Should The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night Be Colorized for a New Generation To Enjoy?

No way. Great movie just as it is.

 

Reported.

 

Is Help a hit with modern audiences? Even in Full color? No. So no money to be made with a colorized AHDN.

 

A Hard Day's Night is a FAR SUPERIOR movie to Help! To me there's not much comparison, so it makes it tough to draw a fair conclusion that way.

 

No.

 

Nope. I have zero interest in an altered "AHDN" - or any other B&W movie.

People seem to forget that the movie was specifically photographed for B&W, so just slapping color onto it isn't as simple as it sounds.

You can get a movie that's in color, but even if the color looks real, the movie still wasn't lit/photographed for color so it's never going to look right.

I just think colorizing is stupid. If you can't stand to watch something in B&W then don't - there are 1000s of color movies out there for you!

 

I can take movies with stereo/5.1 remixes that were originally mono if individual stems still exist.

I can take music redone into stereo/5.1 that were originally mono under the same circumstances - if the elements exist on unique channels, this music can be redone in 2.0 or 5.1.

But to take a mono source and use cheap, tacky methods ala reprocessed stereo indeed is a bad idea. Fake stereo doesn't work, and neither does colorization...

 

Negative

 

B&W was more accepted in the 70s, largely because a lot of people still had black and white TVs. When I was 11, my parents bought me my own TV, and it was B&W.

I still suspect more than a few people resisted B&W movies even then, though. I agree that once color TVs were at 100% in the 80s, it became even tougher to sell B&W, but I have to believe a decent number of people didn't care for it even in the 70s.

IIRC, Mel Brooks had to fight hard to get the studio to let him shoot "Young Frankenstein" in B&W, and that goes way back to 1974!

 

You're a huge Beatles fan and you dislike "AHDN" - sorry, does not compute!

 

Not at all

 

Here's what this originally looked like:

 

That would be like remixing The Whi..

 

And many reasons why most 2019 movies do not appeal to lovers of 1964 (and earlier) films like me.

 

I'd watch it. The accents are harder for more (non-Brit) people to follow than the black'n'white tho. Nothing really gained from colorizing it.

 

All good points. I'll add The Raging Bull movie to your list. It was also in B&W. As a ps I also grew up with a blonde B&W Zenith TV with a remote (which I managed to break). We had that TV until 1970. I was always amazed at color when we would visit relatives, but a few didn't even have TVs!

My general point is B&W adds to the general atmosphere of the movie. 1964 was the last year that many TV shows were B&W and the B&W tells the viewer you are in a different time and place. It would be out of place for AHDN to be in color.

One last point, did you know there were some people who wanted to colorize the start and the end of The Wizard of Oz?

 

I have my Criterion blu ray - I have no problem with them colorizing. Why would I?

 

I'm going to go against everyone else and say yes.
However, only if they could find enough color photographs from the film sessions that establish the correct colors for each scene.
I'd be against them just guessing the colors of certain things.
If it could be done properly, then I don't see why not as long as the original stays in print. Correct the music playing too slow while they're at it.

 

I see what you did there

 

it can if done properly...just look at It's A Wonderful Life! I 'd say that works...I love the B&W best but the colorized is also much fun.

 

Did you take a look at that small clip of AHDN colorized that Lance posted a couple pages back? OMG that alone proves it can be done and look glorious. Take a look if you haven't seen it yet. It's amazing!

 

I can't recall if he discusses it in the DVD/Blu-ray extras, but I'd guess Scorsese had less of a fight - ha! - with the studio about shooting "Bull" in B&W than Brooks did with "YF" because "Bull" was always gonna be a "prestige film" and not necessarily one that would appeal to a general audience.

With "YF", Brooks was coming off of "Blazing Saddles", one of the most successful comedies of all-time, so he had totally different commercial expectations.

Funny to realize that two of the 5 Best Picture noms for 1980 went to black and white movies! I'm betting you have to go back to 1960 or earlier to find a year with 2 B&W Oscar noms!