My kids in school are often fascinated with film and tv without color. They have a harder time with no sound, for example. So many films, post color, were quite effective in b/w. Godard did a wonderful job in Alphaville, where Eddie Constantine’s bad skin and raincoat (before Colombo) gives a certain underbelly to the film. Several of these shots here, could have seen Eddie coming out of, like a where’s Waldo kind of thing.
It was so funny, years ago, sitting in a dark closet loading film to develop. At 1am, I’d be checking my negs. I went across country doing that in hotel rooms.
I recently saw Fassbinder’s Veronika Voss, I was struck just how well black and white worked here and what a good filmmaker he actually was. I remember someone carrying on over a film made in black and white (probably The Artist), which I thought was not really anything special. Bogdanovich did wonderful black and white work in both The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon. Although, look who he had to shoot them! Several years, before his good pal, Scorcese, did in Raging Bull.
Another irony was the wonderful cinematographer of Ingmar Bergman’s, Sven Nykvist, who did some of the most beautiful work in Persona, was given two Oscars for his color work!
Thinkvisual's Blog 