Glorious Technicolor

[Ed Gordon]

I came across a one hour documentary on Technicolor Corporation on Youtube. My first "real job" was at Technicolor. Not the Technicolor of the famed three-strip process, but the Technicolor which processed Kodachrome film (dream job for a film buff who loved to shoot color movies).

Here is a nice overview of the documentary from IMDB:

Glorious Technicolor -- films, but not all the clips they show here are so glorious

This is an interesting but pretty worshipful account of the company and some of the films made in the process. It mostly ignores the competition, especially that of the 1920s when Technicolor wasn't really all that good. It also slights the hand-painted features of the Silent era, which were often far more beautiful (and far more expensive) than the early color films. It's also hard on Natalie Kalmus, the meddling company "consultant". But for better or worse, Kalmus had something to do with what people like about some of these films.

The best parts are the backstage bits some of which I've never seen anywhere else. There's a stunning wardrobe test of Vivien Leigh and some color snippets of the Marx Brothers. They give time to "La Cucaracha", an early feature, which many accounts of color skip right past to "Becky Sharp". Also good are the excerpts of interviews with cinematographers. It would be nice if we got to hear more from these under-appreciated guys, especially since so many of the clips and trailers that get shown instead are in lousy shape. Many of these faded clips frankly seem like a bad way to celebrate Technicolor films, especially since the films themselves have often been restored to mint condition ("The Adventures of Robin Hood" is a fine example of this).

There's a brief section on the use of Technicolor in England. They ignore the 1940 "Thief of Bagdad" (maybe the best-looking English color production) and spend a lot of time on the somewhat overrated "The Red Shoes", which has only one good sequence. I think they also fail to mention that Huston's "Moulin Rouge", which for my money is still the most beautiful use of color in a film to date, was made in England. (The "Moulin Rouge" DVD looks a lot better than the trailer they include here.) The show covers a lot of ground, especially Vincent Minnelli for some reason, so some innovative uses of Technicolor are ignored, like "Nothing Sacred" and "Leave Her to Heaven" and Lubitsch's "Heaven Can Wait". The show also more or less stops with the films of the 1950s. Technicolor continued to be used into the 1960s and 1970s, usually with a less saturated look, as in "The Godfather".

Here is the documentary:

[Brian Fretwell]

Well as it says for The Black Pirate in the 1920's Technicolor was only red & gree (2-strip), also i have read that for that film th elook was what the diretor wanted, not intended to be realistic.

[Osi Osgood]

This was/is a nice extra on the two disc DVD of the adventures of Robin Hood! Since this documentary came out, it has been discovered that the earliest three strip process was actually, believe it or not, 1902! Sadly, it was made by an obscure fellow that time forgot. In fact, though he had made an apparatus to display his color experiments, he was never able to see the finished product! Through today's computer work, they have been able to put the three elements together, and it truly was what we would call Technicolor, though the inventor of Technicolor probably never heard of this early inventor, otherwise, he would have never wasted time with the two strip Technicolor. I am on my cellphone, so could someone put up a link to the YouTube videos, showing the 1902 process? Edward R. Turner is the man's name. What his process did was photograph each color section, one after another, Red, yellow and blue, 123, 123, 123. So, for each "frame" of finished color, it would take three frames, projected at the same time, to give you each "finished" frame of "Technicolor", but Technicolor, it certainly was, and THIRTY YEARS before "Kalmus" invented three strip Technicolor!

[Ricky Daniels]

Edward R Turners system was indeed ingenious and (imo) perfect for still images. However, it’s colour overlay principle has some colour separation/fringing, but all credit to him, it’s still outstanding and fascinating for the early 1900!