Colorized movies

I was going through some old VHS tapes the other day, when I found a recording of the 1939 film The Hunchback of Notre Dame that had been taped off a local television station (WOAY) in 1989.

The version of the film happened to be Ted Turner's colorized version, and boy was it awful! At the risk of stating the obvious, everything relating to color, contrast, and texture looked wrong and unnatural.



They even took the crayons to this:



And if the colorization alone wasn't bad enough:

 

Hey, it's "100% mono compatible"!

 

Chace does good work - their stuff does fold-down to mono very well.

Colorization doesn't fold-down to monochrome...it just plain sucks.

 

Why not?

 

Saw 'Miracle on 34th Street' the other night. It was the colorized version, and although it's not my bag, it looked pretty decent.

 

...kinda like fake stereo?

 

The people in the clip don't even look real. It looks like (bad) animation/claymation.

 

The 1934 version "The Count Of Monte Cristo" I purchased on VHS in the late 80's was colorized and in EP to boot on VCI tapes. As far as I know this magnificent movie was not made available in any other format. It is one that I transferred to DVD because I love it so much I can overlook the fact that it was colorized. I would love to buy a glorious Black & White deluxe version of this true classic.

Edmond Dantes (Robert Donat): "It's not my sword, Mondego, but your past that disarmed you."

 

You're joking, aren't you? IMO, colorization of a movie is as bad or even worse that pan and scan.

 

I've never seen a colorized movie that looks even remotely watchable.
(IMO)

 

(Sigh) You traditionalists! What's the problem? To paraphrase Paul McCartney: it wasn't black & white in the studio when they made these films!!!

 

I'm against it as well. It panders to prejudices against different technology which should be directly addressed and is a ridiculous waste of resources. The only colorized film I've seen that looked at all "realistic" and watchable was the '50's Walt Disney Zorro series done in the late '80's iirc. It did, again if I recall rightly, look ok, but even then I'd rather have it the way they filmed it to look, in (sharper) black and white. That Hunchback colorization looks like a true horror.

 

'cause even when we're not speaking of a case where the effect of black and white is part of the artistic feel, the color is still lost. The colorization adds fake color, not the color that was really there.

 

What I find fascinating is that Ted Turner, who was the biggest offender (clever in that the new colour version gave him a copyright), is now a leader in presenting films restored in their original B&W glory.

 

Exactly the arguement I made for the process back when I had one of my first letters printed in Video magazine (remember that one?) back in the mid-80's.

My arguement was, it WASN'T putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa, but it was going back to the best resurrection they could do...and putting a mustache on THAT. Also, saving the resored version for further life.

The other argument was, even if you didn't like the process then, it, like so many other processing techniques, would only get better under the practiced hands of a master - so let them practice! Like NoNoise, it's a tool, not a demon.

 

I wonder when they'll get around to colorizing "Dr. Stangelove" or "Young Frankenstein"? That'll make 'em better, right?

 

"The Elephant Man", "Raging Bull" & "Schindler's List" definitely need to be colourized.

 

Well, somebody slipped up and let that little colorized girl into "Schindler's..." but that was just a fluke, I guess.

 

I was, of course, being facetious since those movies were intentionally filmed in B&W (although "Raging Bull" & "Schindler's List" both have a little colour).

 

I think the Kansas Visitors Bureau should demand they colorize the sepia scenes in Wizard Of Oz, and return the middle part to black & white - just like we remember watching it on TV in 1962.

 

I read in an article in the LA times about 5 years ago that there are still firms that are around that colorize movies. The irony is that they have improved the technology to colorize films.
I think Ted Turner realized that it was just bad business to colorize films.
The whole point in doing it was to get people who didn't like black and white to watch an old film because it was now in color.
But the truth is people don't like old films because they are old.

If you look at Schindler's list and Ed Wood or even Young Frankenstein, its not the black and white that is the problem. It was the fact that old films feel old via bad audio or bad film. These new black and white films had good sound quality and didn't feel hokey.
Today, many of those OLD FILMS in black and white look great as they are transfered to dvd.