When Film Colorization Goes Wrong

It's shallow at best, pretentious at worst. The artists, directors and filmmakers who worked in black and white, knew what they had. The medium was black, white and grey-scale. They used that to specific effect. Director John Houston was against it for that reason and his daughter, actress Angelica Huston, successfully helped implement legislation in France to prevent colorization of movies against the wishes of their creators.

Would you assume that a charcoal rendering by Picasso should be colored because he couldn't get his hands on some paint? If you had books with black and white engraved by plates by Gustav Dore or Hans Holbein, would you automatically assume they need to colored-in?

Sure, I'm obscenely rich, I can fix that stuff for them.

Those really old B&W Cartoons are - for me anyway - just nauseating to look at. There's just something WRONG about them, from the drawings to the music to the dialog to the "bounciness" of the character. I feel like if I watch too long I'm going to get sucked into the Twilight Zone and spend all eternity with Kevin McCarthy....

@Tod Westlake wasn't it Orsen Welles who said, on his deathbed, something to the effect of, "Don't let that man touch my film!"? he was referring to Ted Turner wanting to colorize Citizen Kane.

anyway, i'm not militant about it, but overall don't really see the point in colorizing film. it seems to destroy a lot of the artistry in it, especially because production crews had to go to great lengths to balance contrast (ie, if you saw a color photo of many of the actors, they'd often have on tons of strangely-colored makeup to make the contrast look correct in black and white.)

i don't have a problem with "cleaning up" black and white films (like correcting balance, saturation, that sort of thing), or fixing audio which seems to lose a LOT of high end as it ages. but i think of that more as maintenance and preservation, rather than fundamentally changing the whole film, like colorization does. celluloid film does not age well, especially if it's just tossed in the corner of a warehouse somewhere. i'm all for cleaning up and digitizing classic films, but i still don't understand the point behind colorizing them, since it doesn't seem to benefit anyone in any way.

Of course it can be done badly but if you have seen the recent post on Neatorama of colorized iconic photos (Churchill, Lincoln) then you know it can be done extremely well. Why were these shot it b&w? Because the color processes at the time were either horribly expensive or poor quality. It wasn't an artistic decision, they would have done them in color if it was possible. My complaint is when the process compromises quality.

I dislike colorizing. It's better to see black and white movies and television programs as their creators envisioned them.

The cow's foot disappears at 3:57 in the colored version.

The color one lost a lot of detail in the conversion, corners seem to have been cut.

Colorization is from the DEVIL!

I agree completely with samuel. If you put the dedication and care into colorization that you would into creating your own film- which is essentially what you're doing- it can be done well. That's not usually the case, though, so I wish they'd stop doing it.

When? What do you mean 'when film colorization goes wrong'? It IS wrong in and of itself.

why can't the "new" generation just accept the past as the past and move on with their lives? Seriously, remaking films is already horrible enough as it is, they have to ruin black and whites now? I didn't even watch the video provided because I could already see that the colorization is not going to be any better then the black and white. Plus, black and white is great, or at least I think so because I like to imagine what it might be like rather then knowing that it might not even be the colors I am imagining. For example, we all know Mickey wears red shorts yet in the colorization he has blue on... totally ruins the effect or the imagination of what we might think of the color he is wearing. if that makes sense.
I'm again colorization and remakes. the new generation that can't stand the black and whites or that feel the need to remake films, they can go blow themselves and find something of their own. Stop messing with the past.

Well the question at the end is kind of moot, since they've been colorizing ever since they knew. Another interesting point is that I would not call what they did you this cartoon "colorizing." Colorizing being a process where they take original frames and add colors to them. this was clearly completely redrawn, they didn't just trace them, they redrew them. Making it in effect a new cartoon.

Actual colorizing I find almost always looks fake, especially in skin tone, and almost always ruins the intended artistry, the men and women who had to figure out exactly how different colours would be rendered on different types of black and white film.

If they are to do colour it shouldn't be done carelessly (like some sloppy 2D to 3D conversions,) If they would put as much or more attention into preserving the original artistry as the filmakers did, then I'm all for it. Unfortunatly most of what I see colorized today seems like a sloppy paint by numbers, where skin tones become flat, eyes become glossy and lighting and shadow go out the window.

wel, the balck and white one wil stay available, so this only alows more people to see the content. It's not a terible thing if some VHS classics are being released on dvd or streaming media, you can stil watch the original if you wish.

The main thing that's terrible in the recreation is the frame rate, there are considerably less in the colored version, that's why it's so rigid and less beautifully fluid like the OG one, what a shame! also, those colors are just not helping a thing

I don't think it's that bad. Some of the details are lost, but the coloring looks fine to me.

What about recent movies shot in black and white? Should they be colorized? Seriously.

The idea is ridiculous, of course. The scene composition is so much different between the two formats. It would ruin Citizen Kane and all of Kurosawa's early work, for example.

Overall, color may be preferable. The original of this cartoon, however, was created to be black and white. The outlining and grayscale selection were done with the intention of bringing details to the eye without using color. In my opinion, colorizing this cartoon resulted in something that is not as visually interesting. Additionally, it destroyed the work of the artists who spent their lives developing this style. How disrespectful.

The colorized version has removed so many of the background details as well as the pie shapes from the eyes. It sucks. I will always prefer the original - be it white, be it purple, be it whatever. Now let me go back to colorizing all those Ansel Adams Photos of Yosemite. (PS: I saw in Italia a "restored" version of the Wizard of Oz - where they colorized the beginning and ending sections of the movie!)

I think colorization works for some films, not for others. When detaching from any nostalgic feelings associated with this Mickey Mouse cartoon, I think it looks better *with* color.

I've never been fond of colorization, and this is a prime example of why. The colors are just so garish. In 100 years, I wonder what they'll do with movies like "Young Frankenstein"?