Colours, audiences, and (dis)continuity in the 'cinema of the second period'

The essay confronts the issue of the relationship between silent film colour and its audience during the 'second period' of early cinema (approximately 1909 to 1917) by analyzing the practice of producing multiple versions of any given film. It also addresses the overall status of colour within the cultural context of the first decades of the twentieth century. The formal and narrative structure of these films, and therefore their implications for the study of early colour, are found to be unstable. It is shown that the use of applied colour in the cinema can be studied through a systematic analysis of the work of Film d'Arte Italiana in the years 1907–1917, because, as is not the case with most surviving films of the period, we possess unambiguous information regarding their colour schemes. The author outlines the complexity of these issues and suggests some possible interpretations and hypotheses – a rough map into what has been a largely uncharted territory.