climactic game in which the figure of Death (in a
black cowl) plays with black pieces, while the
Knight, who has returned from the Crusades to
find his country ravaged by the Black Plague, plays
with white pieces.
Tonality—the system of tones—is the distin-
guishing quality of black-and-white film stock. This
system includes the complete range of tones from
black to white. Anything on the set—furniture,
furnishings, costumes, and makeup—registers in
these tones. Even when a film is shot in black and
white, it is customary to design its settings and cos-
tumes in color. Black-and-white cinematography
achieves its distinctive look through such manipu-
lation of the colors being photographed and
through the lighting of them. During the height of
the classical Hollywood studio system, set and
costume designers worked in close collaboration
with directors of photography to ensure that the
colors used in their designs produced the optimal
varieties of tones in black and white. Their goal was
to ensure a balance of “warm” and “cold” tones to
avoid a muddy blending of similar tones. Some-
times the colors chosen for optimal tonality on film
were unattractive, even garish, on the set. Audi-
ences were none the wiser, however, because they
saw only the pleasing tonal contrasts in the final
black-and-white movie.
Manipulation of tonal range makes black-and-
white movies visually interesting, but that isn’t all it
does. For good or ill, tonality in black-and-white films
often carries with it certain preconceived interpre-
tations (e.g., black = evil, white = good). As simplistic,
misleading, and potentially offensive as these inter-
pretations may be, they reflect widespread cultural
traditions that have been in effect for thousands of
years. The earliest narrative films, which greatly
appealed to immigrant audiences (most of whom
could neither read nor speak English), often relied
on such rough distinctions to establish the moral
frameworks of their stories. Later, even though
both audiences and cinematography became moreTonal rangeThis shot from Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon
(1952; cinematographer: Floyd Crosby) illustrates the tonal
range possible in black-and-white cinematography: from
absolute white (in the shirt), through a series of grays, to
absolute black (in the bottom of the hat’s brim). For the
purposes of explanation, this illustration includes only six
tones out of the complete range. Note that although he is
the movie’s protagonist, Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper)
wears a black hat——typically, in less sophisticated morality
tales, the symbolic mark of the bad guy.
Black-and-white tonalityThe opening scene of
Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success(1957;
cinematographer: James Wong Howe) takes place near
midnight in Times Square, which is alive with activity. The
thousands of incandescent and neon lights create a brash
black-and-white environment in which the space lacks both
depth and shadows. The people packed on the streets are
members of a crowd, not individuals. In other movies, such
bold blacks and whites might suggest the contrast of good
and evil, but the lighting here gives no clue as to which is
which.CINEMATOGRAPHIC PROPERTIES OF THE SHOT 233