salmi, hannu_history in colour_spectacle.pdf

7/27/2019 Salmi, Hannu_History in Colour_Spectacle.pdf

1/10

http://users.utu.fi/hansalmi/color.html

retrieved 29/7/13

This article will be published in Fotogenia (University of Bologna)

in 1995

Hannu Salmi:

"HISTORY IN COLOR"

Color, Spectacle and History in Epic Film

Since the beginnings of dramatic film, narrativization of past

events has been one of the most productive areas of film making.

As the German historian Jrn Rsen argues, historical narration

aims to make sense of the experience of time.(1) This making of

sense (Sinnbildung) is not a privilege of professional

historians. History is produced in a variety of cultural

products, in novels and poems, in commercials and newspapers, in

TV series and films.(2) During the 20th century, historical film

has been one of the most influential factors in the formation of

historical consciousness.

Film scholars have written countless pages about the history

of historical films, but what has been left untouched is the

question: Can we identify a certain historical style or specific

narrative elements that are typical of cinematic historical

discourse? I am myself convinced that such a style exists. There

are certainsigns of historicity, which are needed as markers

that the film in question represents historical narration. One

such marker, which carries historical implications, is the use

of epic music; but there are also many visual elements that are

common to historical films.(3)

The use of color has also played a specific role in this

genre. In the following presentation I wish to concentrate on the

problem of color both as a cinematic attraction and as a

historical attribute. Color seems to exist not only as a physical

term, as something opposite to monochrome, but also as a metaphor

referring either to the imaginative 'coloring' of historical

events or to a certain richness of the past. In the study of

color, it is necessary to study not only the films themselves but

also how they have been received by the public and how the

meaning of color has been perceived.
http://users.utu.fi/hansalmi/color.htmlhttp://users.utu.fi/hansalmi/color.htmlhttp://users.utu.fi/hansalmi/color.html


2/10

Color as Attraction

Historical films have been made since the first years of motion

pictures. The Edison Manufacturing Company, for example, shot

several historical tableaux vivants, including Joan of Arc (1895)

and The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895);(4) and theFrench film pioneer Georges Mlis made several short films such

as Clopatre (1899), Neptune et Amphitrite (1899) and Les torches

humaines de Justinien (1908).(5)

It is difficult to estimate how important a role hand-

applied coloring had in these historical films. According to some

previously released collections of early cinema, films colored

by hand were usually fantastic adventures like Mlis' Voyage

travers l'impossible (1904), or fairy tales like Path's Ali

Baba et les quarantes voleurs (1905).(6) Although the latter

could perhaps be characterized as a historical film in the

broader sense of the concept, usually films which were made as

representations of historical events were not colored. It has to

be remembered, however, that during the early cinema historical

film was not an important genre in the flow of production. During

the first decade of the century, films became longer and soon

hand-coloring was replaced by toning and tinting.

We may still argue that historical narration has accompanied

many of the essential turning points of film history. Italian

ancient spectacles, such as Quo vadis? (1912) by Enrico Quazzoniand Cabiria (1914) by Giovanni Pastrone, assured film makers of

the commercial possibilities of full-length feature films and

constituted a further step in the development of film narrative.

Since the 1910s, historical film has been an essential genre.

In the society of the spectacle, to use Guy Debord's

terms,(7) history has revived nationally important imagery and,

simultaneously, offered a spectacular 'exit' from everyday life.

No wonder that spectacle has used new technology to astonish the

audience. When color film was invented, it was soon applied for

historical films as a new source of attraction. In this case, theuse of color was not introduced in order to create a more

realistic vision of history. On the contrary, color sequences

were utilized to give a distinctive dramatic emphasis for the

film. Color was a new attraction that could widen the larger-

than-life atmosphere of the spectacles. Early color sequences can

be found from The Ten Commandments (1923) and The King of Kings

(1927) by Cecil B. DeMille, and from Ben Hur (1927) by Fred

Niblo, for instance. In the resurrection scene of The King of

Kings the miracle was accompanied by modern technology: the

screen burst into color when Christ "came out of the grave".(8)

This film was not at all meant as a historical reconstruction;it was merely planned as a sequel in a longer chain of


3/10

representations of Jesus. Cameraman Peverall Marley tried to

recreate the style of biblical paintings, and to duplicate them

on the screen.(9) According to Derek Elley, there are in sum 298

homages to Christian art.(10) The use of early Technicolor

process offered a possibility to go further in this visual

picture-book.

Some film makers were afraid that color would finally prove

to be only one more element that would estrange film ever more

from artistic purposes. They seemed to agree with Aristotle, who

wrote in the VI book of his Poetics: "The most beautiful colors,

laid on confusedly, will not give as much pleasure as the chalk

outline of a portrait."(11) In principle, film makers such as

Sergei Eisenstein agreed with Cecil B. DeMille, who used color

for dramatic emphasis (although DeMille had also used it as an

attraction per se). "Color is good when it is necessary", wrote

Eisenstein, "that means that color [is] good where and when [it]can most fully express or explain what must be conveyed, said,

or elucidated at the given moment of the development ofaction".(12)

Eisenstein seems to suggest that color should be used only

partly in a film, as he did in his own Ivan the Terrible (1944).

Moreover, color has been used ever since in this manner by those

wanting to make their film an artistic representative of the

"cinema of non-attraction".(13)

The history of color in the cinema in general, however, went

in the opposite direction. During the 1930s, color captured a

strong position in film making, especially in Hollywood. It was

not used for "artistic purposes", nor to increase the "reality-

likeness" of cinema. As Edward Buscombe has pointed out, color -

- unlike sound -- "could not be instantly accommodated to the

realist aesthetic".(14) Buscombe continues by arguing that for

early spectators there was something "unreal" in the use of

color:

In the first few years after the introduction of three-component Technicolor (originally used in the Disney

cartoon Flowers and Trees in 1932), the great majority of

films employing the process were produced within genres not

notably realistic in the sense of their being accurate

representations of what "life" is "like". It can be argued,

of course, that not many Hollywood pictures represent what

life is like; but it nevertheless remains true that a kind

of hierarchy ranks genres according to the extent to which

the world they portray, fictional or not, is close to what

the audience believes the world to be like. Thus at one end

of the scale we find newsreels, documentaries, war films,crime films, etc. and at the other cartoons, musicals,


4/10

westerns, costume romances, fantasies, comedies. Virtually

all the early three-component Technicolor pictures are in

these latter genres.(15)

It must be added that the early Technicolor films where usually

big budget productions. Newsreels and documentaries could not bedone in color simply for productional reasons. Maybe this

inclination to genres that could use color, however, created a

situation where the audience began to associate monochrome with

reality, and color with fantasy.

Many of the early Technicolor films could, however, be

classified as historical films. We only need think of The

Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), or Gone with the Wind (1939).

These historical films could be characterized as spectacles where

color had an essentially attracting function. These films were

not made as realistic representations of authentic past eventsor processes; they were made in terms of entertainment and

spectacle.

This state of things cannot, of course, be generalized to

cover all national cinemas. In different film cultures, the use

of color could have had specific functions. For example, in

German historical films, such as Mnchhausen (1943) by Josef von

Baky or Kolberg (1945) by Veit Harlan, color became a symbol of

the ability to reach the same technical standard as Hollywood.

A similar kind of symbolism can be seen in some early Finnish

color films. Most of the early color productions were remakes

that were based on national literary classics and that had been

earlier filmed as monochrome. The first Finnish full-length color

film was Juha (1956), directed by Toivo Srkk. The film was

based on the novel by Juhani Aho and had been earlier adapted for

the cinema by Nyrki Tapiovaara in 1937. Here, color was a

spectacular attraction that was intensified by the fact that the

film was also the first Finnish widescreen film. It offered

national imagery in color, but at the same time color served as

a symbol of the domestic studio system hereby achieving

international standing.

Color as Non-History

Color as attraction is without doubt a central element in the

aesthetics of historical spectacle. Simultaneously, however, it

is also more than an attraction. The use of color in historical

films implies certain ideas about history. Could it be that

"history in color"(16) is conceived as something different in

essence from the monochrome Zeitgeschichte shown by old documents

and newsreels? Are there thus actually two modes of historical

perception in the cinema?


5/10

The Swedish film scholar Erik Hedling has located three

subcodes from films that alternate between color and monochrome

sequences:

1) The color change can signify a turn into mental process narration.

2) It might indicate dramatic emphasis of a spectacular, crucial and/orsymbolically important moment of the narrative.

3) It can signify temporal changes.(17)

The third subcode can be illustrated, for example, by Alan

Pakula's Sophie's Choice (1982), where the present time, the

cinematic "now", is filmed in color, but the flashbacks in

monochrome. As Hedling points out, the use of black and white

film not only marks memories as different from the present, but

also stresses their reality as historical facts.(18) This subcode

can perhaps be traced back to the history of cinematic color in

general, where color has been marked as fantasy. In addition,however, there is a longer background in the history of color in

other cultural products. We are still used to regarding old black

and white photos as true historical images.

In western culture, there seems to be a certain iconography

of monochrome Zeitgeschichte. This tradition is perhaps even

longer than the history of photography. Michael Camille has

examined the influence of the printing press on the use of

images. In the early days of printing, there was a difference

between the reading of printed and painted images. There are

naturally many difficulties attending any attempt to study the

history of print perception; nevertheless Camille suggests that

"more efficient communication" was associated with black and

white woodcut images, while the "technicolor flashiness" of

painted Franco-Flemish images was more illusionist.(19)

Many of the early books were intended to look like medieval

manuscripts, and the pictures were colored. Printed books were

consciously set into the tradition of the book as a cultural

artefact. During the Reformation, printing technology was applied

not only to generate beautiful folio Bibles, but also to producerushed and cheaply printed pamphlets with black and white

woodcuts. Pamphleteers believed in making an impact upon their

large semi-literate audience. Their products were quick-made,

spontaneous. Their black and white roughness was an important

sign to verify and validate their role as instant history.(20)

This "instant" tradition was continued when newspapers were

born during the 17th century. Their monochrome image was a

contrast to colored books, which were seen as the bearers of the

cultural heritage, whereas newspapers merely reporting current

affairs. Of course, this was also a matter of financialresources. The use of color has been regarded as expensive and


6/10

time-wasting; thus, the lack of color is interpreted as more

authentic and documentary. This is undoubtedly the case in the

case of the use of photographed images. The newspapers that

started to publish photographs at the end of the 19th century had

neither the money nor the time to consider the use of color, even

though color photography would have been technically feasible.In fact, there were many technical problems limiting this

possibility. It was perhaps possible to produce a color photo,

and even print it, but there was no quick means of transmitting

it from the place of the event to the newspaper. As a result of

these many financial and technical factors, most of the

photographs preserved from the 19th and 20th centuries are black

and white images.

Without overgeneralizing, it could, perhaps, be argued that

the history of the 19th and 20th centuries, as a whole, is

conceived as monochrome, since images regarded as authentic fromthat period are, as mentioned above, in black and white. It seems

that the use of color is permitted, on the other hand, in imagesof former centuries, for describing the time before the birth of

photography. This unwritten codex has a strong resemblance to the

historians' definition of films that are valuable for historical

research. Historians discussed film extensively on international

congresses during the 1920s and 1930s, and an Iconographical

Commission was established to consider what kinds of films

merited archival preservation. According to the Commission,

historically valuable films were only those "which record a

person or period from the time after the invention of cinematog-

raphy and without dramaturgic or 'artistic' purposes: those films

which present a visual record of a definite event, person or

locality, and which presuppose a clearly recognizable historical

interest inherent in the subject matter".(21) According to this

definition, cinema could not describe history before the

invention of cinema, or if it did, it was valueless. In this mode

of thinking, color, of course, was an immediate sign of "artistic

purposes", since it displaced the black and white, instant

roughness of reality. In other words, color meant non-history or

falsified history. Reality had been colored.

Evidently, there must be (at least) two notions of history

operating simultaneously. One code suggests that real history is

black and white, and this code seems to work while describing our

near past, such as World Wars I or II. The other code, on the

contrary, presents history "in color", and openly admits that it

is only a story about, not a window onto the past. This code

seems to work especially while dealing with older history, such

as ancient Greece and Rome.

Color as Metaphor


7/10

While reading reviews of American epics of the 1950s and early

60s, the scholar cannot avoid feeling that color was also

understood in a metaphorical sense. The word 'color' is not only

used to refer to visible color effects on the screen, but also

to create a specific vision of history.

Almost all epics filmed in the US and in Italy during those

decades were made in color. The only exception seems to be Julius

Caesar, directed 1953 by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Maybe the producer

wanted to distinguish his Shakespeare adaptation from other

epics, precisely by making it monochrome.

Hollywood epics usually stressed themselves as historical

monuments. Press material catalogued slavishly all the strategic

numbers: how many extras had been used, how many "magnificent

costumes and heraldic trappings" had been made for this "Super

Technirama 70 mm Technicolor epic".(22) Color was presented asan organic part of this monumentality. Similarly, many reviewers

echoed the magic keyword 'Technicolor'.

In the Finnish reviews of Quo Vadis? (1949), Ben Hur (1959),

and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), the most common

characterization seems to be that they were "colorful" stories

about ancient Rome.(23) One reviewer claimed that The Fall of the

Roman Empire was "the most colorful play" that history could

offer.(24) Here, color is a metaphor which refers to the richness

of events, which is undoubtedly also what these films aimed at.

They present history as a continuous parade where legions march,

masses roar and events flow all the time. This parade could even

be advertised in Leopold von Ranke's words as "history as it

really happened".(25) On the other hand, the reference to

"colorfulness" was also made in order to characterize the many

contradictions of the historical period described, tensions that

seeded "events" and produced history. The use of color as

metaphor implies that just as there are complementary colors or

contrasting colors that create the richness of the spectrum, so

there are also contradictory forces in history, the dialectics

of which pushes the development of history further.

In The Fall of the Roman Empire, an introductory voice-over

underlines that the collapse of Rome was "not an event but a

process". This historical process is, however, focused on some

basic binarities. Even in the first minutes of the film, the

spectator is assured that there is a conspiracy against Marcus

Aurelius (Alec Guinness) which aims to overthrow not only

Aurelius himself but also the peaceful policy he embodies. Later,

the same opposition is represented by the confrontation between

Commodus (Christopher Plummer) and Livius (Stephen Boyd). The

overwhelming plot consists of polarities: war vs. peace, hate vs.


8/10

friendship, personal love vs. social loyalty, ethics vs.

corruption.

These contradictions are brought into the field of visuality

too. In the opening scene, set at a cold, isolated headquarters

on the Northern frontier of the Empire, the sky is covered bygrey clouds. As Jon Solomon writes, the "heavy wooden beams and

thick, snow-covered stone walls remind us that ancient life was

not all marble and eating grapes".(26) After the death of

Aurelius, the film moves from the Danubian frontier to Rome, and

the grey face of the film bursts into colors. The sky is clear

and the magnificent temples surrounding Forum Romanum glisten in

the bright sunlight.

The dialectic vision of history was thus not only a model for

reviewers to comprehend what the passage of time is all about,

but also an idea that guided film makers: A good story had toconsist of contradictions complemented by "colorful" rhizomes.

This can for instance be seen in the press booklet printed to

promote Quo Vadis? to international success:

The dream has come true. Filmed in Rome itself, with

color by Technicolor, on many of the very sites of

Henryk Sienkiewicz's romance of love and faith, of

courage and terror, of lust and luxury, tyranny and

the triumph of freedom even in death, "Quo Vadis" is

offered as a tribute to the finest ideals of the human

spirit, and as a triumph of the myriad human skills

that have gone to the making of a great motion picture

- perhaps the greatest.(27)

In sum, history is seen--or, at least, was presented to be

seen--as an interplay between opposed forces, and the

characterization of epics as "colorful" stories is precisely and

appropriately a metaphor for this historical vision. History was

presented as a huge drama set on a huge stage. The opening scene

of The Robe (1953) is an illuminating example of this dramatic

essence of history. During the overture, credits are shown beforea theater curtain. After the last opening credit, "Directed by

Henry Koster", the curtain is raised and the "colorful" stage of

history revealed to the audience. This kind of multicolor drama,

with its carefully designed white temples and red shields, marble

columns and mosaic floors was often promoted as "something

considerably more than a spectacle".(28)

References:

1. Rsen, Jrn: Zeit und Sinn. Strategien historischen Denkens.

Frankfurt am Main 1990, pp. 157-158.


9/10

2. Salmi, Hannu: "Film as Historical Narrative", in: Film-

Historia, Vol. V, No. 1 (1995), pp. 45-54.

3. More about historical style in Salmi, Hannu: Elokuva ja

historia. ("Film and History") Publisher: Suomen elokuva-arkisto.

Painatuskeskus, Helsinki 1993.

4. Musser, Charles: The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen

to 1907. History of the American Cinema. Vol. 1. General Editor:

Charles Harpole. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1990, pp. 86-

87.

5. Elley, Derek: Epic Film. Myth and History. Cinema and Society

Series. London 1984, pp. 173, 188, 200.

6. Early Cinema. Primitives and Pioneers. Vol. I & II. British

Film Institute, Film & Video Library.

7. Debord, Guy: Society of the Spectacle. Black & Red, Detroit

1977; Debord, Guy: Comments on the Society of Spectacle. Verso,

London 1990.

8. Matthew 27:53.

9. Solomon, Jon: The Ancient World in the Cinema. South Brunswick

and New York 1978, p. 112.

10. Elley, op.cit., p.43.

11. Poetics by Aristotle. Translated by S. H. Butcher. Electronic

Text Available through Internet Wiretap (gopher wiretap.spies.com).

12. Eisenstein, Sergei: "Colour Film", in: Movies and Methods.

Volume I. Edited by Bill Nichols. Berkeley and Los Angeles,

California 1976, p. 383.

13. This term "cinema of non-attraction" was used by professor

Jan Olsson (University of Stockholm) in a lecture that dealt withSwedish film censorship and that was delivered in the Conference

of Cinema and TV Studies in Turku, Finland (February 5, 1995).

14. Buscombe, Edward: "Sound and Color", in: Movies and Methods.

Volume II. Edited by Bill Nichols. Berkeley and Los Angeles,

California 1985, p. 88.

15. Ibid., pp. 88-89.

16. "History in Color" is a slogan from an advertisement of an

Italian spectacle Achilles (L'ira di Achille, 1962), directed byMarino Girolami.


10/10

17. Hedling, Erik: "Color and Monochrome in Lindsay Anderson's

if...: An Analysis", in: Lhikuva 1-2/1988. Special issue: Nordic

Cinema Studies - Nordisk filmforskning, p. 63. See also Hedling,

Erik: Lindsay Anderson och filmens estetik. Diss. University of

Lund, Lund 1992.

18. Ibid., p. 63.

19. Camille, Michael: "Reading the Printed Image: Illuminations

and Woodcuts of the Plerinage de la vie humaine in the Fifteenth

Century", in: Printing the Written Word. The Social History of

Books, circa 1450-1520. Edited by Sandra Hindman. Cornell

University Press, Ithaca 1991, pp. 259-267.

20. Cf. Cole, Richard G.: "The Reformation Pamphlet and

Communication Processes", in: Flugschriften als Massenmedium der

Reformationszeit. Beitrge zum Tbinger Symposion 1980. Hrsg. vonHans-Joachim Khler. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1981, pp. 139-145.

21. Cit. Aldgate, Anthony: Cinema and History: British Newsreels

and the Spanish Civil War. Scholar Press, London 1979, p. 5-6.

22. Quotations are from the press material of El Cid distributed

by Samuel Bronston's press bureau. General Reader "El Cid", in:

Finnish Film Archive.

23. Cf. reviews in e.g. Turun Ylioppilaslehti (February 9, 1962),

Kotimaa (March 3, 1961), Helsingin Sanomat (March 5, 1961).

24. "Historian vrikkin nytelm: Rooman valtakunnan tuho", in:

Uusi Maailma 7/1964.

25. Advertisement of The Fall of the Roman Empire, in: Sunday

Times Colour Magazine March 22, 1964.

26. Solomon, op.cit., p. 57.

27. Press book Quo Vadis?, in: Finnish Film Archive.

28. General Reader "El Cid", in: Finnish Film Archive.

salmi, hannu_history in colour_spectacle.pdf

Documents