It’s the norm for movies to be shot in color nowadays. Technology has allowed convincing color on-screen for decades now, to the point where color films have already been taken for granted by several generations of movie watchers. Even as late as the 1960s, it was still common to see black and white movies alongside color ones (often for budgetary or stylistic reasons).
The fact is, most movies choose to either be in color or black and white. It’s rare to get a film that switches between both formats, or features areas of a frame that are in color while the rest remains black and white… but not unheard of. Some of the most well-known movies utilize a mix of color and monochrome to make for diverse viewing experiences.
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10/10 ‘Pleasantville’ (1998)
Pleasantville is about a brother and sister who get transported into the world of a 1950s sitcom, where everything appears in black and white (reminiscent of the way old TV shows looked). As the pair begin to influence and change the rigid, repressed, and flawed TV world around them, things gradually go from black and white to color, representing positive change.
It’s a clever device to show character development and progression within a small town whose population used to be very stuck in their ways. Pleasantville does play out like a fairly standard dramedy made in the 1990s, but the way its visuals boldly use black & white and color (sometimes within the same shot) makes it a memorable film.
9/10 ‘Casino Royale’ (2006)
While Casino Royale was the James Bond movie that truly took the franchise into the modern age – updating the grit and violence considerably from past entries – its opening feels like a throwback to the past. Not only does Casino Royale flashback to Bond before he became 007, the prologue is shot in black and white, emphasizing how far back the early scenes go compared to the rest of the movie.
Of course, the rest of the movie is in color as to be expected from a modern 007 movie. The harsh black-and-white visuals – and brutal violence – of the opening leave an impact, and help the viewer know right off the bat that Casino Royale isn’t going to be your standard 007 film…
8/10 ‘Raging Bull’ (1980)
Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull is a biopic like no other. While most films about famous figures are reverential, even sappy affairs, Raging Bull is brutal, hard-hitting, and unafraid to show how flawed its central figure – boxer Jake LaMotta – really was.
The vast majority of this sports drama was shot in black and white. It works well for the story, given it takes place mostly in the 1940s and 1950s, and ensures the boxing sequences look how they would have when they were filmed for old television sets. Raging Bull‘s least intense scene stands out from the darkness by being shot in color, being a brief montage made to look like home video footage, showing a rare peaceful time in the otherwise turbulent life of LaMotta and his family.
7/10 ‘Schindler’s List’ (1993)
There’s a strong argument to be made that Schindler’s List is Steven Spielberg’s greatest film. It’s an epic that runs for over three hours, telling the story of how Oskar Schindler – a businessman who began World War II profiting from cheap labor – changed his ways and decided to help the persecuted Jewish population, eventually using his wealth to save more than a thousand lives.
While most of Schindler’s List is in black and white, there are occasional uses of color that prove to be very striking. The prologue and emotional epilogue are both shot in color, while a young girl who catches Schindler’s eye (and makes him begin to change his ways) has her coat appear red, standing out among the black and white around her.
6/10 ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ (1945)
The Picture of Dorian Gray is about a portrait that grows old while the man depicted in said portrait stays young. At first, this seems like a great deal for the title character, but the existence of such a painting doesn’t come without some severe consequences.
Like most movies from the 1940s, The Picture of Dorian Gray is shot in black and white, with bright colors used whenever the portrait is shown in full. This happens several times throughout the film, with the painting indeed looking older and more horrific as the movie builds towards its dramatic ending.
5/10 ‘Blonde’ (2022)
Without a doubt one of 2022’s most controversial movies, Blonde depicts a fictionalized version of Marilyn Monroe’s life. The movie touches on some of her successes in the film industry, with a few fleeting moments of happiness here and there. For the most part, Blonde is a dark and distressing movie about the way the Hollywood film industry can spit up and chew out young, attractive, talented women.
Blonde cuts between color and black and white very frequently, and sometimes at what feels like random. It similarly switches its aspect ratio multiple times throughout the film, making the visuals quite disorientating. There’s no easy answer as to which scenes were to be shown in which format; it’s done for (sometimes quite mysterious) emotional reasons.
4/10 ‘Kill Bill’ (2003/2004)
Kill Bill is a two-part epic by Quentin Tarantino that spans about four hours in length, containing a little bit of everything. It’s got action, dark comedy, and plenty of movie references – the first half feels like a yakuza film, while the second feels like a Western… Kill Bill is far more than “just” a revenge movie.
The variety extends to the visuals, too. For the most part, Kill Bill is a vibrant, colorful movie, but its big fight scene in Vol. 1 plays out in black and white, as do some of its flashbacks – especially notable in Vol. 2’s opening. The latter isn’t uncommon when showing flashbacks, while the former was done to make the gruesome violence of that large-scale fight scene less impactful.
3/10 ‘Memento’ (2000)
While Memento wasn’t Christopher Nolan’s very first movie, it was arguably his first great one, establishing him as a noteworthy director who was worth keeping an eye on. This psychological thriller follows a protagonist who has amnesia. Certain scenes play out in reverse order to help the viewer understand his disorientation, while other brief scenes play out in chronological order.
The backward scenes and chronological scenes are intercut, but luckily, the ones in reverse order (most of the scenes) are in color while others are in black and white. It makes for a strange and dizzying watch, but there’s a method to Memento‘s madness, with things coming together powerfully by the movie’s conclusion.
2/10 ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’ (2018)
Several years before breathing life into hours of old Beatles footage with Get Back, Peter Jackson took a similar approach to his World War One documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old. The movie is a technological marvel, taking grainy black-and-white footage that’s more than a century old and restoring it in color to show life during WW1 more vividly than anything else has before.
They Shall Not Grow Old starts off showing the footage as it used to look, before transitioning into the remastered, upgraded footage, and the contrast is striking. It can be a difficult watch such a brutal war – and the aftermath of trench warfare – in stark detail, but it makes for an unforgettable documentary experience.
1/10 ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (1939)
Few movies that use both black & white and color in tandem are as iconic as The Wizard of Oz. The classic film about a young girl stranded in a strange fantasy realm was one of the first big feature films to use color, and made sure the colorful land of Oz packed a punch by showing the Kansas scenes in black and white.
The transition from black and white to color is one of the most famous moments in film history, and helped pave the way for more movies throughout the 1940s and beyond to truly utilize color. There are numerous reasons why The Wizard of Oz is a beloved film, but this artistic choice made the film a legend.
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