Glorious Technicolor

This is a documentary on the history of Technicolor, starting right from the inception and through until recently. It consists of clips from films, interviews, rare footage of stars in two colors, stills and voice-over by Narration She Spoke. We see the progression(early on, flesh tones weren't deemed important! Instead, focus was on the backgrounds, set and FX) and the early skepticism... not only did people in the business not believe that we didn't want to hear the actors speak, they didn't think that it should go beyond black and white, either! Hearing from the people who experienced it first-hand(and some of them even worked with it, directly) is quite interesting, and any film geek will enjoy the one-hour running time of this. It's well-edited and thoroughly researched. If you aren't already into this subject, however, this isn't likely to win you over and get your attention. There is no offensive material in this, except for the old gender roles and the like... the one bit of strong language is carefully bleeped out. I recommend this to those who want to know about it. 7/10

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".

This excellent documentary is included on the bonus disc for "The Adventures of Robin Hood". It is terrific from start to finish and is narrated by Angela Lansbury. It begins, not surprisingly, with the earliest color processes and moves right to the history of the Technicolor company and the Hollywood films made using this film stock. In addition, it discusses the supplanting of the three-strip process with the later Eastman process. All of this is very, very interesting for film buffs like myself. My only complaint, and it's a minor one, is that there WERE alternative processes to Technicolor--both the Two and Three-strip film. Why Cinecolor and other early rivals are not mentioned is a bit baffling. And, occasionally, the prints shown seem to be second-rate and over-saturated--which is odd, since it was produced by Turner Classic Movies who owns the rights to most of the films. But considering how wonderfully complete and interesting the film is otherwise, I'll forgive this omission. Not perfect but well worth seeing and one more reason to buy the DVD for "Robin Hood".

Glorious Technicolor (1998)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely entertaining documentary from Turner Classic Movies tells the story of Technicolor. We start off getting some early examples of color including films that were hand tinting frame-by-frame and then we get to pictures like THE TOLL OF THE SEA, which made good money at the box office but not enough for the added expense. From here we see how 2-strip Technicolor was produced before finally getting to the three strip. The documentary does an extremely good job at giving you all the details that you could hope for. We learn about its creator, Herbert Kalmus, who wanted to credit for what he did and in fact he hired a publicist to keep his name out of the media. We learn how many of the studios felt that color had no place in movies and it's funny because many of the comments sounded just like the ones we heard when sound was coming into play. Many actresses didn't want to be filmed in color and we even hear how MGM kept it away from their features and only OK'd it for short films. Ester Williams, Arlene Dahl, Evelyn Keyes and John Alton are just a few of the people who are interviewed. Some of the best moments in the film are of course the scenes that really show off the color and everything it was capable of doing. We get clips from the major titles like THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD and THE WIZARD OF OZ all the way up to some of the very last films to use the process including the Michael Powell pictures. If you're unfamiliar with the process then this is the perfect place to learn about it and get some good ideas for rentals.

This 1-hour documentary details the history of this most famous of color processes, still considered the most satisfying - and durable - ever devised for purposes of filming. It also provides biographical data about the two people most important for its development and promotion - Dr. Herbert Kalmus and his wife Natalie; their thorny relationship and hers with the various studio bosses, when she eventually took Technicolor under her wing, is a great story in and of itself...but the documentary pays tribute as well to the many film-makers and auteurs who adopted the color system as their ideal mode of expression. There is a bit of an over-insistence on musical extravaganzas of the 1940s and 1950s but, then, it also affords reasonable time to classic illustrations of Technicolor on the screen - in particular, GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) and other David O. Selznick productions - and even touches upon how it fared in other countries, primarily Great Britain (where the process was perhaps seen at its best advantage in the idiosyncratic visions of The Archers' films).