Colorization has touched of a fierce debate in Hollywood this past year, culminating in a congressional proposal to halt the controversial practice of adding color to black-and-white movies. Following a hearing on Capital Hill at which Woody Allen, Milos Forman, Sydney Pollack, Ginger Rogers, and others testified about the artistically destructive nature of this process, Rep. Richard Gephardt introduced a Film Integrity Act of 1987 to protect old films.
The congressman said, "Classic feature films are a vital part of America's living heritage. They've become one of the most potent voices through which one generation speaks to the next." Sydney Pollack, the Academy Award winning director of Out of Africa, said the proposed legislation "is a great step forward, granting motion pictures the status as fine arts that they deserve."
Director-writer-actor Woody Allen stated, "Whether it's just a bunch of movies or an old Honeymooners or I Love Lucy, you don't want a society where they have a free license to change an artist's work."
Last fall, the Regency, a revival house on Manhattan's Upper West Side, featured The Maltese Falcon. The marquee advertised it as "the original black-and-white version." Why did the theatre feel the need to add this tag to a film classic? That same week, a colorized version of the film aired on WTBS. The manager of the Regency, Morton Tankus, said the marquee description was in support of John Huston, the film's director. After the television airing, the elderly director held a press conference to express his outrage over the colorized version. Huston said he was unable to watch more than a few minutes of the film because he found it so offensive.
John Huston is not alone in his opposition to the process of colorization. In fact, the entire film community - critical and creative - have been in a state of high indignation since Ted Turner made the decision to colorize black-and-white films for television. Key arts organizations including the Directors' Guild of America, the Screen Actors' Guild, the Writers' Guild of America, and the American Society of Cinematographers, along with federal groups such as the National Council on the Arts and the American Film Institute, have protested the process. The BBC, the British television network, says it will not air any colorized films.
Colorization is still a developing technology. Film is transferred to videotape and colors are added, by hand and then by computer, to the black-and-white version. It is a costly - approximately $3,000 a minute - and slow process, often requiring thousands of hours in the research, transfer of colors, and actual colorization of the film. The two competitors in the field started operations in 1983. They are Color Systems Technology, Inc., of Marina del Rey, California (which colorized Miracle on 34h Street and The Maltese Falcon) and Colorization Inc., based in Toronto (which handled the process for It's a Wonderful Life and Laurel & Hardy's Helpmates).
The Most Naïve Observer
Colorization became an issue after media mogul Ted Turner acquired the MGM film library last year for over $1.2 billion. Included were more than 3,600 films, many considered classics. Even the most naïve observer of the business world assumes
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