What was the first color film in history?

Color is such an important aspect of modern cinema. From sunny pastel Playful romances and unconventional musicals by Jacques Demy to bleak monochrome Tim Burton’s gothic tales, such as his masterpiece Edward Scissorhands, color plays a crucial role in creating the mood and tone of a film. We know that movies were not always in color as this technology was developed later. But when exactly? It’s hard to pin down because there are so many different definitions of the first color film, depending on how you look at it, from short films to documentaries to animated films.

Before the advent of color techniques, cameras were only capable of producing black and white images. While filmmakers have been able to play with shadows in visually exciting ways—such as the ghostly presence of Count Orlak in Nosferatu or the grand futuristic society in Metropolis—finally being able to tell visual stories through color has opened up entirely different forms of creative expression to filmmakers. self-expression.

Many moviegoers mistakenly consider the first color Technicolor films, such as 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, to be the first color film in history, but the use of color in film has a longer and more complex history. The Wizard of Oz, now considered a cinematic classic for the ages was one of the first films shot in Technicolor, in particular. Technicolor requires a special camera that separates three black-and-white negatives for each of the primary colors to make one full-color strip of film. The filmmaking technique has vibrant and detailed colors that make everything really pop off the screen.

The Wizard of Oz tells the story of the power and beauty of this powerful color. When Dorothy opens the door of her tornado-swept home, leaving behind a dim, sepia-toned world, we’re equally struck by the bright, iridescent land of Oz, with its bright yellow brick road and glittering Emerald City. While the use of this new technique was stunning and swept Hollywood in the coming decades, animation has been using Technicolor and even other forms of color for some time.

The Walt Disney Studios pioneered the use of Technicolor for its animated films, beginning with the short Forest Romance and Rivalry “Flowers and Trees” and then the feature film “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became Disney’s biggest box office hit because studio executives were skeptical of all the elements that would eventually make it so revolutionary. In the documentary “The One That Started It All” on the Diamond Blu-ray and DVD editions of the film, animator Ward Kimball shares what worried Hollywood insiders so much:

“It was fine, six or seven minutes, like in shorts, but an hour and a half, no way! The main reason is that you ran out of funny things, you had to laugh in a minute. And the bright colors would cut your eyes; everyone would stand up and went out.”

Not only was the story completely engrossing, taking us from the horrors of the spooky forest to the sweet, lovable dwarves bonding with the princess, but the colors were breathtaking and gorgeous. We all remember the shot of a bright red apple dripping green poison in the shape of a creepy skull. The rich colors were perfect for the main character whose beauty with porcelain skin, ruby ​​red lips and jet black hair made her the most beautiful of them all.

Disney continued to use Technicolor for other classic cartoons such as Pinocchio and Cinderella. By the mid-1950s, oversaturated palettes had become the standard for feature films, both live-action and animated. Before Technicolor, however, there were other dyeing processes that allowed color to appear in films as early as the early 20th century.

Many early short films were originally shot in black-and-white, but converted to color by film manipulation—either by hand-coloring each frame or applying tints. Early color version Georges Méliès’s 1902 short film A Trip to the Moon, one of the best space films, uses color to make the space adventure even more fantastical, bathing the interstellar goddesses in bright pinks and turquoises. Similarly, The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, 1903. features the same hand-painted technique, where only certain elements are painted to emphasize their significance in the biblical story, such as the bright yellow star above the manger of Jesus Christ.

Technically, 1908’s A Visit to the Sea was the first color film, but it’s only an eight-minute short. A collage of young girls frolicking in swimsuits or majestic couples strolling along the promenade was shot in a new technology called Kinemacolor. Kinemacolor was a special camera tool used to apply red and green filters to black and white film. Bright colors made the scenes vivid and as close to real life as possible. Of course, to our modern eye, the first thing we notice is the limited range of hues, where only red and green are noticeable. Kinemacolor also required a special projector, which had too many problems. In 1912, the documentary With Our King and Queen Through India also used Kinemacolor, depicting the coronation and triumphs of King George V and Queen Mary of Texas. It must have been interesting for the audience to see authentic images of their leaders on the screen, with the use of color that emphasizes their royal significance.

Given the most popular definition of film as a feature-length narrative, 1914’s The World, The Flesh and the Devil can be considered the first color film. The 50-minute drama, made in Kinemacolor, tells the story of a cunning woman who conspired to switch children between rich and poor families. Unfortunately, all footage of this film has been lost. While the Kinemacolor technique paved the way for future colorization processes and was less laborious than other approaches, it still had many kinks to work out before Technicolor would revolutionize filmmaking.

It’s incredible how far we’ve come with color in cinema and how much it’s changing the way we see movies. Looking back, we can see how early color techniques changed film beyond the black and white that had come before. The history and role of color in film is as rich and varied as the color wheel itself, and is worth learning more about in books like Color in Motion: Chromatic Studies in Cinema by Jessica Niebel and Sofia Serano.