I grew up in the technological end of the black-and-white era. In the 1950s and early ’60s, our TV was black and white (technically called monochrome). So was everyone else’s, as were all TV broadcasts for the first decade. I watched everything in greyscale, and the day ended with a test pattern. Movies at the theatre were sometimes in colour, sure, but a lot were still in B&W. Colour filming was a more expensive and complicated process, and ballooning budgets mattered enough to keep many producers using B&W.

I remember going to a drive-in theatre with my parents in the late 1950s and early ’60s, and seeing double features, mostly B-films. Sometimes they were in colour, but often one or even both were black and white. I remember watching Saturday morning cartoons and The Three Stooges on TV, in glorious B&W.*

I started thinking about the use of colour versus B&W in film recently when I watched a colourized version of the Christmas favourite, It’s a Wonderful Life. It was released in 1946, directed by Frank Capra. It initially had a mixed response from audiences, but it grew steadily in popularity ever since.

Although NBC began broadcasting some of its network shows in colour in 1963 and transitioned to full colour by fall, 1964, colour TV broadcasting didn’t even come to Canada until 1966, the same year the third and last US TV network transitioned to full colour broadcasting. I can’t recall when my parents got a colour TV set, but by the late ’60s I remember seeing episodes of Star Trek and The Monkees in colour on it, or perhaps on a neighbour’s.

After the mid-60s, making films in B&W would be more of an affectation; a gesture of artistic intent rather than a technological necessity. The earliest colour film was actually shot by Edward Turner in 1901, but later filmmakers in the pre-1930 era usually hand-coloured frames to get a colour effect. The two-colour process, Cinecolor, was in use from 1932-55, but almost exclusively for short subjects until its second generation, SuperCinecolor, was invented (first used for a feature film in 1951). The company, however, was not a financial success, and was sold in ’52. Its buyer was subsequently sold, and the final owner closed in ’55.  Other colour methods in between wars included Kinemacolor, Gasparcol, Multicol, Prizma, Raycol, early versions of Technicolor (first used in 1915-16), and bipack colour; none of them proving commercially successful.

It wasn’t until Technicolor Process 3 was developed as a viable technology in the early 1930s, using three strips of film, that colour film became practical, albeit expensive and finicky to prepare. It was famously used in the 1939 Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind films, although it had been used for full-length movies as early as 1928.

Kodak’s Eastmancolor became the dominant technology after its 1950 introduction, in part because it was less expensive to use than Technicolor (although the latter was still being used for films like The Godfather in 1973, and Susperia in ’77). Eastmancolor was used in films like Oklahoma! (1955), Rebel Without a Cause, Guns of Navarone, The Mouse That Roared, A Clockwork Orange, and even the original Jurassic Park (1993). Digital effects (computer graphics) were used as early as 1984, in The Last Starfighter. Digital filming, common today, was first introduced in the early 1990s and was part of the Super Mario Bros. film, in 1993. Both of these films were in colour.

While some directors and producers wanted to bring colour to the silver screen, others use the chiaroscuro of B&W to create emotional and visual moods. Alfred Hitchcock was one of the masters of this method. Although he shot two films in Technicolor in the late 1940s, he returned to B&W until 1954, when he filmed Dial M For Murder. Hitchcock used colour after that, but used B&W for The Wrong Man in 1956 and Psycho in 1960, as well as his TV show (1955-66).

Having colour has not stopped directors from continuing to make films wholly or partially using monochrome, although fully B&W films are not uncommon. One of my favourite titles, Young Frankenstein, was shot entirely in B&W in 1974 (although fans have colourized the trailer and some scenes, none of them feel right) as was the satirical Steve Martin film, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982). The award-winning film, Oppenheimer, shot in 2023, mixed colour and B&W footage, as did Schindler’s List (1993; although shot primarily in B&W it used rotoscoped colour for the girl’s coat) and Dune Part Two (2024). The Japanese film company Toho released both colour and B&W versions of their excellent films Shin Godzilla (2016) and Godzilla Minus One (2023), including theatrical releases of both (in homage to the original 1954 film that began the franchise, shot in B&W).

Those early years watching black and white films included a range of what are now revered vintage/classic movies, as well as a lot of B-films; I developed an affection for them, as well as for the monochrome presentation. Some I simply can’t image any other way: Dracula, Frankenstein, Casablanca, Laura, Lost Horizon, Double Indemnity, The Thirty Nine Steps, The Invisible Man, The Day The Earth Stood Still, To Kill A Mockingbird, Citizen Kane, Topper, Harvey, A Hard Day’s Night, Dr. Strangelove, The Maltese Falcon, Godzilla… these are films I’ve seen, most more than once, that are carved in my memory in monochrome.**

I’ve seen several attempts over the last two decades to colourize some of those films and the improvement, to me, often ranges between negligible and negative. In part that may be because the colourization was done by amateurs who, no matter how well-meaning, don’t have the equipment of the large studios to polish their work.

Yes, some films can (and perhaps should) be colourized and doing so will add another dimension to them. Colour can help us see the actors as real humans, not caricatures or puppets, can help us visualize their surroundings better; can make the film see more real, less like a performance.

Sometimes colourization doesn’t affect much, if any, response. I have colourized versions of Three Stooges skits and for me there’s no improvement because the skits are based on physical comedy and pratfall gags that work as well in either medium. On the other hand, I have videos of actual WWII and WWI footage (like the Capra films) that have been colourized and they make the events seem more dramatic and the soldiers and civilians less like actors and more human. The added realism deepens my emotional response when watching them.

And I imagine that there are films that will benefit from the process, like the Goldiggers of 1933, and any of the Zeigfield Follies or Deanna Durbin films. I’m not sure about The Thin Man films, and definitely not the 1930s-40s Universal monster films (although the later Creature From the Black Lagoon films might benefit).

I bring this all up because I had picked up a Blu-Ray of Frank Capra’s 1946 film, It’s A Wonderful Life, shot in B&W with as great a use of shadows as any film noir. Arguments can be made that the main reason for not shooting in colour was because of the extra cost, but Capra was a master of B&W filmmaking and had been in the business since 1921 and had a long list of hit films before 1946.***

Although the initial response to it was mixed, thanks to it being shown frequently on TV during the holidays, it blossomed into one of the perennially popular Christmas films. Included in the Blu-Ray package was a colourized version that I hesitated until recently to watch.****

I first have to note that the colourized version of the film is subdued, lacking the vibrancy and depth of any movie you’d see today. It’s almost a pastel palette, and it looks washed out, almost hand-coloured. If you recall the eye-popping change from the dark sepia in the beginning of The Wizard of Oz to full, vibrant colour when Dorothy opens the door into Oz, or the shots of Atlanta burning at the end of Gone With The Wind, then you know that colour films in that era could be rich and deep. Why was this, then, released with a dull colourization rather than a more saturated look? Skin tones don’t look real: they look artificial.

The problem, it seems, lies with what the releasing studio did to colourize it and when it was done. In fact, more than one colourized version has been released since the film became public domain, in 1970 (due to a clerical error). The first colour version came out in 1986, released by Hal Roach Studios with the blessing of director Frank Capra. Republic Pictures released a colour version in 1989, and Legend Films did so in 2007. The version I have is copyright 1989 by Melange Pictures (the holding company for Republic). I have not seen the other versions yet.

There were a lot of films released in 1989 with excellent colour palettes: Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Back to the Future Part II, Ghostbusters II, Driving Miss Daisy, Deepstar Six, Dead Poet’s Society. Compared to them, the colourized film looks pallid. True, by today’s standards, the computer technology of 1989 is ancient, but I suspect that it was a choice, not merely a hardware issue.

My view is that, no, It’s A Wonderful Life does not benefit from colourization, at least not the version I’ve seen. Perhaps if it were redone using a more vibrant, saturated palette it would improve the viewing. But for now, I recommend you stick with the classic, B&W version as Capra intended it to be. That doesn’t mean others won’t benefit from the process, but each one should be judged on its own merit.

Notes:

* I still recall vividly seeing Roger Corman’s Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) at the drive-in. It scared the crap out of me and gave me nightmares. As an adult, I bought it on DVD and have seen it since, with somewhat less of a fearful response. In fact, it is somewhat corny in places. But it wasn’t to a young kid. Still, it gave me the seed to enjoy Corman’s other films — all in the B-film category — later in life. I also saw The Mysterians, a 1957 Toho scifi film, that stayed with me. Those drive-in movies started my love of both scifi and monster movies.

** Here’s a good list of 50 B&W films on BoredPanda that I mostly agree should remain that way. I have seen the majority of them.

*** Including 1934: It Happened One Night and Broadway Bill; 1936 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; 1937: Lost Horizon (one of my other favourites); 1938: You Can’t Take It with You; 1939: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; 1941 Meet John Doe; 1944: Arsenic and Old Lace. Plus he produced 13 films (documentaries) during WWII, all in B&W. Capra did not shoot in colour until 1956 when he made Our Mr. Sun in Technicolor for TV.

**** The film is unrelentingly sentimental, to the point of being annoyingly saccharine at times, and the Christmas-Carol-like ending is entirely predictable. An FBI memo criticized the film for being “Communist” because it maligned the greedy banker in it. ‘Muricans, eh? Still, the performances of Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Thomas Mitchell, and Lionel Barrymore make it worth watching if you’re in the mood for a feel-good film. It is light-years beyond the crop of cookie-cutter Christmas films that abound on TV today. But then, I consider the first Die Hard to be good for seasonal viewing: It’s just not Christmas until I see Hans Gruber fall from the Nakatomi Tower. And I can always watch and enjoy pretty much every Jimmy Stewart film.

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