Chapter 4 Storytelling with Light 145Th ese early uses added some color to black and white moving images, but
true color soon became a goal of some motion picture technicians. Additive
color systems were created in the fi rst years of the twentieth century, including
Kinemacolor in England and Dufaycolor in France, but these processes
required too much light through the fi lters in which primary colors were
added together to produce the full spectrum of colors.
Th e color system that fi rst took hold on the industry was a subtractive
system known as Technicolor. In the three-strip Technicolor process, separate
rolls of negative pass through a complex camera setup that split the light so
that it can be recorded onto three rolls of fi lm that are sensitive to either
red, green, or blue. Th e three fi lm negatives, which are in cyan, magenta,
and yellow, are combined to produce a single positive print in full color.
Use of this process required quite a signifi cant amount of technical mastery
and the reactions of the celluloid to particular hues and saturations of color
demanded rigorous oversight.
Th e results could be quite brilliant, as one can see in some of the
most notable color fi lms from the 1930s and 1940s , including Disney’s
Silly Symphonies, Snow White, and Pinocchio, and two well-known Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer classics directed by Victor Fleming in 1939, Th e Wizard
of Oz and Gone with the Wind. Th e vibrant tones of Robin Hood, directed
by Michael Curtiz in 1938, perfectly match the robust energy of the action
and romance in the movie. Meet Me In Saint Louis (1944) and Gigi (1958),
directed by Vincente Minnelli, are noted as landmarks for their uses of color
to add resonance to the drama and emotions of their stories and to bring
their settings vividly to life.Figure 4-27 Hermione
Gingold, Louis Jourdan, and
Leslie Caron in Gigi, directed
by Vincente Minnelli with
Technicolor cinematography
by Joseph Ruttenberg.
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