Cinema snobs around the world scoffed when polarizing director Zack Snyder announced that his indulgent superhero opus would be Zack Snyder’s Justice League republished in a desaturated black and white version He had named Zack Snyder’s Justice League: Justice Is Gray. I was among them, but mostly because Snyder’s joyless take on DC’s pantheon of comic book heroes was already stripped of anything that resembled a primary color. And Snyder is hardly the first director to claim there is value in watching a black and white version of a movie filmed in color.
Roll your eyes to Snyder what you want (or, if you prefer, viciously defend him through abusive tweets and emails), but it just follows a precedent from Oscar-winning George Miller who believes the colorless “Black & Chrome” version of Mad Max: Fury Road is “The best version of the film”. James Mangold’s Logan is that Top-rated entry in the X-Men franchiseand the positive critical reception likely supported the director’s decision Drop a discolored version that elevates the post-apocalyptic noir vibe of the film.
And you have to appreciate the honesty of Bong Joon-Ho, who admits a driving force behind the release of a black and white version of last year’s best-picture satire Parasite. “When I think of the classics, they are all in black and white,” he said during the 2020 Rotterdam International Film Festival. as quoted in The Hollywood Reporter. “So I got the idea that if I turned my films into black and white, my films would become classics.”
While this is certainly up for debate (there are plenty of bad movies from Hollywood’s Black and White Golden Age), Bong is right about one thing: draining the paint off a movie changes the way you watch it. “We can focus more on the texture [of each scene], ” He told the participants of the film festival. “[T]The movie felt more intense. it felt like [more] cruel. “That means you have to watch all your favorite color movies again in black and white – even if no such officially approved version has been released – by simply adjusting your TV’s settings (especially lower the color, cranking it up), the contrast and adjusting the brightness a).
Let’s get the caveats out of the way first, even if you may leave angry comments that will highlight them anyway. Yes, it’s the height of hubris to assume watching a faded version when the filmmakers haven’t sanctioned it (a sin almost as bad as watching a movie at double speed). Another heresy that I’m not naturally against). Yes, cineasts railed for years against the coloring of old black and white films, but that’s not exactly the same – there’s no chance the color version will come out of life because you’ve been messing around on your TV.
And yes, there is a difference between a movie shot in black and white and the “wrong” black and white you see when you tweak the contrast of your TV, or even something like the parasite faux grayscale parasite, which has been digitally, but still optimized, only roughly corresponds to the appearance of a “real” black and white film. (Previously, the never-seen colors of makeup, props, and costumes were chosen the way they wanted complement and contrast each other on black and white film.)
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But even if there isn’t a “real” black and white version of your favorite color film, there’s nothing wrong with giving it another spin without RGB to see if it hits you differently Acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh knows this: in 2014 he shared a digitally decolorized version of Raiders of the Lost Ark, a fact I learned via the blog of writer and artist Austin Kleonwho, following Soderberg’s example, tried and enjoyed another Steven Spielberg film in black and white – Jurassic Park (Velociraptors: The Ultimate Femmes Fatale). In Kleon’s words:
I couldn’t believe how good it looked – all the rain and smoke from Samuel L. Jackson’s cigarette in the control room made it feel almost noirical. (And it definitely emphasized the horror elements.) An old movie becomes new. Magic!
Give it a try and see if and how it changes your impressions of the films you love. Does Ferris Bueller’s Day Off seem like a nifty French farce now? Will the loving pans in New York City in When Harry Met Sally … start giving you the Manhattan vibe? Does the new Godzilla vs. Kong finally feel like a real homage to the Kaiju classics? Judge with your own eyes and fuck the haters.
