Friday, October 14, 2011

In a Colorful World, Sometimes Black and White Tells the Best Story

Netflix has changed its mind again!  Netflix had planned to offer streaming video and then create a new service (Qwikster) to offer DVD rentals.  Now the Qwikster plan has been shelved.

When Netflix went wobbly last month, I switched my movie rental business to a startup company called Bliter.com.  Bliter only offers Black & White films.  But even Bliter has undergone a change. 

Recently, Bliter’s subscribers made it clear that this genre of films is actually White & Black, not Black & White.  So Bliter, bowing to pressure, changed its name to Whackster.

“The Third Man” and “Citizen Kane” are considered by many critics to be the best films ever made.  Both are B&W; both also feature Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten.  Had they been shot in color, these films would be failures.

There is something intriguing about B&W cinematography.   “Gaslight”, a thoroughly scary thriller starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman, relies on the mysteriously dimming gas lights in Bergman’s town house.  B&W film accents the low lighting.  Color film just can’t do this.

Thanks to B&W, Joseph Cotten is even more evil as a serial killer in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt.”  Can you imagine Hitchcock’s “Psycho” in color? 

Not all B&W films are murder mysteries.  Gary Cooper played Marshall Will Kane in the western, “High Noon.”  Cary Grant played an overwhelmed nephew in the comedy, “Arsenic and Old Lace.”  Humphrey Bogart stayed one step ahead of the Nazis in wartime “Casablanca.” 

David O. Selznick won Best Picture Oscars in 1939 and 1940 for “Gone with the Wind” and “Rebecca”, respectively.  Selznick obviously knew his media.  GWTW had to be filmed in color; “Rebecca” had to be filmed in B&W.

B&W films add a touch of grit to the plot.  Compare “The Bedford Incident” (Richard Widmark) to “The Hunt for Red October” (Sean Connery) or “Crimson Tide” (Gene Hackman).  “The Bedford Incident” (B&W) keeps you on edge throughout; you feel the chill of the North Atlantic in this Cold War submarine chase.

Elmore Leonard’s short story, “3:10 To Yuma”, was first made into a movie in1957.  Starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin, the movie evolves as a morality play which is accented by B&W cinematography.  The 2007 remake of the same name is in color, and not surprisingly, it is gunplay for gunplay’s sake.  Russell Crowe and Christian Bale are sadly diminished by the relentless carnage.

Blood really shows up in color.  Maybe that’s why directors avoid B&W nowadays. 

Color film has its place.  I cannot imagine “Lawrence of Arabia” or “Bridge on the River Kwai” not being filmed in color.  Yet, Sir David Lean, the director of those masterpieces, shot “Oliver Twist” and “Great Expectations” in B&W.

Steven Spielberg did choose B&W for “Schindler’s List”.  Can you imagine a color version?  But for the life of me, I cannot understand why he didn’t rely on B&W for “Jaws” and “Saving Private Ryan.”  The choice is so obvious.

David O. Selznick would have used B&W.  So would have Sir David Lean.  There, the “Davids” have it!

The studio system ruled the B&W era.  For all of their faults, the studios gave us some interesting pairings of leading men and leading ladies (Claude Rains and Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, et al.)  If the studio system still ruled, there would be five “Meryl Streeps” instead of one.  However, I am not sure that any of today’s leading men could match even Fred MacMurray (“Double Indemnity” with Barbara Stanwyck), let alone Clark Gable. 

From the 1930s through the 1950s, actors knew how to act.  They acted with their eyes, facial tics, and hand movements as well as with the way they delivered their lines.  Eli Wallach was 92 when he appeared in 2010’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.”  Though he has few lines, he is constantly acting—flinching and using his walking stick—while the rest of the cast just spouts rhetoric.

B&W also brought us the horror genre.  Claude Rains was the “Invisible Man” (by H. G. Wells.)  John Barrymore, Frederic March and Spencer Tracy have all starred as “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (by Robert Louis Stevenson.)  Wells and Stevenson understood that the true horror is the evil lurking inside of us, not an otherworldly creature.  B&W film allows for the transformation in ways that color cannot.

B&W rules!



Ten recommended B&W films:
  • The Night of the Hunter (1955)
  • Lured (1947)
  • Deception (1946)
  • Ball of Fire (1941)
  • Sunset Blvd. (1950)
  • Grand Hotel (1932)
  • Our Man in Havana (1962)
  • Advise and Consent (1962)
  • The Big Heat (1953)
  • Hobson’s Choice (1954)