Introduction: Early Colour

One of the most fascinating (yet misunderstood and overlooked) aspects of silent cinema history is that of colour technology and aesthetics. Like early sound, colour was incorporated with the black-and-white image through a variety of processes. From the turn of the last century through the end of the 1920's, applied colour processes (hand-colouring, stencil, tinting and toning) were used, often in combination. Later, 'natural colour' processes (colour photographic reproduction) surfaced in the form of such short-lived two-colour systems as Kinemacolor, Multicolor, and Prizmacolor, which had limited success but eventually failed due to both technical and business related problems. At the same time, colour processing was affected by how silent film prints were generated, assembled and distributed. Several distinct techniques, including positive cutting, joining separate negative rolls, and producing a cut negative, determined when the colour process was carried out (either before or after the release print was assembled for example).

Moreover, colour in silent film served a diverse range of overlapping and sometimes contradictory functions that could be motivated by both aesthetic considerations (as an attraction in its own right; to enhance realism and replicate the natural world according to established norms; purely sensual, impacting the spectator's emotions and senses; as a stylistic and narrative storytelling device) and commercial factors (a means of product differentiation; random effects of distribution or exhibition practices; a marketing device to promote high-class pictures; a vehicle for advertising consumer products, such as fashion). The question of why colour was added to black-and-white images may still be contentious. But as Tom Gunning has underscored, colour's 'invasion' of everyday life since the mid-nineteenth century (through both mass culture and commercial practice), constitutes, alongside mechanical reproduction, one of the principal perceptual transformations of modernity – one that threatened pre-existing notions of elitist high culture. From the 1860s onwards, colour's overarching influence and predominance – its sensual rather than rational nature – was such that it was a force to be reckoned with and even elicited fear. Colour was thought to be dangerous because it represented the emerging mass culture: a 'chromocivilization', in which colour was not only 'a power in itself', but one which opposed the traditional values of the monochromatic black-and-white world.

Placed within the historical context of modernity, colour becomes a focal point for the vast spectrum of aesthetic and scientific inquiry taking place throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one which intersected such diverse fields as medicine (as in chromotherapy), chromolithography, textiles and fashion, advertising, window display and interior design, art and architecture, and, of course, the cinema. Not surprisingly, colour has always been a challenging and elusive subject for film historians. Equally relevant are the numerous technological and financial challenges faced by preservationists and curators, who through attempts to photochemically and digitally restore the colours of the silents, confront ethical and practical questions that have an enormous impact on how scholars and viewers interpret what they see. Through restoration projects and special conference and festival screenings, preservationists and curators have taken initial steps towards bringing colour to the black-and-white world of silent cinema; however, they have done so largely in isolation behind laboratory doors. This is not to ignore significant collaborative efforts at conferences, seminars, and publications that address colour in silent cinema, nor individual restoration projects that have benefited from the expertise and knowledge contributed by both scholars and preservationists, but simply to point out the current need within the entire moving image community to improve our approach to preserving and restoring the colour of the silent cinema, and to enrich its scholarly inquiry, investigation, and instruction as well.

The international conference 'Il Coloure nel Cinema Muto' (The Colour of Silent Cinema) held in Udine, Italy, 23–25 March 1995, and the forthcoming 'Colour and the Moving Image: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive', to be held in Bristol, UK, 10–12 July 2009, are specific events in which the topic of early colour was, or will be, jointly addressed by archivists, preservationists and scholars. In general, the European community of preservationists and academics is significantly ahead of their North...