Colorized films: a mockery of masterpieces or a new step in art

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

More than ten years ago, colorized versions of old and beloved tapes began to appear on our screens. The very first such experience caused a flurry of controversy. Is this a barbaric desecration of film classics or one of the ways to preserve the film heritage? We have not come to a consensus on this matter, and the process of coloring films continues in full swing. Interestingly, in America, where a similar experience was launched much earlier, the reaction of the audience was very similar.

Film historians know that colorization of films is not such a novelty. Back in 1895, Thomas Edison invented and personally tested a method for coloring film with aniline dyes. One of the pioneers of silent films, Georges Méliès, produced colorful films at the beginning of the 20th century, but at that time this required a whole team of artists, because each frame was painted by hand with thin brushes. The color of such copies "breathed" as the shade of the paint slightly changed in each separate "picture".

Later, methods of toning and stencils were invented (the Patekolor colorization technique was created in 1905), but they also remained manual and very laborious. In Soviet cinema, the first experiment of this kind is considered the red flag on the battleship Potemkin, which Sergei Eisenstein himself painted by hand. Of course, in all these cases it was about the author's intention. The directors immediately created, albeit naive, imperfect from a modern point of view, but a color picture. Experts believe that it is impossible to colorize a film shot in black and white with high quality, because the setting of the color and even the makeup of the actors have a number of peculiarities. When coloring, the image often becomes unnatural because of this.

The 21st century has brought with it digital opportunities for calorization. In 2009, color versions of the films "Seventeen Moments of Spring" and "Only Old Men Go to Battle" were released. A poll conducted at the request of Channel One showed that 89% of viewers rated the colorized versions positively, but the controversy has not subsided on the Internet and in the media since then. Numerous parodies of "painted Stirlitz" showed the general attitude of the TV audience to such experiments. Vyacheslav Tikhonov himself spoke extremely disapprovingly of the new version of the film, because, in addition to painting, it was pretty much “cut off”:

It is strange that the choice of the first "victims" of calorization was made so unsuccessfully, because these films were conceived and created in black and white specifically to convey the time and create a certain atmosphere.

Despite very controversial results and numerous criticisms, the calorization process continued at full speed. Today, work has already been completed on colored versions of the following films: "Seventeen Moments of Spring" (2009), "Only Old Men Go to Battle" (2009), "Cinderella" (2009), "Foundling" (2010), "Volga, Volga" (2010), "Funny guys" (2010), "Spring on Zarechnaya street" (2010), "Three poplars on Plyushchikha" (2011), "Officers" (2011), "Circus" (2011), "Come tomorrow …" (2011), "Heavenly Slow Mover" (2012), "Father of a Soldier" (2013), "Arshin Mal Alan" (2013), "Kashchei the Immortal" (2014) and "Beware of the Car" (2017). The films “Unyielding”, “I Walk Through Moscow”, “Girls”, “Golden Calf”, “Spring” and “Alexander Nevsky” are currently being colorized.

I would like to note that calorization, even in digital form, is a long and laborious process. The cost of creating an updated version of the film is comparable to the filming of one episode of a modern TV series, saturated with special effects and, as a result, collecting much more viewers from the screens. Painted old films, on the other hand, usually generate a barrage of criticism and very little interest. To the question of why this process is so persistently continued, there is an answer that is often presented in controversy and looks quite convincing - when creating a new color version, new copyrights to the tape appear and, perhaps, this is the main incentive for their creation.

By the way, in America, where a similar process began several decades earlier, the situation was very similar: the painted versions of the films caused a mixed reaction from the audience, up to complete rejection. So, for example, when they were going to paint "Citizen Kane" - the shrine of American cinema - an incredible scandal erupted. Interestingly, so far only two films in the colorized version have attracted the approval of the audience and, accordingly, a significant response in viewings - this is the American horror film "Night of the Living Dead" and our old, beloved Cinderella. In both cases, by the way, the films were not filmed in color only for technical or financial reasons, so the creation of their colored versions was even historically justified.