Colour, Costume, and Commodities in Fashion Newsreels of the 1910S and 1920S

Symptoms of desire: colour, costume, and commodities in fashion newsreels of the 1910s and 1920s

Symptoms of desire Eirik Frisvold Hanssen

ne of the most striking aspects of the relation- changes taking place during the so-called ‘transi- ship between costume and early cinema was tional’ era (ca. 1907–1917) destabilized this attrac- Othe recurring tendency to colour clothes in tions-based role for colour.1 hand and stencil coloured films. In fact, in Within this historical framework, which encom- some instances, the clothes themselves constituted passes transitional cinema, the establishment of the only elements in the film being coloured. Later, Classical Hollywood cinema, and even the emer- during the 1920s, stencil colouring, as a convention, gence of sound in the late 1920s, the fashion news- was primarily limited to two specific newsreel genres: reel, one of the few genres where stencil colour travelogues and fashion films, both of which focused continued to function as a convention, is a remark- extensively on clothing and apparel. While there are ably static genre.2 As Elizabeth Leese reminds us, numerousexamples throughout the silenterainwhich the conventions for the fashion newsreel genre did colour is used to emphasize clothing – such as not significantly change between the 1910s and the costume pictures, diva films and historical and mythi- 1930s.3 Similarly, in my previous examination of the cal subjects – my analysis focuses on the stencil-col- emergence of Kinemacolor within the film historical oured (and in a few instances ‘natural’ colour) fashion context of the transitional period, I noted how films newsreel of the 1910s and 1920s, a genre that dem- produced by the process differed in many respects onstrates how clothing and fashion impacted aes- from contemporary film practices.4 This was not only thetic, technological, industrial, and ideological due to the fact that about 70 per cent of Kinemacolor perspectives associated with the function of colour films were non-fiction subjects; evidence found in the during the silent period. numerous discourses surrounding the aesthetics as- The 1910s and 1920s are characterized by an sociated with the Kinemacolor process reveal it had interaction and coexistence among a number of dif- more in common with earlier film conventions, spe- ferent colour systems, methods and technologies – cifically the cinema of attractions’ mode of presenta- most importantly that between photographic and tion which was based on ‘showing’ rather than non-photographic colour – as well as the interaction between black and white and colour. Despite the variety of colour processes and methods employed during this period, and the extensive experimentation Eirik Frisvold Hanssen is assistant professor of cinema studies at the Norwegian University of Science and discourse, primarily on photographic colour, it is and Technology in Trondheim. His dissertation is a also an era of indeterminacy and hesitation regarding historical and theoretical study of discourses on colour the possible functions of colour. While the functions and cinema from 1909 to 1935. He has been employed of (non-photographic) colour as spectacle and affect at the Ingmar Bergman Archive in Stockholm and is currently working on Nordic regional television and seem to have been easily integrated within the broadcasting collaboration and program exchange attractions-based aesthetics of early cinema, as Tom during the 1950s and 1960s. Gunning notes, the industrial, stylistic, and narrative Correspondence: [email protected]

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‘telling’ in order to demonstrate the powers of the mise-en-scène as an ornament, and is – as in many photographic process. other cases – limited to clothing, while the Venetian Thus, instances when colour arises in the cin- settings and the faces of the actors remain in black ema of the transitional period and in that of the 1920s and white. In fact, colour in Un drame à Venise – the polychrome stencil and ‘natural’ colour images functions as a form of clothing, or an exterior value of the fashion newsreel are a prime example – do not for the film image – it is an adjunct on the surface that exist ‘outside’ of film history; they are, nevertheless, does not emanate from the represented black and extremely difficult to categorize in terms of the spe- white world. cific stylistic developments of the period (like narra- Referring to hand coloured Italian films from tivization), as colour alternately functions in a variety the 1910s, Giuliana Bruno notes how advertisements of ways, with regards to realism or spectacle or for the film Maria Rosa di Santa Flavia by Elvira Notari abstraction. Similarly, the display of clothing and the (1911) emphasize the links between colour and female body in fashion newsreels is associated with, clothing in the production: ‘the film used colour to- but also fundamentally different from similar kinds of nalities characteristic of the Calabrese costumes es- display found in Classical Hollywood cinema. pecially designed for the film’.6 Notari’s company specialized in colouring, and colour, in this later example, is used to authenticate the image by rein- Colour and costume in silent cinema forcing native and ethnic dress of southern Italy – it The newsreel genres of travelogue and fashion actu- is a culturally specific reference that may also func- ality do not constitute the only striking appearance of tion decoratively, and address a particular southern colour and costume in early cinema. Early films, as Italian audience.7 noted, often featured decorative costumes and In addition, early colour in both cinema and clothing in colour through a variety of applied colour costume shared similar technological processes. techniques. Philippe Dubois uses the term hybridiza- For example, tinting and toning practices often in- tions to describe the effects of hand and stencil volved dyes and techniques, such as mordanting, colouring, combining the black and white of the that were used for colouring wool, textiles, and other photographic film image with the polychrome ele- products, many of which are still available today.8 In ments of applied colour.5 The origins of the concept contextualising the filmic practice of applied colour of hybridization are found in the cinema of attrac- technologies within a larger nineteenth century aes- tions, and the phenomenon is, according to Dubois, thetic culture, Joshua Yumibe refers to the modern- linked to three different types of ethos – functions that ization of the textile industry and how the use of applied colour performs in relation to the black and colour in tapestries, wallpaper and rugs entailed an white photographic image. The most well-known and industrialization of dyeing technologies: spectacular effect of hybridization is linked to attrac- These developments in the colorant industry tion, to how colours function in their own right in terms … not only determined the dyes used in early of visual expressiveness, a type of effect that is often film production, but also, the technologies of difficult to describe. As an example, Dubois refers to textile dyeing proved to be an important inter- the hand coloured serpentine dance genre of the medial influence on the dyeing (tinting and 1890s and the interaction between choreographic toning) of film images. [I]f one looks to the and chromatic movements as the dancer, the methods employed in the tinting and toning of clothes, and the colours are in constant movement. nitrate film, parallel procedural techniques are In addition to a less common ethos linked to narrative evident: vat dyeing and bleaching, the use of and structural functions (the author’s main example mordants, precise temperature control, re- here is Émile Cohl’s Le peintre néo-impressioniste lated colorant mixtures.9 from 1910, where colour functions as a diegetic As in many other examples to be explored in element constituting the premise for the storyline), this essay, we find a direct link between colour in Dubois specifically points to the hand-coloured (and cinema, and colours in commodities in the fashion partly tinted) melodrama Un drame à Venise (Ferdi- industry, as well as in other industrial products. Thus, nand Zecca, 1906) as an exemplary case of a de- within the practice of tinting and toning, specific dyes scriptive and decorative ethos. The film might have been chosen for films not necessarily demonstrates how hand colour functions within the because of their specific narrative or aesthetic val-

FILM HISTORY: Volume 21, Number 2, 2009 – p. 108 Symptoms of desire FILM HISTORY Vol. 21 Issue 2 (2009) 109 ues, but because they were fashionable, or because colour in cinema entailed what Tom Gunning has they were new. described as a surge of colour into previously mono- Although the use of applied colour techniques chrome territory.13 The relationship between colour other than tinting and toning diminished at the end and black and white is often discussed in terms of of the 1910s, in particular in narrative cinema, tech- preferences, and very often in terms of a resistance niques such as stencil colouring were occasionally towards colour. The primary visual difference be- found in certain ‘prestige’ productions throughout tween colour and black and white is the differentia- the 1920s, typically foregrounding colourful cos- tion provided by the kind of polychrome colour tumes.10 Casanova (Alexandre Volkoff, 1927) is a late images found in, for example, stencil coloured fash- example in which stencil colour functions in different ion newsreels: values of lightness depicted in the ways to enhance the surface of the image by creating black-and-white image are supplemented by hue visually complex details of light and shade through- and saturation, as colour splits the cohesive mono- out the mise-en-scène. Flickering colours reflected chrome image into different hues. Furthermore, hues in the water of the Grand Canal emanate from fire- are usually linked to the division between different works, coloured illumination, and multi-coloured objects. Films produced in early photographic colour costumes, connecting colour in clothing explicitly to processes such as Kinemacolor and the Gaumont colour in other forms of visual spectacle. Chronochrome process accentuate both the repro- Similar to the stencil coloured hybridizations duction of colour and the origins of colour almost described by Dubois, early examples of two-strip exclusively found in specific objects, and thus often Technicolor sequences in otherwise black and white attempt to demonstrate the verisimilitude of everyday films during the late 1920s and early 1930s often objects as part of their main theme.14 As Jacques emphasized costumes and sets, and in some cases Aumont has pointed out, visual perception (and the even displayed fashion shows.11 Jeanne Thomas perception of colour) is structured by the notion of Allen identifies costumes in the Technicolor fashion the object, as much as the traditional categories of show segment of Howard Hawks’ black and white space and time.15 Thus, the colours in fashion news- comedy Fig Leaves (1926) as ‘the raison d’être for reels are linked directly to the specific garments or color’.12 Colour functions in this scene to underscore objects displayed. and draw attention to the costumes in the fashion The differentiation provided by colour within a show at the same time that it expands on a central medium traditionally perceived as black and white theme in the film’s narrative. The title, Fig Leaves, has often been understood as a disturbance, a refers to clothing, and the story of Eve in Paradise purely sensual addition with no essential purpose or wanting something new to wear; the story then jumps function. Thus, discourses on colour and cinema in to the 1920s where similar concerns about dress classical film theory, as well as industrial practices, plague the modern woman. The relation between have, to a large extent, been informed by notions of colour and black and white in these early part-Tech- control and restraint. Discourses on ‘colour restraint’ nicolor films was not connected to specific, diegeti- are especially evident in regard to the integration of cally-determined spatial or temporal conditions, three-strip Technicolor within the narrative and stylis- such as passages to dream worlds found in later tic conventions of Classical Hollywood cinema in the examples such as The Wizard of Oz (1939). Rather, 1930s. Scott Higgins has examined how colour was it indicates a general divergence from how Classical often accused of being obtrusive or distracting, re- Hollywood cinematic narration was usually defined, sulting in an ‘aesthetic of restraint’ in the mid-1930s by linking the sudden appearance of colour (within before more assertive designs (integrated with Clas- the narrative flow in black and white) solely to notions sical Hollywood conventions) emerged at the end of of spectacle similar to those associated with the the decade.16 This resistance to colour film, with cinema of attractions. reference to the notion of colour as unnecessary, corresponds to the traditional art historical division Colour and costume: discourses of between disegno and colore, between line and col- otherness and femininity our. Typically such claims refer to the superiority of In fact, most accounts of colour in cinema seem to the line, or, as art historian John Gage has put it, ‘the situate colour in relation to black and white, which ancient notion that an adequate representation might may have to do with the fact that the emergence of be made with line alone, colouring being an inessen-

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tial adjunct to form’.17 Jacques Aumont draws paral- tions between colour and the feminine mentioned lels between this opposition and general western above also echo associations between colour and conceptions of the superiority of the spiritual over the general conceptions of a non-western ‘other’. David material, exemplified by traditional ‘dualities’ like Batchelor uses the term ‘Chromophobia’, a fear of soul/body, word/image etc.18 Thus, discourses on colour, to describe what he characterizes as the colour based on notions of control and restraint do effort to marginalize colour in western culture.25 At- not only have aesthetic limitations, they also reveal tempts to diminish colour’s importance in culture problematic cultural prejudices – in particular with were made either by linking colour to ‘some “foreign” regard to connotations associated with colour and body – usually the feminine, the oriental, the primi- the sensual qualities of images, the trivial, notions of tive’, or to ‘the realm of the superficial, the supple- (non-western) otherness, and exoticism, often de- mentary, the inessential or the cosmetic’. Colour is, scribed under rubrics such as the ‘primitive’, and the therefore, linked to the dangerous as well as the ‘feminine’. trivial. Batchelor argues that the recurring demand to These attitudes toward colour can also be exclude colour demonstrates its importance – colour traced to the writing of film history, as well as to early means something because it gets in the way.26 I have archival practices and a historical perception of early previously traced an ambivalence to colour in cata- cinema as black and white. Giovanna Fossati notes logues and promotional material marketing Kinema- that in the few instances where colour has been color, where colour, despite being the main selling referred to in traditional film historiography, it has point of the product, nevertheless is often linked to usually been labelled a primitive feature of cinema.19 exoticism and ‘otherness’, to something charac- Terry Ramsaye, for example, pointed out in 1926 that teristic of non-western (and, more specifically, non- although hand colouring had been used for various British) culture.27 This notion of otherness is, to a purposes since Edison’s serpentine dance films in certain extent, evident in descriptions of the ‘natural’ the 1890s, it never attained ‘any particular impor- colour system’s ability to reproduce a variety of skin tance in screen art. It occurs only as a symptom of colours placed in opposition to whiteness, and is desire’.20 recurrently associated with the reproduction and Examining the various discourses on colour in foregrounding of clothing – the depiction of ‘pictur- cinema reveals that it is difficult to define exactly what esque costumes’. colour was thought to add to a film – particularly These attitudes towards colour in western cul- within the realm of narrative cinema, which produced ture have perhaps their ultimate expression in the notions of colour as distraction or excess, an element taste for white and, in particular, black clothing es- that should not be noticed. Similarly, ideas of colour tablished at the beginning of the sixteenth century as affect can be linked to colour and certain nine- (coinciding, as Michel Pastoreau has pointed out, teenth century conceptions of the ‘feminine’, what with the introduction of book printing and engraved Gage, among others, has pointed out as the recur- images), the emergence of a visual culture, and an ring assumption that a feeling for colour is a ‘femi- imaginary in black and white.28 The preference for nine’ province.21 Likewise, women are often sombre, dark clothing does not only reflect ‘bour- mentioned specifically as a potential audience for geois’ values, but also what Pastoreau characterizes colour films.22 Yumibe has discussed the fact that as the ‘chromoclasm’ or ‘war against colour’, an film colourists usually were female, and connects this important dimension in the new Christian morality of not only to lower wages and the repetitive task of Protestantism. In fact, Pastoreau actually ties this colouring but also to the gendering of colour, as ‘chromoclasm’ explicitly to the distinct cultural oppo- women were considered ‘more susceptible’ to the sition between colour and black and white in cin- affective, sensual impact of colour.23 Notions of the ema.29 In his Theory of Colours, Goethe remarked, female spectator, in terms of specific marketing for example, how ‘men in a state of nature, uncivilised strategies as well as an understanding of cinema as nations, and children have a great fondness for col- a means of entry into the public sphere are, of course, ours in their utmost brightness’, while ‘people of central to a discussion of fashion actualities. refinement have a disinclination to colours’.30 Additionally, Gage points out how ‘a disdain In most of the French Pathé-Revue stencil col- for colour’ in western culture was seen as ‘a mark of oured travelogues of the 1920s, scenes focusing on refinement and distinction’.24 The various associa- landscapes and buildings are often followed by a

FILM HISTORY: Volume 21, Number 2, 2009 – p. 110 Symptoms of desire FILM HISTORY Vol. 21 Issue 2 (2009) 111 section at the end displaying ‘studies’ of the local Colour as visual material of desire inhabitants, or ‘types des pays’. Figures from Mo- in consumer culture rocco, Crete, Tunis, Portugal, Madeira, Croatia, etc., The direct links between colour in the cinema and usually wearing traditional costumes often labelled colours in commodities in the fashion industry (as with intertitles like ‘picturesque’ and ‘multicoloured’, well as other industrial products within the broader are featured. Additionally, these sections also often context of consumer culture), demonstrates that in- present close-ups of specific details of the cos- terdisciplinary approaches are essential to under- tumes. An inter-title in the stencil coloured travelogue stand how the history of colour in film is directly linked La moisson de Bosnie (Pathé Revue, 1926) com- to specific industrial and cultural practices outside ments on the ‘curious Muslim costumes’ [‘curieux the cinema. In fact, colour film is often understood costumes musulman’] of the Bosnian peasants. En through comparison with sound, painting, music, Italie: Les costumes de Sarrentino (Pathé Revue, and the black and white image. As Tom Gunning 1926) is a travelogue about clothes, where specific points out, with specific reference to the United details of colourful traditional costumes are empha- States, ‘an invasion of color into all areas of daily life’ sized and at the same time located in a specific took place from the 1860s through the early nine- place: a specific landscape which also is in colour.31 teenth century, constituting ‘one of the key percep- Thus, colour in these travelogues seems to visually tual transformations of modernity’.35 Experimental reinforce general cultural conceptions of a non-west- art, popular culture, and industrial products were the ern other, the exotic, and the foreign. sources of this radical change in perception. In ad- In addition to striking narrative and stylistic dition to cinema, colour became available in electric similarities between travelogues and fashion news- lights (used in theatres, in the illumination of foun- reels in colour, and the recurring contemporary links tains, in colour organs), in different print media, in between colour, the feminine, and the primitive, there advertising, dyed fabrics, and stencil-printed wallpa- are, however, also significant differences. While par- per.36 Thus, the everyday world was transformed allels between colour and the ethnographic image of through colour as the experience of daily activities, ‘native types’ in early travelogues is defined through materials, and objects, often involving perceptual skin colour and colourful clothing – constructing what transformations, merged together beginning in the Fatimah Tobing Rony calls images of ‘a racialized late nineteenth century and on through the 1930s.37 Other’ for a colonial gaze – it can be argued that For example, John Seitz predicted in 1930 how fashion newsreels’ explicit address to a female audi- future uses of colour cinematography would ‘play a ence refers to the construction of identity and eman- great role in influencing public taste in the choice of cipation associated with women taking part in dress, household furnishings, wall and floor cover- consumer culture at the beginning of the twentieth ings’.38 During the 1920s and 1930s new industrial century.32 This relation of colour, clothing, and the products for everyday use were produced in colour. potential female spectator is found in the hand and An article in the February 1930 issue of Fortune stencil coloured fashion actualités and newsreel magazine contrasted ‘the home of 1920 and 1925’, films produced by Gaumont and, in particular, Pathé where most objects were in ‘natural colors’ (each from the 1890s throughout the 1920s. Colour in this object ‘deriving its color from the material of which it context is associated with a world of objects, which was fashioned’) with ‘the thoroughly painted home when turned into commodities for sale represents of 1928’. Here we find kitchen sinks in a variety of another practice associated with women: what Vic- colours; orange refrigerators; dishes, pots, and pans toria de Grazia, among many others, refers to as the in ‘bright gay tints and tones’; a bathroom pervaded ‘gendering’ of consumption and shopping in West- by the colour green in the tiles, the tub, the towels, ern society, a specifically female activity.33 Thus, and even the toilet paper; as well as coloured echoing Ramsaye’s description of hand and stencil glasses, cloths, garbage cans, typewriters, furniture, colouring as ‘a symptom of desire’, colour functions cars, etc.39 in fashion newsreels as a means for understanding With regard to film, Sumiko Higashi examines the complex relationship between female spectator- the connection between the use of colour in Cecil B. ship, cinema, and consumer culture, a subject exam- DeMille’s productions of the 1910s and 1920s and ined in a number of important studies that provide the thematization of consumption, modernity, and important historical background to this essay.34 the ‘new woman’, as well as Orientalism.40 Higashi

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identifies DeMille’s use of applied colour (in particu- means of transmitting this new commercial aesthetic lar, the Handschiegl colour technique) to accentuate of colour, glamour, and the exotic to the average the modernity of Art Deco sets and costume design consumer. According to Leach, fashion merchandis- in such films as The Affairs of Anatol (1921) with the ing helped to ‘democratize desire: it carried exciting subsequent increase in the use of colour in magazine meanings and introduced the mass of consumers to advertisements for clothing and commodities during everything from the aristocratic glamour of Paris to the 1920s.41 the exotic allure of orientalism’.49 At the same time, The invasion of colour in all these different the democratization of luxury was limited to various arenas, as Gunning describes it, played a part in forms of visual appropriation for many social shaping a ‘culture of sensationalism, based in sen- groups.50 The fashion show, originating in Parisian sual and emotional intensity’.42 Richard Abel, in dis- couture salons, was adopted in the United States in cussing Pathécolor films and their relation to a the late nineteenth century on a less intimate and ‘feminized’ ‘aesthetic of imitation’, or cinema as a exclusive (but more theatrical) scale for the mass cultural space of consumption, refers to William market – identified by Leach as ‘the most sensational Leach’s study of the emergence of the culture of innovation’ in American fashion.51 Department stores consumer capitalism and identification of a new arranged ‘dress parades’ to attract the growing mar- ‘commercial aesthetic of desire and belonging’ after ket of middle-class women. By 1915 fashion shows 1880.43 The new commercial aesthetic described by were popular attractions in all major American cities. Leach displays a vision of the good life and paradise ‘Living models paraded down ramps in store thea- – as required and desired by any culture, but within ters’, spotlighted by lighting engineers to a musical a context specifically linked to consumption.44 Show accompaniment, at times to a running commentary windows, electrical signs, advertisements, and bill- on the clothing.52 The popularity of large fashion boards, as well as fashion shows, artefacts and shows in the 1910s and 1920s suggests that many commodities are the means for transmitting this new in the audience were spectators rather than ‘serious’ aesthetic that is shaped by ‘the visual materials of shoppers.53 Thus, spectatorship is evident as an desire – colour, glass and light’.45 Leach notes how important feature of the emerging fashion culture, the importance of colour as a ‘material of desire’ was linking cinema and fashion as cultural practices. over-stressed within the emerging commercial aes- As a background to her study of fashion and thetic: ‘By the 1920s so many commercial institutions notions of femininity in 1930s Hollywood films, Sarah and people had exploited the word ‘color’ that, ac- Berry examines how the ‘symbolic power of dress’ cording to The New York Times, the word itself had was integrated in capitalism in the late nineteenth been “worn to a frazzle”’.46 century, signalling a shift towards a ‘symbolic econ- omy’, one concerned with attaching meanings to Colour, the fashion industry, and goods and lifestyles, a ‘commodification’ of social the female consumer/spectator identity which became linked to what one consumes The fashion industry, and its display and use of rather than what one produces.54 Berry points out colour in garments, was central to the importance of that while male identities traditionally have been as- colour as a visual material within the new commercial sociated with work, female identities have been as- aesthetic. After the late 1880s, as Leach points out, sociated with Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ‘physical ‘the tempo of fashion’ was intensified through new capital’ or symbolic values of beauty and style. Since communications media and methods of transporta- the 1880s, women’s fashion thus gave the female sex tion that facilitated transmitting ideas and designs access to modernity, along with citizenship, possi- more rapidly.47 For example, the textile and garment bilities for consumption, and other opportunities. industries quickly expanded after 1885, and by 1915 Clothing and make-up became signifiers of social the clothing trade was the third largest in America identity, emancipation and social mobility.55 As Anne (after steel and oil). By 1910 every standard item of Friedberg has put it, regarding the practice of ‘win- women’s clothing had become ‘ready-to-wear’, and dow shopping’: ‘[T]he female flâneur, the flanêuse, by the end of the 1920s mass-produced fashion was was not possible until she was free to roam the city widely available, making the marketing of apparel on her own. And this was equated with the privilege more important to stores.48 of shopping on her own’.56 Fashion advertising became an important Women were seen as the primary consumers

FILM HISTORY: Volume 21, Number 2, 2009 – p. 112 Symptoms of desire FILM HISTORY Vol. 21 Issue 2 (2009) 113 of cinema, so there was overlap in the target markets La Mode; no longer need they be content with of the film, fashion, and cosmetics industries, result- perusing dull, lifeless fashion-drawings. For a ing in the emergence of a culture of cross-promotion visit to the theatre showing the ‘Fashion Ga- and ‘synergy’, including Hollywood ‘tie-in’ labels, zette’ is a far more delightful pastime.64 product placement in films, and extensive use of Promotional strategies to advertise clothing fashion publicity for upcoming films.57 Female spec- often involved the careful amalgamation of all three: tators were encouraged to use cinema as a fashion the printed press, the department store, and cinema. guide, for example by sewing their own versions of film costumes or buying costumes through maga- Colour and the fashion newsreel zines such as Photoplay.58 genre In addition to fashion newsreels, film serials The integration of fashion and moving images in produced in the 1910s advertised fashion as a sig- actuality films intensified in the 1910s, with Pathé nificant feature of individual episodes. Ben Singer taking the lead as the most prominent production notes how the ‘serial-queen melodrama’ often pro- company using colour in connection with the display moted ‘fashion interest’ – ‘apparent both in the mise- of clothing and appealing lifestyles. A review in an en-scène of the serials and in extra-textual October 1911 issue of The Bioscope noted the merchandizing tie-ins with fashion houses’, as evi- genre’s increased popularity: dence of the genre’s address to a female audience.59 The delight with which the coloured fashions In 1910, Moving Picture World referred to women in Pathé’s Animated Gazette have been attending stage productions primarily to see the viewed by thousands of feminine spectators gowns, and recommended the film industry take every week has been a precursor of a fre- advantage of this interest.60 quently expressed desire for films giving a Shelley Stamp examines women’s film spec- greater number of pictures showing the tatorship in the United States during the 1910s and changes foreshadowed by Dame Fashion. To places it within a broad consumer culture environ- meet this desire and demand for fashion films, ment where the cinema and the department store are Messrs. Pathé are commencing a series show- examined as key leisure sites for women.61 Films, ing the coming models from Paris. The present department store displays, tie-in and tie-up promo- one gives coloured pictures of hats, dinner tions, and ads in women’s magazines, for example, gowns, tailor-made costumes, walking entailed a notion of ‘the compatibility of shopping, dresses, negligees and tea gowns.65 browsing through magazines, and going to the cin- Newsreels regularly covered Paris openings; ema as related spheres of women’s leisure. Fanta- not surprisingly, early filmed fashion shows were sies of upward mobility were enacted through the described as a promotional tool for setting trends woman’s gaze – at product ads, at store display and promoting sales, ‘facilitated by the tie-ins be- cases, and at the movies – as women’s “inarticulate tween motion pictures and women’s fashion in order longings” were fed through consumer desire.’62 to sell both kinds of commodities’.66 Pathé’s skill at Here, Stamp expands on the argument made promoting its product was reinforced by the fashion by Jane Gaines regarding the inter-changeability of genre. A Moving Picture World article of 1916 de- the motion picture and the department store: ‘Cin- scribes how the French company employed a so- ema-going was analogous to the browsing-without- phisticated marketing strategy for its fashion obligation-to-buy pioneered by the turn-of-the- newsreel series by employing key figures as spokes- century department store, where one could, with no persons for their product, as in a series produced offence to the merchant, enter to peruse the goods, ‘under the personal supervision of Miss Florence exercising a kind of visual connoisseurship, and Rose, the country’s famous fashion expert’: leave without purchase’.63 Browsing in a department The most beautiful fashions ever seen in Amer- store, reading fashion magazines, and watching ica shown at the same time in leading news- fashion newsreels as analogous forms of leisure papers, leading department stores and were also noted by trade press articles that promoted leading moving picture theatres … . Leading the latter as superior: newspapers will, every day for twelve days in No longer need women make a tiring tour in advance of release dates, publish the fashions order to learn of the latest vagaries of Madame to be shown on the screens in each release.

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Later, the garments will be on sale in the Pathé cinemagazine Eve’s Film Review (1921–1933), stores. This means that the women of America Jenny Hammerton shows how the series was pro- can first see them in the newspapers, then on moted specifically toward a female audience; in the the screen, and later at their own department trade press ‘subjects essentially of interest to ladies’ store.67 included fashion, gossip, ‘hints and advice on the The 1910s also included productions in ‘natu- domestic arts, such as cooking and dressmaking’ ral’ colour – for example, La mode de Paris (Gau- but also accounts of ‘women at work in novel and mont, 1913), which was shot in the Gaumont interesting occupations’.73 Chronochrome process.68 During the mid-1910s, As indicated earlier, along with travelogues Natural Color Kinematograph, the company behind (which also, to a large extent, focused on costuming), Kinemacolor, competed with and placed itself di- throughout the 1920s and until about 1931 rectly in opposition to Pathé’s stencil colour in ads Pathécolor was mainly used in fashion films.74 Pathé- and other promotional materials featuring dis- Revue titles like Fantaisies parisiennes (1920), Pour courses on indexicality, ‘deception’, and truth, and le soir (For the Evening, 1920), Chapeaux de prin- by producing fashion films.69 The Kinematograph & temps (Spring Hats,1924), Élégants ensembles Lantern Weekly described how the Kinemacolor pro- d’après-midi (Elegant Ensembles for the Afternoon, ductions New York Autumn Fashions (1912) and the 1924), Fantaisies féminines (1924), Modèles de prin- ‘cinemagazine’ Kinemacolor Fashion Gazette (which temps: Ensembles d’après-midi (Spring Models: En- circulated in a few issues during 1913) featured sembles for the Afternoon, 1926), Mode pour la … beautiful women, posed in the most charm- campagne (Fashion for the Countryside, 1926), Pour ing frocks, gowns, furs, hats, boots – in fact, la promenade matinale (For the Morning Walk, 1926), all the various items which go to make the etc., suggested the garments displayed, as well as stylishly dressed lady. The beauty of the sub- where and when to wear them. Additionally, these jects and their apparel must interest not only productions featured models displaying hats, the fair sex, but fascinate mere man. Some of dresses, fur coats, shoes, jewellery, handbags, lin- the most renowned West End and Parisian gerie, sportswear, accessories, and hairstyles. Some firms of costumiers, milliners, etc., have al- films, such as the stencil coloured Une fête lowed their ‘creations’ to be filmed and every d’élégance au Polo Club de Bagatelle (An Elegant lady who desires to be kept au fait with style Party at the Bagatelle Polo Club, 1926), imitate the and fashion should see these wonders. The narrative styles of other newsreel genres and give the advantage of thus presenting up-to-date fash- impression of depicting an ‘event’ while still featuring ions in all their tints and colours with the effect close-ups of fashion accessories like dresses and of movement cannot but be a delight to every- hats. A number of fashion newsreels also featured one interested in dress, except, perhaps, the children’s apparel, such as Mode de gosses (Mode poor husbands who have to pay for them.70 pour fillettes) (Fashion for Children [Fashion for A review of the Kinemacolor production Paris Girls], 1924) and Mode pour les moins de 10 ans Fashions (1913), filmed in the fashion capital, noted (Fashion for Those Under 10 Years, 1930), thereby how ‘the newest designs by Paquin and the other offering additional subjects specifically targeting fe- French moguls paraded by living models, and in their male maternal consumers. truest colors’ made the film ‘an immensely interesting Although models featured in the fashion news- feature for women’.71 To further promote and make reel in colour sometimes stand in front of neutral, available its product, the ‘Kinemacolor fashion serv- black or white backdrops, in general the colouring of ice’ also entailed ‘special morning matinee perform- objects other than apparel (clothes, hats, and acces- ances for ladies only’. The matinees accommodated sories) – for example, interiors, wallpaper, furniture, women’s busy domestic schedules by offering inti- flowers, curtains, chandeliers – is just as striking. mate apparel, as well as instruction on how to prop- These objects and materials are as meticulously erly wear it. Programs featuring ‘intimate displays … coloured as the fashion accessories and often are not [meant] for the general public’, demonstrated displayed within an environment of leisure surround- ‘the correct manner of wearing the latest style of ings – in Parisian salons or luxurious home environ- French lingerie’, as well as instruction on ‘the correct ments – or picturesque settings like parks method of donning a corset’.72 In her study of the (sometimes with multicoloured flowers, or lakes),

FILM HISTORY: Volume 21, Number 2, 2009 – p. 114 Symptoms of desire FILM HISTORY Vol. 21 Issue 2 (2009) 115 terraces, and beaches.75 The display of clothing Thus, the combinations and interrelationships of dif- within the context of specific social situations and ferent colours in the fashion newsreel are displayed milieus is a fundamental aspect of the style of the through careful and meticulous colour compositions. fashion newsreel, and demonstrates how colour Fashion newsreels did not disguise their ad- functions in this genre. [Plate 1] vertising function, and listed the names of the design- Fashion newsreels, enriched by the technique ers and the department stores where the clothes of stencil colour, usually take place within a setting displayed could be bought – in contrast to the use of where everything in the mise-en-scène is in colour product placement in the mise-en-scène of Holly- (unlike examples of hand colouring in silent cinema, wood films.79 In addition, intertitles indicated de- such as Un drame à Venise, where only the apparel signs, types of garments, materials, etc., yet the has been coloured as a special feature to sell the models wearing the clothes usually remained anony- film). Here the garments are integrated within an mous faces and bodies. While the fashion and film environment of luxury and colour, featuring other industries were often associated with stars, fashion commodities to be desired apart from the clothing.76 newsreels usually did not feature motion picture stars Contemporary practices used in department stores as models (something which at times would be com- are likely sources for such filmic compositions and mented upon).80 However, some fashion newsreels mise-en-scène. Leach examines how the assem- featured upper-class women and celebrities, and bling of merchandise – called ‘making pictures’ with frequently indicated the names of the (usually fe- goods – took on new forms during the 1920s, where male) ‘fashion experts’ organising and producing the ‘colour coordination’ was emphasized.77 For in- films.81 Products on display were associated with the stance, in Damernas strumpor (Ladies’ Stocking, social class, status, and commercial attraction of Pathé, 1923) the embroidery of a stocking (shown in these women, thereby offering images of social mo- an extreme close-up) functions to create a pleasing bility and self-representation through clothing to fe- composition in contrast to the coloured ornaments male working class and middle class audiences. on the rug on which the model’s foot is placed. [Plate 2] Relationships established between garments and Close-ups, poses, and looks: colour, their surroundings in order to create interesting visual performance, and self-representation compositions were also accentuated in trade press Jane Gaines has pointed out how costume takes discourse, by linking ‘the artistic sense delighted by place within the discourse of the image of woman as the toute ensemble’ to notions of colour harmony: cultural and industrial ‘construction’, where the con- One beautiful, filmy white frock, for instance, is tinuity between the female body and dress, between worn in the midst of an old-world garden, the attire and femininity, underscores woman’s dress as flowers and the foliage forming just the ideal a form of self-representation.82 The fact that the fash- contrast. A fountain with floating lilies suggests ion newsreel displays this type of self-representation the restful, poetic ‘atmosphere’ that the sim- through moving images is not unimportant. José plicity of the gown requires … . There is not a Teunissen refers to the nineteenth-century repre- discordant note struck anywhere; if the frock is sentation of fashion drawings informed by an aes- worn in a garden, the very flower-beds will be thetic that negated movement; the movement of the found to blend harmoniously or, on the other body had no importance and this also determined hand, to contrast admirably with the dress- the style of dress. Through various artifices the fe- maker’s creation. Again should the pose be male body and its movements were carefully hidden made in an interior, the curtains, perhaps, or in order to obtain ideals in terms of profile and stat- the hangings, even the furniture itself, will be ure. Towards the end of the century this aesthetic found to be an ideal blend that completes the changed radically, due in part to the impact of cin- artistic whole.78 ema and photography, as well as an increased fas- Sometimes colourful backdrops and sur- cination with movement in culture in general. roundings function to accentuate garments in black Teunissen notes that Jacques Henri Lartigue was the and white; the colourlessness of the clothing consti- first photographer who did not have his fashion mod- tutes the centre of the image and is contrasted els pose in a studio, but photographed them doing against the colour of the model’s skin and hair, as daily activities in the Bois de Boulogne. He links this well as the multicoloured surroundings. [Plate 3] practice to a new approach to the female body – one

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that is more physical and mobile; similarly, Paul model’s. Noting how the dress would ‘perform’ Poiret’s abandonment of the corset has been asso- could help the female viewer to decide whether ciated with the emancipation of women.83 or not her figure was suitable for the dress. If a Within a relatively short period there was also woman was persuaded by the fashion preview a revolution in the approach to fashion: this radical that the dress complimented or flattered her, change was documented by, and in numerous ways she could refer back to the newspaper for the result of, the cinema. Teunissen regards the more information, such as department store tableaux of the fashion newsreel as a ‘hinge’ between advertisements indicating where similar outfits the static aesthetics of the nineteenth century and the were for sale.87 emerging dynamic aesthetics of the twentieth cen- Scrutiny of this kind was made possible not tury, where careful colouring contributes to (or facili- only by the model’s posing, but also through a tates) making visible the clothes, as well as the number of cinematic devices, such as the close-up, bodies in motion wearing them. Films in the newsreel which along with notions of ‘visual access’ and analy- fashion genre are characterized by a presentational sis produced a problematic of both the gaze and aesthetic, a direct address to the spectator similar to display of the female body, which to a certain extent the cinema of attractions, with models posing and becomes a commodity used in order to sell other turning in front of the camera and looking directly into commodities. it. However, as Elizabeth Leese has shown in her brief In some cases tilt movements scanned and discussion of the genre, the display of gowns some- scrutinized the body, as well as the details of the times progressed into a storyline built around the garment. [Plate 5] Similarly, the removal of a jacket display.84 With regard to the Florence Rose series, it could reveal previously unseen details of clothing was stated that ‘a pretty story will be woven into each underneath, in addition to displaying bare shoulders reel to increase the interest of the audience; the first and arms. The display of clothes and of women instalment, titled A Day with a Society Girl, followed wearing them is represented in these films through a its protagonist ‘from the time she wakes up in the dynamic use of distance and framing, from long morning until she leaves the Charity Bazaar that shots of models placed within specific surroundings night’.85 This practice is likely the result of the in- to close-ups and extreme close-ups fragmenting the creased narrativization found in the broader contem- body and giving visual access to (often multicol- porary film historical context, but Leese points out oured) details in the garments: embroidery, textures, that although the early titles of the series indicated etc. [Plates 2 and 6] As Herzog points out, both the simple plots (such as Weekend House Party and A details of clothing and the display of the body were Day in New York with Betty), later titles (such as The important to female spectators, but there are visual Season’s Novelties and Style Information) suggest a and abstract qualities of these images that transcend return to standard formulas for fashion newsreels.86 the ‘instructional’ characteristics of the close-ups. Sometimes converging within the same scene, In addition to stencil colour and ‘natural’ col- fashion newsreels combine narrative situations with our, some early fashion newsreels featured other poses in the tradition of the still image. In Senaste applied colour techniques, such as tinting and ton- modenytt från Paris (Svenska Biografteatern, 1922) a ing. In Paris chaussures femmes aux Galeries La- woman arranges flowers, then immediately starts fayette (Pathé, 1912) close-ups of legs and feet posing and looks straight into the camera. [Plates 1 wearing different shoes are toned in sepia, pink, blue and 4] Like the titles of many fashion newsreels, the and other colours. Here, the differentiation of colours presentation of these social, ‘narrative’, situations not is temporal rather than spatial: a montage effect, only displays garments but also suggests how and which is sensual rather than narrative, is constructed when to wear them. On the other hand, the use of between the interplay of different colours. In the posing gave the spectator an opportunity to examine stencil-coloured Damernas vårhattar (Ladies’ Spring the garment, a type of scrutiny that took place in Hats, Pathé, 1923) close-ups of hats with orna- various media through the practices of tie-in promo- mented semi-transparent veils partly concealing a tional strategies. According to Charlotte Herzog, the face, or embroidered stockings, or shoes, focus pri- intermedial nature of the preview marily on the abstract visual qualities of patterns and … facilitated an easy comparison between a textures. [Plate 7] [female spectator’s] body type and the screen There are several similarities between colour

FILM HISTORY: Volume 21, Number 2, 2009 – p. 116 Symptoms of desire FILM HISTORY Vol. 21 Issue 2 (2009) 117 and the close-up. As with the close-up, colour frag- ential notion of ‘visual pleasure’, a paradigm of vo- ments the image by differentiating the spatial and yeurism and fetishism positing a male spectator, and compositional unity of the image through isolating, second the paradigm of the ‘masquerade’ (Mary accentuating, and distinguishing objects. Jane Anne Doane), which functions as a supplement and Gaines refers to the close-up as a cinematic conven- reaction against the first paradigm.92 In many re- tion which has been associated with encouraging spects, the use of close-ups and models posing in fetishization, and thus also the commodification of front of the camera in fashion newsreels can be the body.88 Marlene Dietrich for example, was fre- linked directly to Laura Mulvey’s descriptions of the quently featured by Von Sternberg in close-ups and representation of the female body in Classical Holly- fragmented images of parts of her body – Dietrich’s wood cinema. That is, they function as spectacle by legs were also used for ads to sell stockings. In this halting the narrative and, in terms of inscribing the case, the familiar image of the star being fragmented spectator as a hypothetical subject within the film as provided a subtle and subliminal mode of reinforcing text, imply a male gaze. However, the fashion news- the female body as a commodity associated with reel genre obviously assumed a female audience – other commodities, the stockings.89 Similar associa- what Herzog has described as ‘the critical “shop- tions between photographic representation in colour per’s eye”, the eye with which women measure them- and the female body can be found in a number of selves against store mannequins and size up the cut different contexts. and line of the dress into which they project their Steve Neale situates notions of the female (imaginary) bodies’.93 The question remains whether body within the somewhat contradictory ideological or not the ‘male look’ merges with this kind of gaze. discourses regarding nature, realism, spectacle, and Herzog refers to 1930s film reviews pointing out how art connected with colour and cinema: fashion-themed films would appeal to both female Since women within patriarchal ideology al- and male audiences – with women being interested ready occupy the contradictory spaces of na- in the clothes, and men in the models wearing ture and culture (since they therefore evoke them.94 both the natural and the artificial) and since The nonfiction film from 1906 until World War I also they are marked as socially sanctioned has been characterized by Tom Gunning in terms of objects of erotic looking, it is no wonder that what he calls a ‘view aesthetic’, that is, ‘the way early from the earliest days of colour photography actuality films were structured around presenting they function both as a source of spectacle of something visually, capturing and preserving a look colour in practice and as a reference point for or vantage point’.95 Gunning’s notion of the view is the use and promotion of colour in theory. The also applicable to fashion newsreels, in particular female body both bridges the ideological gap with regard to his discussion of the recurring ‘re- between nature and cultural artifice while si- turned looks’ of people posing in front of the camera. multaneously marking and focusing the Although the look entailed by the films examined by scopophilic pleasure involved in and engaged Gunning can be linked to ‘colonial and sexist gazes’, by the use of colour in film.90 an important argument in Gunning’s essay deals with Neale refers to the depiction of women in col- how the act of looking nevertheless involves a variety our photographs from the 1910s and 1920s, as well of ‘possible scenarios of dominance, curiosity, se- as discourses about feminine beauty (both ‘natural’ duction, objectification and even identification’.96 and ‘glamorous’), linking Technicolor with the female Hammerton argues that the direct look to the camera body and notions of the female star, lighting and in fashion items ‘marks a special relationship with the make-up. Joshua Yumibe has also considered the female viewer, a relationship characterised by same- early genre of hand-coloured ‘serpentine dance’ and ness as opposed to difference’, suggestive of a gaze how the coloured illumination of cloth, where the into a mirror reflecting an ideal self.97 In some of the movement of colour is linked to the movement of the ‘narrative’ situations found in the fashion newsreels, fabric, as well as the dancer’s body, entails a colour- a notion of a ‘female gaze’, merging the categories ful display of the moving female body.91 of objectification and identification, is thematically Within early feminist film theory Gaines traces integrated within a scene. For example, often two two lines of descent that produced contrasting theo- women display clothes in front of each other, both ries of body and costume: first, Laura Mulvey’s influ- posing and turning for each other, as well as the

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camera, till their looks meet, thereby supplementing also in terms of abstraction or affect, as ‘pure’ colour, their individual looks straight into the camera. Thus, as a quality in itself. It is usually difficult to separate the presence of two gazes is acknowledged – the these two seemingly contradictory functions when camera’s gaze and the ‘diegetic’ presence of an trying to describe colour in film images. In fashion onlooker. In Senaste modenytt från Paris (Svenska newsreels this hybridity is also found in the mise-en- Biografteatern, 1922) the two women eventually scène: social and narrative situations alternate with share a gaze as they both look at the pair of shoes tableaux of poses, an ambiguous display of bodies, that one of them is wearing. [Plate 8] The contested and direct address to the camera often within the issue of women’s relation to images of women is same shot. The use of the presentational mode, and underscored, just as the colours of the fashion news- the emphasis on the visual, sensual, and abstract reel make the objects, garments, commodities and qualities of colour found in these films, recalls how bodies of the image distinguishable from one an- colour functioned as spectacle in the earlier cinema other. of attractions, and also closely resembles experi- The films studied in this essay demonstrate ments in colour abstraction in the work of Len Lye, how colour in cinema is in most cases an intermedial Oskar Fischinger, and others – films that, just like the phenomenon, often having specific connection to coloured fashion newsreels, often were funded as other industries. The coloured fashion newsreel was advertisements. These dual and simultaneous func- part of a broader contemporary commercial and tions of verisimilitude, display, and abstraction dem- visual culture characterized by the increasing use of onstrate how colour as a stylistic element in film can colour in commodities, and an emphasis on colour be taken to the extreme in a number of seemingly in marketing strategies. Colour in silent cinema was opposite directions; colour is elemental in essential- likewise achieved through a variety of technologies, ist conceptions of cinema as ‘total’ realism or mime- sometimes photographic but usually related to col- sis, as well as in conceptions of cinema as pure affect ouring within other fields. or abstraction. Returning to Dubois’ notion of hybridization, Similarly, Ramsaye’s description in 1926 of within the fashion newsreel hybridization initially took hand and stencil colour throughout cinema history place on a technical level, as colours in most of these as occurring ‘only as a symptom of desire’ can be films were external elements added to black and linked to how colour functioned in the fashion news- white photographic images. Likewise, the fashion reel on more than one level: first, the desire implicit newsreels can also be viewed as both instructional in the visual reinforcement of the garments as well as films – meticulously displaying knowledge of the the bodies on display through colour, and second, latest fashion and its potential uses, achieved to William Leach’s notion of colour as a visual mate- through mise-en-scène, cinematic devices such as rial of desire taking part in the democratization of the close-up, and precise colouring – and as aes- desire within consumer culture – where desire is not thetic objects employing colour as a ‘visual material only linked to the specific garments and commodi- of desire’. ties on display, but also to the potential of these In the fashion newsreel of the 1910s and 1920s commodities as signifiers of social identity, emanci- colour functioned in terms of realism through the pation, and social mobility. verisimilar colouring of specific objects, but often

Notes 1. See Tom Gunning, ‘Colourful Metaphors: the Attrac- Essays on Early Nonfiction Film (Amsterdam: Neder- tion of Colour in Early Silent Cinema’, Fotogenia 1 lands Filmmuseum, 1997), 12. (1994): 249–255 3. Elizabeth Leese, Costume Design in the Movies (Bembridge: BCW Publishing Limited, 1976), 12. 2. Referring to Ben Brewster, Tom Gunning has discussed the fact that ‘many nonfiction films of 1910s, 4. See Eirik Frisvold Hanssen, ‘Colour and the Con- most especially travelogues, look surprisingly similar struction of Film History in the Catalogue of Kinema- stylistically to nonfiction films from earlier periods’. color Film Subjects (1912)’, in Enrico Biasin, Roy See Tom Gunning, ‘Before Documentary: Early Non- Menarini and Federico Zecca (eds), Le età del cin- fiction Films and the “View” Aesthetic’, in Daan Her- ema / The Ages of Cinema (Udine: Forum, 2008), togs and Nico de Klerk (eds), Uncharted Territory: 165–173.

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5. Philippe Dubois, ‘Hybridations et métissages: Les 18. Aumont, 121. mélanges du noir-et-blanc et de la couleur’, in Jac- 19. Giovanna Fossati, ‘When Cinema Was Coloured’, ques Aumont (ed.), La couleur en cinéma (Mi- Tutti i colori del mondo: Il colore nei mass media tra lan/Paris: Edizioni Gabriele Mazzotta/Cinémathèque 1900 e 1930 / All the Colours of the World: Colours française, 1995), 77. in Early Mass Media, 1900–1930 (Reggio Emilia: 6. Giuliana Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Edizioni Diabasis, 1998), 130ff. Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari 20. Terry Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights: A History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 97ff. of the Motion Picture (New York: Simon and Schuster, 7. Bruno indicates that Elvira Notari did some of the 1926), 118. hand colouring. According to Enzo Troianelli, how- 21. Gage, 91. ever, Notari’s husband Nicola, who was co-founder of Dora Films and worked as a cameraman, initially 22. See Adrian Bernard Klein, Colour Cinematography did the colouring. See Enza Troianelli, Elvira Notari: (London: Chapman & Hall, 1936), 308. pioniera del cinema napoletano (1875–1946) (Rome: 23. Yumibe, 140ff. See also Bruno, 106ff. EUROMA Editrice Universitaria di Roma, 1989), 23ff. 24. Gage, 31. My thanks to Kim Tomadjoglou for this citation. 8. Paul Read and Mark-Paul Meyer, Restoration of Mo- 25. David Batchelor, Chromophobia (London: Reaktion tion Picture Film (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, Books, 2000), 22f. 2000), 180, 272ff. See also Joshua Yumibe, Moving 26. Ibid., 21ff. Color: An Aesthetic History of Applied Color Tech- 27. Hanssen, Early Discourses on Colour and Cinema, nologies in Silent Cinema (Ph.D. diss., The University 65ff. of Chicago, 2007), 177ff. 28. Michel Pastoureau, Dictionnaire des couleurs de 9. Yumibe, 59. notre temps: Symbolique et société (Paris: Éditions 10. Ibid., 206ff. Bonneton, 1992), 160ff. 11. Sarah Berry, Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 29. Ibid., 22f. 1930s Hollywood (Minneapolis/London: University 30. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theory of Colours of Minnesota Press, 2000), 12. [1810], trans. Charles Lock Eastlake [1840] (Cam- 12. Jeanne Thomas Allen, ‘Fig Leaves in Hollywood: bridge/London: MIT Press, 1970), 326, 329. How- Female Representation and Consumer Culture’, in ever, Goethe does not necessarily regard this Jane Gaines and Charlotte Herzog (eds), Fabrica- reluctanceas an expressionof sophisticationinitself; tions: Costume and the Female Body (New York/Lon- rather, the fact that women seemed to dress in white don: Routledge, 1990), 134. and men in black was due ‘partly to weakness of 13. Gunning, ‘Colourful Metaphors’, 250. sight, partly to the uncertainty of taste, which readily takes refuge in absolute negation’. 14. See Eirik Frisvold Hanssen, Early Discourses on Colour and Cinema: Origins, Functions, Meanings 31. The relationship between clothing and ‘ethno- (Ph.D. diss., Stockholm University / Almqvist & Wik- graphic’ representation in colour is also evident in sell International, 2006), 45ff. A surviving early Kine- the amount of images displaying colourful traditional macolor test film, Tartans of Scottish Clans (G.A. dress in the autochromes from around the world Smith, Natural Color Kinematograph Company, featured in Albert Kahn’s Archives de la planète 1906) features a sequence of Scottish tartans as a project. See David Okuefuna, The Wonderful World means to demonstrate the process. of Albert Kahn: Colour Photographs from a Lost Age (London: BBC Books, 2008). 15. Jacques Aumont, Introduction à la couleur: des dis- cours aux images (Paris: Armand Colin, 1994), 17. 32. Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and EthnographicSpectacle (Durham/London: Duke 16. Scott Higgins, Harnessing the Technicolor Rainbow: University Press, 1996), 10. Color Design in the 1930s (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 79ff., 89ff. For criticism of the under- 33. See Victoria de Grazia, Introduction to Part I: ‘Chang- standing of the stylistic development of Technicolor ing Consumption Regimes’, in Victoria de Grazia and in the 1930s in terms of a gradual integration with Ellen Furlough (eds), The Sex of Things: Gender and Classical Hollywood cinema conventions, see Brian Consumption in Historical Perspective (Berkeley/Los Price, ‘Film Style,Period-Building,andTechnological Angeles/London: University of California Press, Determinism’, in Biasin, Menarini and Zecca (eds), 1996), 1ff. Le età del cinema, 387–392. 34. These include Berry, Screen Style; the anthology The 17. See John Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Sex of Things; the anthology Fabrications: Costume Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (London: and the Female Body; Shelley Stamp, Movie-Struck Thames & Hudson, 1993), 117. Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the

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Nickelodeon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, talets Sverige (Ph.D. diss., Stockholm University / 2000); and Anne Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cin- Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2006), 13ff. ema and the Postmodern (Berkeley/Los Angeles/ 56. Friedberg, 36. Oxford: University of California Press, 1993). 57. Berry, xv. 35. Gunning, ‘Colorful Metaphors’, 250ff. For an examination of the relationship between colour and con- 58. Ibid., 11. sumer culture during the period 1914–1934 within a 59. Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensa- broader cultural context, see Stephen Eskilson, ‘Col- tional Cinema and Its Contexts (New York: Columbia our and Consumption’, Design Issues 18:2 (Spring University Press, 2001), 224. See also Stamp, 122ff. 2002): 17–29. 60. ‘Dress and the Picture’, Moving Picture World 7: 2 (9 36. See Frederick A. Talbot, Moving Pictures: How They July 1910): 73ff. Are Made and Worked (Philadelphia/London: J.B. 61. Stamp, 18ff. Lippincott Company/William Heinemann, 1912), 289. See also Ezio Raimondi and Giuseppe Ber- 62. Stamp, 24. For a discussion of tie-in advertising, see tolucci, ‘When the World Stopped Being Black and Charles Eckert, ‘The Carole Lombard in Macy’s Win- White’, Tutti i colori del mondo: Il colore nei mass dow’ [1978], in Gaines and Herzog, 100–121. For a media tra 1900 e 1930 / All the Colours of the World: discussion of cinema, fashion and advertising in a Colours in Early Mass Media, 1900–1930 (Reggio Swedish context, see Ylva Habel, Modern Media, Emilia: Edizioni Diabasis, 1998), 91. Modern Audiences: Mass Media andSocialEngineer- ing in the 1930s Swedish Welfare State (Stockholm: 37. Yumibe, 29ff. Aura förlag, 2002), 97–104. 38. John Seitz, ‘Introduction’, in Hal Hall (ed.), Cinema- 63. Jane Gaines, ‘The Queen Christina Tie-Ups: Conver- tographic Annual 1930, Volume One (Hollywood: The gence of Show Window and Screen’, Quarterly Re- American Society of Cinematographers, Inc., 1930), view of Film & Video 11, 4 (1989): 35. 17. See also Adrian Bernard Klein, Colour-Music: The Art of Light 1st edn) (London: Crosby Lockwood and 64. ‘Fashions on Film: A Chat with the Creator of the Son, 1926), 28. “Kinemacolor Fashion Gazette”’, The Picture Theatre Magazine (22 November 1913): 211. 39. ‘Color in Industry’, Fortune (February 1930): 85. 65. Quoted in Leese, 9. 40. Sumiko Higashi, Cecil B. DeMille and American Cul- ture: The Silent Era (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: 66. Charlotte Herzog, ‘‘Powder Puff’ Promotion: The University of California Press, 1994). Fashion-Show-in-the-Film’, in Gaines and Herzog, 134. 41. Ibid., 144, 177. 67. ‘Pathé Fashion Film to Have Wide Publicity’, Moving 42. Gunning, ‘Colorful Metaphors’, 252. Picture World, 22 July 1916: 640. See also Janet 43. Richard Abel, The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cin- Staiger, ‘Announcing Wares, Winning Patrons, Voic- ema American, 1900–1910 (Berkeley/Los Ange- ing Ideals: Thinking about the History and Theory of les/London: University of California Press, 1999), Film Advertising’, Cinema Journal 29:3 (Spring 40ff. 1990): 11. 44. William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power and 68. See ‘The Gaumont Chronochrome’ Moving Picture the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Viking, World (28 June 1913): 1346. See also Paolo Cherchi 1993), 8f. Usai, ‘Le miracle de Chronochrome’, Cinémathèque 45. Ibid., 9. 3 (1993): 91. 46. Ibid. 69. Bregtje Lameris, ‘Pathécolor: “Perfect in Their Ren- dition of the Colours of Nature”’, Journal of the 47. Ibid., 93. Popular andProjected Image Before 1914 2,2(2003): 48. Ibid., 93; Berry, 1ff. 46ff. See also Hanssen, Early Discourses on Colour 49. Leach, 91. and Cinema, 58ff. 50. See Higashi, 176. 70. ‘A Boom in Kinemacolor: Big Changes and Addi- tional Attractions’, The Kinematograph & Lantern 51. Leach, 101ff. Weekly, 9 December 1909: 274. See also Emily 52. Ibid., 102. Crosby and Linda Kaye (eds), Projecting Britain: The 53. Berry, 55. British Guide to Cinemagazines (London: British Uni- versities Film & Video Council, 2008), 161; ‘The Scala 54. Ibid., xiii. Theatre’, Kinemacolor supplement to The Kinema- 55. For a discussion of the rise of women buyers, see tograph & Lantern Weekly (26 September 1912); ‘Kin Leach, 95ff; also Therése Andersson, Beauty Box: Starts New Series’, Variety (17 October 1913): 14; Filmstjärnor och skönhetskultur i det tidiga 1900- ‘Fashions of To-Morrow: Dresses Photographed for

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Kinemacolor’, Pall Mall Gazette (5 September 1913); with intertitles emphasising the ‘perfect harmony of ‘Fashions on Film: A Chat with the Creator of the style and colouring between the furniture and the “Kinemacolor Fashion Gazette”’, The Picture Theatre wallpaper’ [‘parfaite harmonie de style et de coloris Magazine (22 November 1913): 211ff; Luke McKer- entre le mobilier et le papier peint’]. nan (ed.), A Yank in Britain: The Lost Memoirs of 77. Leach, 317. Charles Urban, Film Pioneer (Hastings: The Projec- tion Box, 1999), 79. The cinemagazine was a format 78. ‘Fashions on Film: A Chat with the Creator of the similar to the newsreel but differing in subject matter ‘Kinemacolor Fashion Gazette’’, 211ff. and address, often released on a weekly basis and 79. Berry, 13. focusing on fashion and similar topics rather than ‘hard’ news stories. In fact, the first British cinema- 80. See Hugh Hoffman, ‘New York Fashion Show in gazine for women is considered to be the Kinema- Pictures’, Moving Picture World 18: 1 (4 October color Fashion Gazette in 1913. See Jenny 1913): 32. Hammerton, For Ladies Only? Eve’s Film Review, 81. See ‘A Boom in Kinemacolor: Big Changes and Pathé Cinemagazine 1921–33 (Hastings: The Pro- Additional Attractions’, The Kinematograph and Lan- jection Box, 2001), 8, 17ff. tern Weekly (9 October 1913): 2556. See also ‘Kin 71. Review of Paris Fashions, Variety (7 March 1913). Starts New Service’. 82. See Jane Gaines, ‘Introduction: Fabricating the Fe- 72. ‘Kinemacolor Arranged for Ladies Only’, unsourced male Body’, in Gaines and Herzog, 1ff. New York review, 10 May 1913, Charles Urban papers, National Media Museum, Bradford,volume 3/1. 83. José Teunissen ‘La moda in movimento’, Cinegrafie 3, 6 (1993), quoted in Il Cinema Ritrovato program, 73. The Bioscope, 28 April 1921, quoted in Hammerton, Bologna, 1993, 23ff. 11. Hammerton (136, note 2) briefly mentions the use of stencil colour for fashion items in cinemagazi- 84. Leese, 9ff. nes. See also Emily Crosby, ‘The “Colour Supple- 85. ‘Pathé Fashion Film to Have Wide Publicity’, 640. ment” of the Cinema: The British Cinemagazine, 1918–1938’, Projecting Britain, 10ff. 86. Leese, 11ff. 74. See Lameris, ‘Pathécolor’: 54. 87. Herzog, 134. 75. For a discussion the popularity of exotic and often 88. Gaines, ’Introduction’, 22f. spectacular décor in fashion show, see Leach 102ff. 89. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cin- ema’, Screen 16, 3 (1975). 76. Just as clothes, jewellery and similar coloured commodities were the topic for fashion actuality films in 90. Steve Neale, Cinema and Technology: Image, colour, films about coloured wallpapers (which were Sound, Colour (London/Basingstoke: Macmillan produced by stencil printing, a technique similar to Education, 1985), 152. the stencil colouring of films) were produced in both 91. Yumibe, 106f. Kinemacolor and Pathécolor. The Kinemacolor production Choosing the Wallpaper: A Very Severe Test 92. Gaines, ‘Introduction’, 21ff. of Color Photography (1909), displayed differently 93. Herzog, 159. patterned wallpapers as a means to, as the title suggests, demonstrate the capabilities of the colour 94. Ibid., 157. process. The stencil coloured Pathé production of 95. Gunning, ’Before Documentary’, 14. twenty years later, Le home moderne (Pathé Revue, 96. Ibid., 20. 1929), seems more focused on selling a product; it features wallpapers in a number of different rooms, 97. Hammerton, 55, 66–74. Abstract: Symptoms of desire: colour, costume, and commodities in fashion newsreels of the 1910s and 1920s, by Eirik Frisvold Hanssen This essay demonstrates how the stylistic use of colour in fashion newsreels of the 1910s and 1920s was derived and modified from earlier attractions-based film practices with regard to narrative integration and spectacle, and also related to conventions associated with the later narrative cinema. It places the use of colour in fashion newsreels within a broader visual and commercial context by exploring how contemporary cultural connotations associated with colour in relation to the terms ‘primitive’ and ‘feminine’ were both adopted and problematized in a film genre specifically addressing female spectators. Key words: colour film, Kinemacolor, Pathécolor, motion picture newsreels, consumerism, fashion

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