20 April 2011 / Film Desaturating Private Ryan
Jeremy Davies as Corporal Upham
After reading about Steven Soderbergh's multiple viewings of Raiders of the Lost Ark in black and white (mentioned in this post), last weekend I turned the colour down on my telly and watched a couple of films. As a designer, I'm forever challenging to presumption that more colour equals more quality, so I'm curious to see how adjusting this variable might effect my enjoyment of films. (And yes, I know the sun was shining and I should've been outside playing, but I have a wide-eyed, pale, geekulous complexion to maintain, okay?)
First up was Saving Private Ryan. I maintain that pretty much any Spielberg film would suit the black and white treatment, but was surprised at just how effective it was in this case. The cinematography is incredibly desaturated anyway, but dialling it right down gives the film a more authentic feel. I say authentic – I realise WWII wasn't actually fought in black and white, but the majority of photography and footage from that period is, so that distancing layer is already part of how history has been recorded. Watching Saving Private Ryan in this way was like delving deeper into a clip from The World at War.
Robert Capa's stunning D-Day photography
More specifically, it brought the action a lot closer to the Robert Capa photographs of D-Day that clearly influenced the film's look. Spielberg was trying to drop the audience into the middle of the action of the various battle scenes (all of which are amazing, but often get overshadowed by the opening one), but our usual accepted experience of war is through documentary. The visual language of reportage is the reality of war to us, so replicating this era-specific look makes the story and the characters just that little bit more believable.
After that, I watched David Fincher's Zodiac. That film gets better with every viewing – I'm tempted to say it's even better than Seven – but for some reason I can't quite put my finger on, the black and white approach didn't work as well as I'd expected. Fincher puts a lot of effort into colour correcting his films, and I think robbing Zodiac of its nocturnal, seedy yellowness took away far too much.
Still, I'm going to persevere with this experiment. I'm thinking that perhaps an earlier Fincher picture Alien ³ – would work quite well. Any suggestions for other films that would benefit from this approach?
Reader Comments (9)
An interesting experiment. Another one to try might be 'Let the right one in', though its colour is already pretty subtle in the scenes I can remember. I'm imagining all of my favourite films in black and white now.
I used to do this with movies all the time -- it really is hit and miss -- but totally creates a new experience. I'd suggest films by Kubrick, especially The Shining and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Coen Brothers films also work very well - Fargo and No Country For Old Men specifically.
Not sure if the comments I made before actually arrived with you … the bullet points:
— Dolores Claiborne (awesome movie) and movies like it – ie, *so* reliant on the colour and saturation wouldn't work in black and white
— Anything shot by Vittorio Storaro should *never* be watched in black and white. Like Fincher, the amount of work he puts into the filters and colour correction (eg in The Sheltering Sky) mean that by watching it in black adn white, you're just being rude.
— Reservoir Dogs might work.
— European cinema might on the whole lend itself to black and white rather than Hollywood. Betty Blue would be fantastic, but Amelie needs colour. Leon would be amaaazing in black and white – 'slice of life' movies lend themselves more to it than 'event' movies (although that pi$$es all over Saving Private Ryan).
— It's a Wonderful Life should only be viewed in black and white and never in colour. So there.
Think that's it … !
Oh! And … Shawshank works well when you monkey about with the brightness and contrast, although I've never watched it totally monochrome.
David, did 2001 work? What about the final sequence as he enters Jupiter space and it goes all trippy?
I think your approach is worth trying on:
– Michael Mann's movies;
– maybe Kingdom of Heaven;
– The Thin Red Line.
Very interesting. This got me thinking about modern day films that update older genres where the earlier films were in black and white. So how about three modern day film noir masterpieces - John Dahl's brace of The Last Seduction and Red Rock West, perhaps? And what about Brick? Granted the colour palette of the film is probably as important as that in Zodiac, so it may end up being detrimental, but possibly worth a try at least.
There Will Be Blood could work, too.
Thanks for this post! Watching SPR right now in monochrome. Will try the rest of the latest films starting with 127 hours :)
I'm thinking Fight Club, Wonder Boys, Casino Royale, Cape Fear, Barfly (and maybe a weekend lockdown of Band of Brothers / Pacific back-to-back)
@Unresist Not sure about Fight Club – the colour seems to be a very important element of Fincher's films. Cape Fear and Casino Royale would be great though!