Old black and white footage creates its own imagery and world. It’s like a dream sequence. But what if you saw it in color? Would it look more like day to day reality?
Here’s a treat: black and white footage of a 1951 “I Love Lucy” Episode intercut with COLOR footage taken from the audience during the filming (you can see the mikes and all). Don’t Lucy and Desi seem more like “real” people?
Meanwhile, unlike many, I LIKE colorization and think it makes many classic comedies and dramas more accessible to modern audiences (I know some young people who will not watch black and white). Here’s a colorized Laurel & Hardy scene from the 30s:
And a scene from a colorized Three Stooges short:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.