How black-and-white became Hollywood's favourite new colour
Los Angeles
BLACK-AND-WHITE is the hot new trend in Hollywood, where directors of Oscars-contending films such as Belfast and The Tragedy of Macbeth are embracing monochrome for its storytelling power.
Kenneth Branagh's childhood drama and Joel Coen's Shakespeare adaptation are among a batch of recent acclaimed movies shot either entirely or mainly without colour, as filmmakers seek to tap into the medium's inherent sense of historical authenticity and humanising intimacy.
"Colour allows you brilliantly to describe people, but black-and-white allows you to feel people," Branagh said of his deeply personal drama about violence in 1960s Northern Ireland, which is up for seven Oscars on Sunday (Mar 27) including best picture.
While a "sweeping landscape of a desert or a mountain range" can be made epic by colour, "an epic dimension of black-and-white photography, on a massive screen, is the human face". The choice "makes for a poetic dimension to things that can otherwise seem a little banal," he told AFP.
Meanwhile, The Tragedy of Macbeth cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel told The New York Times the effect was "meant to bring theatricality" and give the film a timeless quality. Its star Denzel Washington is in the running for best actor.
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Monochrome movies have continued to exist despite falling out of mainstream favour during the 1950s, when cheaper colour technology enabled more directors to emulate the bright tones that had dazzled audiences years earlier in The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind.
In 2012, The Artist - a film that was not just black-and-white but also silent - won best picture at the Oscars, while the likes of Roma and Mank have won Oscars for best cinematography more recently.
But this year's colourless contingent has grown. "We all got together... it was a DGA (Directors Guild of America) meeting," joked Mike Mills, whose family drama C'mon C'mon starring Joaquin Phoenix also comes in grayscale, and was nominated at this month's BAFTAs.
In Passing - whose star Ruth Negga has been nominated for a batch of awards, winning at the Film Independent Spirit Awards earlier this month - the format is used to tackle the issue of racism.
Rebecca Hall's directorial debut explores "racial passing," as two childhood friends of mixed racial heritage have a chance encounter in 1920s New York while both are pretending to be white.
"It wasn't just a stylistic choice. I felt that it was a conceptual choice - to make a film about colourism... that drains the color out of it," Hall said at its Sundance film festival premiere.
"We look at faces, and then we immediately put them into these categorisations... the categorisations become important, but they are also in some senses absurd." AFP
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