Do you think "A Night to Remember" would look bad if it was colorized?

[Dan Kappes]

Some of the sinking footage from this film was colorized and used in three other Titanic films, SOS Titanic, No Greater Love, and Time Bandits, and it looks cheesy.

It would also look odd now if the film was edited to show the ship splitting in half while sinking.

 

[Mike Spooner]

Raising an interesting point. What was the original colour of the engines in Titanic?

Mike.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

If the colours could be rendered accurately, I don't see why it would be a problem.

 

[Mike Spooner]

Hi Michael,
The only reason why I ask the colour of the engines, as I see the film SOS is mention. The engine used in the film is from the Kempton Steam Museum which is painted green. Now if the film is in black and white well that doesn't matter. But in colour some sharp eye member may know the original colour and was not of the Titanic engine?
Mike.

 

[Dan Kappes]

I just remembered that the scene in the 1964 film The Unsinkable Molly Brown showing the Titanic sinking also includes colorized footage from the 1953 film and ANTR.

 

[Alex Clark]

There were coloured still of ANTR used for promotional purposes. At least one of the film posters was colourised.

 

[Dan Kappes]

Yeah, I've seen some of those. Same with the 1953 film; the lobby cards and poster art was colorized.

 

[telegonus]

I think that color would ruin the film's dark beauty. As it is it's a very well made film for its time; and even today it plays well. I can't see what color would add to this film's qualities, of which it has an abundance as it is. The film has an almost dream-like time capsule ambiance in its early scenes, and it retains much of this even after it sails off for the New World. After the iceberg hit it changes tone, as it, obviously, must, and yet even so much of the Edwardian era dignity of the early part of the picture is retained, and I believe rightly so, as this was a very different time from today; modern, to a degree, as cars and airplanes existed then, even as they look quite different from what we have now, more than a century later; and yet the ship has electricity and plumbing. The setting is modern, however through 21st century eyes it must appear to many, Millennials in particular, as quaint and old-fashioned. This is all for the good, as I see, as Ken Burns' formal and highly stylized Civil War TV mini-series was.

 

[Dan Kappes]

I'm a millennial, and I found this to be a beautiful film in B&W and a glorious and accurate depiction of the optimism and attitudes of 1912.

 

[Roger Southern]

Having recently watched a BBC Remembrance programme using WW1 black and white film that was colourised I would think that it may work well. The images that I saw really came alive when they changed to a colour format. And I'm speaking as someone who was brought up on black and white television!

Roger

 

[Harland Duzen]

Having recently watched a BBC Remembrance programme using WW1 black and white film that was colourised I would think that it may work well. The images that I saw really came alive when they changed to a colour format...

It was "They Shall Not Grow Old" by Peter Jackson and it was incredible how by altering the speed and colourising it the footage (among other things), they managed to make it look like it was filmed literally days ago. It does change your perspective on WW1 when you see all the grass and blue skies instead of mud and fog normally seen in recreations.

Back to topic and while it could be done (I've admit it would be interesting to see how the model would look), colourising it would't change or enhance anything as it was a product of it's time and it still stand up on it's own well cinematically 60 years later.

...And I'm speaking as someone who was brought up on black and white television!

Apparently 7,000 people / homes in the UK still have a black and white TV license.

 

[Robert T. Paige]

There were coloured still of ANTR used for promotional purposes. At least one of the film posters was colourised.

I think the question of colorized movies is more or less just a personal opinion.

If you were of a strictly historic interest in the movie you might be against it..
But on the other hand colorizing all of the details , in particular to the interiors of the ship.
I believe this would add to the Historic interest..

Comment on the "Lobby Posters" :
My memories go back to my younger days of the 1950's.
The 1953 "Titanic" in particular.
I don't remember ever seeing a poster that wasn't colorized.
Are there some that were black and white of this movie and ANTR that could be posted ?


Maybe a bit off-topic, but one movie I would like to see colorized is the 1936 Gene Autry movie "The Big Show."
Much of this movie was fillmed at the Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas.
One of the colorized posters shows a scene on the inside of the Gulf Radio Studio during one of the musical numbers.
The colorized poster brings out the details of the art deco interior of the studio and the colors of the clothing of the actors.
It would be interesting to compare the colors of the Fair Park of 1936 to the Fair Park of 2018.
There has been quite a bit of restoration that has been done in recent years gradually to restore the buildings and grounds to their original 1936 "Centennial" appearance.
...As I post this, it's almost 2019 ! LOL

 

[Robert T. Paige]

Having recently watched a BBC Remembrance programme using WW1 black and white film that was colourised I would think that it may work well. The images that I saw really came alive when they changed to a colour format. And I'm speaking as someone who was brought up on black and white television!

Roger

And.......How about that change from Sepia to Technicolor in "The Wizard Of Oz" ?

 

[David G. Brown]

Black and white motion pictures cannot be colorized without losing a great deal in terms of the light and shadows, depth of field, crisp focus, and mood deveopment that made monochrome an artist's delight. Beyond that was the projection system with its carbon arc lights which aproached 6,000 K. The result was magnificent

Anyone borne after the 1970s has simply never seen the full magnitude of black and white. Even though modern lamps are powerful, they have an amber tint that hides the quality of the print -- if any remains after duping ahe re-duping of the original into a fuzzy relic of what had been.

Finally, there is the colorization of all media today. LIFE magazine provided us with images that wont stand up to color, but then came People with lots of kitchy pop color photos. To my knowledge there never has been a monochrome smart phone or tablet. When computers were mono, they weren't capable of doing much beyond "Pong" with graphics.

The urge to colorize films meant to be black and white is easily understood. especially among the gamers and such who power today's media.ish I could take some of you back to the black-and-white days to see those films on first-class studio prints and with an Ashcraft arc light blasting through a Super Simplex projector. But, times have changed. Colorization is just one of those nasty changes that can't be stopped

-- David G. Brown

 

[Harland Duzen]

For anyone curious, Google has shown a few attempts to colourise sections of the film (sorry if any of the photos are too big):

(Photo above: by felipe929258 on flickr: A night to remember Screenshots

I would add in having spent a lot of time staring at black and white photos of the Titanic and other ships (as we all done! ) even compared to today's HD cameras , many of the black and white photographs have incredible and crisp detail that the former seem to miss.