b&w AND color

R

ruben

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A few days ago I saw on TV a film by Claude Lellouche, which i don't know how it translates to English but the meaning of the film title should be something like "Happy New Year For The Lovers". The central actor is the legendary Lino Ventura. The film was done by 1974.

The interesting thing for us, was that the first and last quarters of the film were done in black & white, and the remaining center half, in color.

The black and white parts were done so well, I mean that the balance of tones and contrast, displayed so good in my humble TV, that I got the strange feeling that I could see the whole film in B&W or in color, without noticing any substantial or aesthetical difference. Perhaps lighting had a great part too.

This in contrast to a more or less recent film featuring G. Clooney, and done in full black and white, which i saw both at cinema and TV, in which the treatment of the tones and high contrast was a disaster to my taste.

The only conclusion i can draw is that well done black and white can challenge standard color. And put an accent on "well done", since I don't remember another black and white film I saw on TV matching Lellouche standards.

Perhaps my opinion is too byassed, I don't know, this is what I felt.

Cheers,
Ruben
 
Ruben,

The old film makers really understood how to use light and shadow to convey mood, location, tension. Watching any of the old masters is truly amazing. My favorite is Alfred Hitchcock. He was truly a master.

Bob
 
I agree rpsawin, hitchcock's films still look great now! I wonder if I could find the film here your talking about Rubin, what's the exact title?
 
A Man And A Woman (Un Homme Et Une Femme)

Warner Bros. // 1966 // 103 Minutes // Not Rated
Reviewed by Appellate Judge Dan Mancini (Retired) // April 28th, 2003

http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/manandwoman.php



It's the look of A Man and a Woman that recommends it today, so long after its initial release. A raw little film shot by Lelouch with handheld cameras and available light in both color and black and white, it's a reminder that the sleekly produced modern Hollywood romance isn't the only way to go, that romantic films can benefit from the raw aesthetics of the low-budget independent. The story itself feels like a vehicle for Meg Ryan, but the look is pure Parker Posey territory.
Aimée and Trintignant are movie-star pretty, but Lelouch's style gives them both a weighty humanity, as do their performances. Like any respectable disciple of the French New Wave, Lelouche gives his actors plenty of room to improvise, to get to the heart of a scene via whatever path feels natural. The tentative nature of the interactions between Aimée and Trintignant—their halting eye-contact, pregnant pauses, nervous laughs—undercuts (in a good way) their sparkling good looks and movie-star mystique.
The film is often dismissed for the simplicity of its love story as a result of its charm disintegrating on subsequent viewings. It's use of flashback is engaging the first time out, without taxing the viewer's patience. The way it builds narrative tension around the identities and whereabouts of each of the leads' spouses is also entertaining: is it a movie about emotionally damaged spurned lovers, a grieving widow and widower, adulterers? This sleight of hand keeps you guessing but fails to pay off satisfactorily in the end, and disappears like vapor the second time through.
With the exception of some annoying specks that appear intermittently on the image and almost look like dirt on the lens of the camera since they're static over the moving image and last through entire shots, Warner's presentation of the film on DVD leaves little to complain about. Framed at an anamorphically enhanced 1.85:1, colors are appropriately natural during the color sections, and black levels are solid with no bleeding in the black and white segments.
Which brings me to the strange case of the different film stocks used for the movie. Don't tie yourself in knots trying to deduce the artistic significance of Lelouch's use of both color and black-and-white photography (does one represent the present and the other the past? Is one or the other tied to a particular character's point of view?) because his reasons were strictly mercenary: he'd intended to shoot the entire thing in black and white because it was significantly less expensive to do so, but was informed American television rights could be procured if he shot in color. He struck a compromise, shooting interiors in black and white, and exteriors in color. That's all there is to it. The film stocks themselves mean nothing, but once you get into the rhythm of the film's shifting back and forth, it becomes a comfortable and even engaging conceit.
 
d_ross said:
.... I wonder if I could find the film here your talking about Rubin, what's the exact title?
Click to expand...

Googling at English Wikipedia, I could only find the original title in French:

La Bonne Année

which is already quite better than my translation from the Hebrew title.

Cheers,
Ruben

BTW, Tuolumne, the review you quote about A Man And A Woman , sound to me somehow belitteling. At least for the French and Spannish speaking countries, this film is held as a cult one. Or a classic.
Something of the sort of the OM1 here.:)

And back to La Bonne Année , ceirtainly this one was not done at natural light.
 
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A number of Soviet films were shot in mixed black&white and colour. Examples that come to my mind are At Home among Strangers, a Stranger at Home (Свой среди чужих, чужой среди своих, 1970), which is a brilliant Western-esque film about a lone KGB man somewhere in Central Asia trying to reclaim his honour; it has a long scene depicting a train robbery which is shot entirely in black & white with surreal shadow play that enhances the incomprehensibility and cruelty of the situation; or Tarkovsky's masterpiece Stalker of 1979, where the main character is an outsider that lives and works in a dangerously contaminated "Zone", and the Zone footage is in colour, while the "normal" work outside is in a grim black & white. The reason was usually shortage of colour film stock, but the choice which scenes to shoot how was usually made on artistic grounds.

Philipp
 
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