In his wonderful 1989 essay “Why I Love Black and White,” Roger Ebert wrote: “There are basic aesthetic issues here. Colors have emotional resonance for us… Black and white movies present the deliberate absence of color. This makes them less realistic than color films (for the real world is in color). They are more dreamlike, more pure, composed of shapes and forms and movements and light and shadow. Color films can simply be illuminated. Black and white films have to be lighted. With color, you can throw light in everywhere, and the colors will help the viewer determine one shape from another, and the foreground from the background. With black and white, everything would tend toward a shapeless blur if it were not for meticulous attention to light and shadow, which can actually create a world in which the lighting indicates a hierarchy of moral values.”
Fans of black and white absolutely need to look at this — it’s definitely an interesting way of looking at some of these movies, and it makes me want to try them and see for myself.
I also recommend the special edition of Frank Darabont’s The Mist — It includes a black and white version of the movie that is vastly superior to the theatrical version. It’s the version I insist on showing to people.
Definitely check out the video included for The Departed — I almost can’t picture watching that movie in color again.
Totally agree with Silence of the Lambs, but not with Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sorry, but there’s some magic in the color, especially the sunset scene of Jones putting on his hat at the dig site.
