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Joined: Feb 24 2006 Posts: 2578

I had the opportunity to play with a little bit of cinema gold today.

Anybody remember back in the late 80s/early 90s when Ted Turner planned to colorize Citizen Kane? According to Wikipedia -- and probably other, more credible sources -- "Turner later said that this was a joke designed to needle colorization critics, and that he never had any intention of colorizing the film."

Well it would seem that that's filthy lie. Today I worked with a cinema professor -- the man who literally wrote the book on Citizen Kane -- digitizing the only existing copy of the colorization tests for Kane outside of the Turner archives. Apparently segments of the film -- mainly the final scene -- were farmed out to a couple of colorization houses to see what they could do. And the results range from unsettlingly weird to just plain ridiculous.

I mean, wow. That movie was just not meant to be in color. But it was pretty freaking amazing to see footage that I didn't even know existed!

However, I have yet to see Duke Phillips's version in which Kane's last word is "Schwing."

Posted: Aug 08 2006 04:52 pm

From what I heard, Orson Welles' Citizen Kane contract gave him such full control of the movie that Turner couldn't legally colorize it. Of course, the movie bombed and Welles never got another contract like that.

Posted: Aug 08 2006 05:11 pm

Ah, the great era of colorization. I tried doing that using a bastardization of the technicolor process and... I think "Clerks". Didn't work to well. The best results are if you hand paint every cell. I'll just accept some movies were not meant to be in color.

Cool find nonetheless. And rockin' Critic reference Very Happy

Joined: Apr 14 2006 Location: Lake Michigan Posts: 3332

Columbia has tried to sell some colorized versions of the Three Stooges - certainly not the quality of Citizen Kane, but a travesty nonetheless.

The bitch about it is this is the only way they've released my favorite short, "Oh You Nazty Spy" on dvd. You can view the original B&W on it, so I may have to just buy it eventually. However, I would like to hold out on it on the chance that they might release just the original B&W version one day, possibly packaged with the short "I'll Never Heil Again", as that's what they did on VHS (Moe and Curly are just perfect caricatures of Hitler and Mussolini).

The release of the stooges' shorts on dvd have been annoying. They started to release them on single dvds that held either 6 or 7 shorts, then they shrank that to 4 or 5. Then they started this colorization experiment, which double-dipped some shorts, and now nothing after that failure. I have most of my favorite ones on two box sets of three of the previous releases, so I just want those two Nazi shorts.

Posted: Aug 08 2006 06:05 pm

Speaking of colorized comedies, I've always loved the colorized version of "March of the Wooden Soldiers" with Laurel and Hardy (yeah, not as loved as the Stooges, but still appreciated). I grew up with this version and was surprised later that it was originally in black and white. It's one of those films that if you see it the first time in color, it's hard to imagine it any other way. Same is true with black & white. (Factoring out shitty colorized processes, naturally).

Joined: Feb 24 2006 Posts: 2578

I'm a big fan of the stuff from Legend Films. They do some excellent colorization, as well as gorgeous restorations of original black & white prints. And their cult movies have commentary by MST3K's Mike Nelson. Very Happy