Film History, Volume 21, pp. 9–46, 2009. Copyright © John Libbey Publishing ISSN: 0892-2160. Printed in United States of America ‘Unnatural Colours’: An introduction to colouring techniques in silent era movies An introduct ion to colouring techniques in silentera movies Paul Read atural colour’ was the term coined in the late oured social drama in 3 parts. Better than ever.’ (The 1900s for genuine colour photography, as advertisement spelled her name Neilsen, incor- ‘Ndistinct from coloured or ‘painted’ mono- rectly!) Tinting and toning, two very different chemical chrome images. Exactly when and where the techniques, were the principles used for all these first use of the term natural colour occurred is not ‘unnatural’ colouring methods. They were frequently clear (it was probably applied by Clerk Maxwell during confused in the minds – and just as often in the eyes his demonstrations in Edinburgh in the 1860s), but it – of even experienced viewers. From about 1929 was widely used by 1900, hence my connotative use onwards, because the technology they used did not of ‘unnatural’. suit the new combined sound-on-film, and despite ‘Natural’, to distinguish a genuine colour proc- many courageous and expensive experiments, the ess from a ‘coloured’ image, crops up again and majority of the world’s cinema audiences saw only again in early technical literature and manuals for black-and-white images on screen. It would be many photographic technicians. Good examples are the years before widely distributed Technicolor and its Kinemacolor programmes, especially where Urban various competitors filtered across the world [Fig. 1]. and Smith state that they ‘take special pride in the Over the last twenty years, I and my colleagues fact…that their invention is based on solid foundation in the Gamma Group (a European interest group of of established scientific truths’ (Madison Square moving film archivists, film laboratory technologists, Garden, Kinemacolor Programme, 11December and members of the FIAF Technical Commission) 1909). A second example, years later, is the ‘Fox have written and published a great deal of technical Nature Color Pictures Instructions for Cameramen’ in information on the origin and practice of tinting and 1929. It is slightly unfortunate that both these sys- toning technology, and the restoration techniques for tems were two-colour (not three-colour) processes. silent era film. It is not my intention to repeat that work In both cases the claimants were perhaps trying to defend their results to their fellow technologists, de- spite the fact that the processes were only approxi- mations to the ideal. Paul Read received his degree in natural sciences from London at the end of the 1950s, and went on to ‘Coloured’ was the term almost universally research motion picture colour film for Kodak Ltd in used to describe the colour images of silent film. In the UK. He subsequently worked with many motion my father’s collection of old newspaper cuttings was picture laboratories around the world, and was director a page to remind him of his favourite film star, Asta of a film laboratory in London in the 1970s. A consultant on cinema film technology and a peripatetic lecturer Nielsen. It describes The Bonds of Marriage (to be on cinema science, he is now increasingly involved shown at the Kursaal in Southend where his family with digital cinema technology, film archives and was staying in November 1913) as ‘A beautiful col- restoration. Correspondence to [email protected] FILM HISTORY: Volume 21, Number 1, 2009 – p. 9 10 FILM HISTORY Vol. 21 Issue 1 (2009) Paul Read Kodak Testing Department theatre at Harrow, an after-thought to follow the screening of a CinemaS- cope print of Ben-Hur. A bit of light relief selected by the projectionist for the benefit of my students! I knew all about tinted film – I had even seen some ‘on the bench’ – but it still came as a shock. By that time I was a Kodak film technologist: I had worked in re- search, I knew the chemistry, I even thought I knew something of cinema history. I was commissioning Eastman Colour laboratories, teaching laboratory staff to control the chemistry and sensitometry of those early tripack colour processes. I was also Fig. 1. Tinted in this article, which should be considered an infor- training young science graduates, newly employed and toned prints mal introduction to those original texts. As additional by Kodak, who were starting their research careers were advertised information I have attempted to place this information in film technology (science graduates know a lot of as ‘coloured’ as into the context of the relationship between the film science, but photographic technology was, and still part of the makers, the associated film laboratories, and the is, a closed book to them!). Even so, I found the attraction. This 1913 provincial manufacturers of film stocks and their technologists unnaturalness of the tinted image, and its cavalier English and researchers. I believe that only one influential disregard for the original scene’s colours, discon- newspaper company, Pathé, combined all three component certing. My first reaction was to search out some advertisement is parts under one integrated corporate structure, op- literature on silent cinema, but the only information probably for an erating as a film manufacturer and supplier, film available to me then was the plain technology of how English release of maker, and film laboratory carrying out post-produc- tinting was done, and not why. I have since discov- Der Totentanz tion processes to produce the final cinema print. In ered that why can still be contentious. (Urban Gad, 1912). 1926 Eastman Kodak bought the Pathé film manu- Film technologists have probably always felt facturing plant at Chalon to create Kodak Pathé, uncomfortable about tinted and toned coloured film. separating this function from the other two compo- In 1918, William van Doren Kelley, the inventor of nents; no similar connection occurred before or several commercial natural colour processes, writing since. in the Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture I spent my school years in Hampstead and my Engineers, complained that he had several times university years in central London, where opportuni- been attracted to a ‘theatre’ where ‘color films’ were ties to visit the cinema were legion. From the age of advertised only to find that the subjects were merely sixteen to twenty-three I spent almost every Friday ‘black and white hand-colored films’. Kelley pro- and Saturday evening in the coffee bar (these were posed that only films ‘photographed so that the the coffee bar years), followed by a one-and- colors are selected entirely by optical and mechani- thru‘penny seat in the cinema (and finally the pub). cal means and reproduced again in a like manner’ And yet, despite all that time in the front row of the be called ‘natural color motion pictures’. ‘Color mo- Everyman near Hampstead Heath tube station, and tion pictures’ he described with his accustomed sar- several cinemas in the Classic chain (notably the casm as ‘films arbitrarily colored with dyes … to suit Baker Street Classic, which specialized in French, the individual taste’. He clearly implied that tinting or Italian, Greek, and very occasionally German ‘art toning was not natural. He was not the first to want to house’ films of the 1930s and 40s – don’t mention distinguish between ‘real’ colour films that repro- the war!) only once did I see a silent film. It was shown duced the original colours in a scene and ‘arbitrarily’ at the Everyman late in the evening (just after René tinted, toned or stencilled black-and-white films. We Clair’s Sous les tois de Paris – with a Tobis Klangfilm still use Kelley’s terms to distinguish between col- sound track), in black-and-white, and played in si- oured films and natural colour films, but it is clear that lence, without any music. It was an eerie experience film technologists throughout the silent period strug- punctuated by the coughs and shuffles of the audi- gled to understand the attraction that coloured films ence. I don’t now remember what it was! had for cinema audiences. As we shall see, some Several years later, about 1964, I watched a manufacturer’s scientifically-trained technical staff screening of a tinted nitrate 1920 travelogue in the did make attempts to come to terms with the con- FILM HISTORY: Volume 21, Number 1, 2009 – p. 10 An introduction to colouring techniques in silent era movies FILM HISTORY Vol. 21 Issue 1 (2009) 11 cept, while at the same time providing what it was photographic reproduction did not need to record they thought the industry required. and reproduce all the exact wavelengths reflected by After 1930, to the cinema technology commu- the subject; all that was needed was to stimulate the nity just as much as to the cinema-goer, it was as if eye in a similar manner to the original scene, and this ‘coloured films’ never existed. None of the great could be done using just three broad stimuli: red, historic texts that film technologists still refer to for the green and blue. Clerk Maxwell in 1866, Ducos du background to photographic science refer to these Hauron in 1868, and others, described and then techniques (Mees, Cornwell-Clyne, Glafkides, Lobell demonstrated the basic technology of three-colour and Dubois, Hunt, and Evans, Hanson & Brewer) and ‘natural’ photography, and established almost all our if they do, it was as if the chemical processes ap- current concepts years before these were in use for peared just in time to be used for natural colour! The still photography and decades before the first natural best examples of this include metallic toning and colour was shown in the cinema using these con- mordant dye toning, well developed for ‘coloured’ cepts.