiences and to create drama or emotion for the respective scene. It had nothing to deal with reality. Siegfried Kracauer puts it that silent film coloring is an attempt to ‘canalize the spectators emotions’ through establishing ‘audience moods in keeping with the subject and the action”. Therefore film scholars like Bazin praised the natural coloring process over the applied coloring system. For him, through the applied coloring process we can only achieve fake reality.
It is almost certain that the relationship between color and the real world is the prime concern in cinema. But it is a very complex thing since the color is not merely a realistic tool of cinema but it also works on the psychological level of the audiences. As Wendy Everett (2007) says, ‘Furthermore, reflecting the ubiquity of color itself, its treatment in film studies extends far beyond the aesthetic and the stylistic or the historical and the technical to include, for example, representations of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, time and memory, realism and fantasy, along with a whole range of other social, political, and cultural issues.’
Bazin like scholars welcomed color in cinema but some others opposed it also. Film Scholar R. Arnheim argued that the usage of color takes out the creativity of the film artist since the camera records the preexisting color that it sees, so filmmakers lack the power of controlling the color. His understanding of filmy realism means not the technological reproduction of reality but the experiences that film can provide to the audiences out of reality. Therefore black & White film is more artistic and powerful. In recent times the relationship between color and movement has been brought out by G. Deleuze, which was also the main motive for Bela Balaz; and C. Dreyer. Wendy Everett (2007) mentions Balaz,
“that it is the movement of colors on the screen that constitutes their specificity, making them part of the ‘action’ in a way that is impossible in painting”
S. Eisenstein was different than others and his work regarding color and cinema is more extensive. He said color is integral to the language of film itself but he also recognized color as the most topical and intriguing problem for our cinema and insisted studying on it. However, Joshua Yumibe is one of the most recent time’s film scholars renowned for his works on silent cinema, especially in the aspect of color. In his seminal essay ‘Into and out of the Screen: The immersive colors of Silent Cinema’ he discusses the aesthetic issues of silent color cinema made by applied coloring. He uses the work of Walter Benjamin’s ‘Spielraum and the color of children’s book’ & his concept regarding play and connects it to the color space of the film. He calls it an ‘Immersive’ color space where color envelops the bodies and invades the dream of the embodied audiences. Color interacts with cinematic space to create an ‘Immersive’ experience for the spectator, he says, “ The immersive sense of color is useful for thinking about the functions of color in film, in particular tactile appeal- the sensuousness color adds to cinematic space as it perceptually transforms a two-dimensional image into relief.’ So with the use of color image becomes three-dimensional. Yumibe gives the example of A Butterfly’s Metamorphosis (1904), how uses of color separate the foreground & background of the image by creating a sense of depth. According to Benjamin technological reproduction destroy the aura as cinema also does but again the “decay of aura can be matched by a huge gain in the scope for play (spiel-Raum). This space for play is widest in film’. Yumibe (2012) also quotes Benjamin that besides destroying aura color film can also play an educational role by helping viewers to adapt sensually to their modern alienated environment.
The color was also used for exotic purposes like creating Eros within the mind of the audience. Precisely the dance scene coloring demands erotic pleasures. Another effect of the Immersive color space is its power to create diegetic meanings at the cultural level. He gives an example of ‘The Vagabond’ and says, “ an understanding of tints and tones that is grounded in these sensational, haptic association of color, and these cultural meanings were thought to provide an emotional resonance in the film image for the spectator.” Furthermore, color also had an impact on the actor’s performance.
We, all are surrounded by colors. It impinges upon almost every facet of our lives, influencing us emotionally, physically, or intellectually in different and unpredictable ways. Therefore color in cinema demands more scholarly attention. But the irony is that the color of silent cinema was not much discussed before our times; therefore going back to those films isn’t easy anymore. As Yumibe puts it, “consequences of the inherent instability of film stock: original colors tended to fade or change with time, while a great many of the films themselves were lost or allowed to decay”. Whatever may be the condition; color in cinema, as well as our life, will remain crucial all the time.
References:
Abel, Richard.(1996) Silent film. New Brunswick, N.J. Rutgers University PressEverett, Wendy (2007). Questions of colour in cinema : from paintbrush to pixel. New York. Peter Lang
Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey (1996). The Oxford history of world cinema. Oxford. Oxford University Press
Read, Paul (2009). Unnatural Color: An introduction to coloring techniques in silent era movies. Vol.21.No.1.Film History: An international Journal. Indiana University Press.
Tomadjoglou, Kim (2009). Introduction: Early Color. Vol.21.No.1.Film History: An international Journal. Indiana University Press
Vacche. Angela & Price, Brian.(2006). Color : the film reader. New York. Routledge
Yumibe, Joshua (2012). Moving Color: Early Film, Mass Culture, Modernism. New Brunswick, N.J. Rutgers Univ. Press,
Yumibe, Joshua (sep.2009). Discovering Cinema: Learning to talk & amp, movies dream s: in color (2003-2004) review. Vol.9. No.1. University of Minnesota Press.
Yumibe, Joshua (2012). Into and Out of the Screen: The Immersive colors of Silent Cinema. Center for Film Studies. Saint Andrews University.Uk.,
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