Kodachrome Test 1922

By Miss Cellania in Film on Aug 23, 2010 at 8:47 am


(YouTube link)

This color footage was filmed even before movies had sound, and 13 years before a color feature film was released.

George Eastman House is the repository for many of the early tests made by the Eastman Kodak Company of their various motion picture film stocks and color processes. The Two-Color Kodachrome Process was an attempt to bring natural lifelike colors to the screen through the photochemical method in a subtractive color system. First tests on the Two-Color Kodachrome Process were begun in late 1914. Shot with a dual-lens camera, the process recorded filtered images on black/white negative stock, then made black/white separation positives. The final prints were actually produced by bleaching and tanning a double-coated duplicate negative (made from the positive separations), then dyeing the emulsion green/blue on one side and red on the other. Combined they created a rather ethereal palette of hues.”

Link -via Nag on the Lake

Previously: 19th Century Color Motion Picture.


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  1. Christophe
    Aug 23rd, 2010 at 12:41 pm

    wow! 1922 make-up…

  2. Minnesotastan
    Aug 23rd, 2010 at 12:45 pm

    Outstanding! I can’t find any explanation at the link regarding why this process wasn’t commercially exploited. Perhaps audiences were sufficiently awed by B&W, and this would have been more expensive.

    Thanks for posting this.

  3. pasher71
    Aug 23rd, 2010 at 12:46 pm

    very cool, i love old stuff like this, what was with the lady at the end though?? I’d give a dollar to know what she was saying.

  4. Bikebreath
    Aug 23rd, 2010 at 1:57 pm

    Oh, so nice! I wished for a period sound-track.

  5. Marty
    Aug 23rd, 2010 at 6:57 pm

    Anyone up on their old silent movie actresses? I thought the last woman looked a lot like Mae Murray, but wasn’t sure. Hopefully, I am not the only one left out there who knows who Mae Murray was!

  6. Miss Cellania
    Aug 23rd, 2010 at 7:21 pm

    According to the linked article, it is indeed Mae Murray.

  7. Foreigner1
    Aug 24th, 2010 at 12:21 am

    Wow Marty you’re good! My only reaction to her was hey she somehow looks familiar, but then again lots of these actrices from back then have a certain kind of stereotype look. Just like nowadays they all would look the same if we would look back at them about a hundred years later.

    To see her in moving color is amazing- never thought to see that.


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