Retrospective 2015: Glorious Technicolor
From George Eastman House and Beyond

The 2015 Retrospective presented an opulent display of colour, as we celebrated the 100th anniversary of a film process that became legend far beyond Hollywood. In 1915, the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation began developing and continually improving two and then three colour processes for shooting and projecting films. By the mid 1930s, the level of quality that gave Technicolor its radiance had been achieved. For the first time, the entire colour spectrum could be reproduced on film and the use of colour could be a conscious choice.

Red and Green

Neither audiences nor the critics were unduly impressed with the first Technicolor films, with their flickering colour fringing. But Kalmus and his team persevered to increasing acceptance. Colour and the almost simultaneous development of sound film began to take over screens and movie theatres. The Technicolor films of this early era show artful skill in dealing with the technical limitations. The Toll of the Sea (Chester M. Franklin, USA, 1922), shot in Technicolor No. II, turned the constraints of red and green into a floral riot with a Chinese aura. The foliage and the red-accented interiors glow with an enchantingly natural feeling. Victor Schertzinger’s Redskin (USA, 1929) in Technicolor No. III, tells the story of the love between a young Navajo man and a Pueblo woman who are subjected to forcible integration into the world of white Americans. The scenes shot on location in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona and Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, sport an impressive palette of lustrous shades of sand in the spare landscape, which particularly highlights the geometric fabric patterns of red, brown and white. By contrast, the sky is pale and a small lake is a greenish-blue, although for an audience, this does not come across as a lack of blue tint.

Animated and Musical Films

Animated films functioned as the trailblazers for the Technicolor aesthetic. In 1932, there were not enough cameras available for the new Technicolor No. III system to be put to widespread use and producers were unwilling to make the necessary investment in a new process with uncertain prospects of success. Since animated films were made with superimposed cels and multi-plane cameras, obviating the need for a three-colour camera, Kalmus signed a two-year, exclusive contract with Walt Disney Productions. That cooperative venture would be enormously important to financing further development of the technology. And the exquisite beauty of the results would help Technicolor break through into live-action production as well.

Even in its first three-colour short films, the “Silly Symphony” series, Disney developed the concept of a synaesthetic fusion of light, colour, shapes and movement. The Silly Symphony Funny Little Bunnies (Wilfred Jackson, USA, 1934) will be shown in the Retrospective. Disney’s first feature-length film using the three-colour process, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, USA, 1937), with its more saturated colours, went on to become an international hit.

Under the inspiration of new creative possibilities, colour created a boom in the musical genre, which also proved to be an aesthetic high point for Technicolor. One example was the MGM musical The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, USA, 1939), which took up the challenge of competing against the Walt Disney films and became a box office hit, not least by virtue of the display value of its excessive use of colour. Virtuosos like Vincente Minnelli also perfected the use of colour as an element in the dramaturgy or motif of a film, such as in Yolanda and the Thief (USA, 1945), in which a 15-minute long dream ballet becomes a somnambulistic tour de force of filmmaking.

Westerns

Westerns used Technicolor to advantage to plumb the aesthetics of location shooting. In John Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (USA, 1949), the earthy tones of Monument Valley provided a picturesque backdrop that contrasts with the bright costumes and other details, and characterises the antagonists’ camps. In Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, USA, 1946), scenes of love and hate are acted out under a torrid, red-orange desert sun. Broken Arrow (Delmer Daves, USA, 1950) strove for an authentic depiction of the Apaches in natural greens and browns. Colours such as yellow and blue were used, for instance, in clothing, to point up the different characters of the protagonists.

British Films

The lion’s share of Technicolor films were made in the USA. But as early as the 1920s, Herbert T. Kalmus also pursued a strategy of exporting his business model to Europe. The ambitious colour film system gained a particularly successful foothold in the British film industry. The newly-restored version of the first British Technicolor production Wings of the Morning (Harold D. Schuster, 1936), as well as David Lean’s This Happy Breed (Great Britain, 1944) both display an unobtrusive look. Black Narcissus (Great Britain, 1947), made by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, on the other hand, is an iconic example of artistic experimentation, which the unrivalled creative team brought to visual fruition using Technicolor.

Technicolor No. V and Beyond

The heyday of Technicolor lasted from 1935 to 1955. In the mid 1950s, Eastman’s newly-developed colour negative film largely replaced matrix film. The three-colour cameras were in use only sporadically. But prints continued to be made using the tried and true Technicolor No. V dye-transfer printing process. These are usually identified with the “printed in Technicolor” credit in the opening titles.