Colour, Costume, and Commodities in Fashion Newsreels of the 1910S and 1920S
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Film History, Volume 21, pp. 107–121, 2009. Copyright © John Libbey Publishing ISSN: 0892-2160. Printed in United States of America 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 cin- ema 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] FILM HISTORY: Volume 21, Number 2, 2009 – p. 107 108 FILM HISTORY Vol. 21 Issue 2 (2009) Eirik Frisvold Hanssen ‘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.