Defense of colorization

[coolrob1955]

This is not really a defense of colorization, just an attempt to calm down the many who seem to have taken offense that some of their favorite black and white movies have been colorized. The main reason that the VAST MAJORITYof films from the beginning up until the late 1950's were filmed in black and white was not for any asthetic reason, but merely because filming in color was extremely expensive, and studios reserved the use of color for their most important and expensive productions. Had filming in color been no more expensive than black and white then nearly all films would have originally been filmed in color. I know there are exceptions and that some directors notwithstanding would have used black and white for reasons of style.

 

I personally don't particularly care for colorization, it's not been refined sufficiently to offer any resemblance to reality, and I'm quite happy with black and white. It's interesting to consider what impact the availability of cheap color production techniques would have had on the history of cinema, film noir in color ?.

 

Old classics will continue to be colorized, and reformatted, and edited, or simply disappear into olblivion as the media corporations that own them continue their single minded persuit for the bucks of our old friends the 'Target Demographic', joining the likes of AMC and Bravo and all the rest on the low road to profitability. Turner Classic Movies remains unique in not jumping on this bandwagon to the trash dump. But for how long ?.........