September 27, 2026
"What has happened to colour in movies? Was there a meeting in which it was decided that the visual medium of film should now be as visually depressing as possible?"
"That instead of rich greens, cheering pinks and passionate reds, today’s cinema palette should be muted pastels and smudgy browns, as if a horrid grey film now covered all camera lenses? What movie could possibly have prompted this torrent of rhetorical questions?"From "I’m so sorry, this new Sense and Sensibility is simply dull/Daisy Edgar-Jones is lovely as Elinor Dashwood, but why mute the joyful comedy of Jane Austen’s funniest book?" (London Times).
Compare the color in the 1995 version of "Sense and Sensibility":
Posts
23 comments:
I've heard that pretty much every frame of a modern movie has been adjusted in post production. So the color choices are deliberate. I'm guessing that a lot of it is simply programmed in at a high level, where everything is adjusted with a few commands. Think of how you want the sky to be uniform throughout a sequence even when shot on different days.
But why do they choose dreary palates? Maybe the same reason low-cost CGI tends to be dreary? Chromaticism costs more and is less convincing? It tends to look artificial?
\end uninformed speculation
There are virtually no shadows in the exterior scenes. Maybe that saves money.
Why the dreary palettes? Look around at American society today. Everything is a dreary palette: architecture, clothes, gray cars, black cars, dreary looking women, dreary mindsets, dreary movies, etc.
I remember saying at an early age The Godfather looked “very brown.”
We could just ask AI why modern palettes are so dull, but what's the fun in that? Uninformed speculation exercises the brain muscles a little.
I posted on this here in the Peter Max thread.
OnwardandUpward said...
"Everything is a dreary palette: architecture, clothes, gray cars, black cars, dreary looking women, dreary mindsets, dreary movies, etc."
I can only comment about the cars. Recently, I have noticed bright cars popping up again. Kandy Apple paint jobs are coming from the factories. Perhaps we have saved ourselves from droll.
It turned into color, you subjects of Her Majesty!
Wait, do you mean the whole world prior to, say 1920, wasn't all black and white ? That's the way I envision it.
Wince: "I remember saying at an early age The Godfather looked “very brown.” I don't think that was the movie--just the first DVDs that were released as a set. They were unrelievedly dark; but later mastering got it back to viewable, I believe.
Ditto for cars. What the heck happened to all the orange and blue and red and ridiculous looking cars people used to drive? Now everything is black or grey or white. So sad. It's like the Taliban took over or something.
James Lileks used to regularly point out the predominance of blue/teal/aqua shades in commercials for prescription drugs. When you look for it, it's very obvious, especially in the Jardiance commercials.
A.I said…
“The Godfather features a very dark, warm color palette dominated by rich browns, ambers, and deep shadows.
Cinematographer Gordon Willis used low-key lighting and deep shadows (chiaroscuro) to give the film its signature dark look.
Warm Tones: Interior scenes, especially in Vito Corleone’s study, rely on infinite shades of brown, mahogany, and soft orange to create a rich, enveloping atmosphere.
Artistic Choice: This muted, shadowed appearance was designed to reflect the moral ambiguity of the characters rather than the bright, flat lighting typical of 1970s studio films.”
Thirty or forty years ago the complaint was about colorizing old movies and now it's about decolorizing new ones.
My wife keeps telling me she would like to see the new S&S and I keep telling her that she has friends.
Some people just can't take a hint.
OK, now let's talk about sound,
Regency-era pigments were not colorfast. Clothes and painted surfaces became duller rather quickly. Then there is the whole natural-light film thing. Interiors lit by candles and fireplaces at night, or by whatever sunlight (usually dimmed by English clouds) makes it through the windows (themselves bubbly rather than today's optically-perfect glass). Even outdoor scenes are dim without added lighting: England is not a sun-worshipper's first destination. CC, JSM
The Redcoats were more often maroon- or even browncoats, as that expensive bug-derived scarlet dye faded from years of marching outside. CC, JSM
For the love of all that is pure and holy do a quality adaptation of Mansfield Park!!!
my 2¢ (as a person Planning on seeing this new one at a theater)
Modern movies are NOW made to be watched on your phone..
10 inches away from your eyes; not 50 feet away.
THAT is why they are dull looking; so that they'll look better on a phone
Nowadays, the sun never shines on the British Empire.
Perhaps England is suffering through a prolonged drought that is drying all of the grass. It’s climate change!
How many movies of this Austen novel have already been made? Three or four seem to be running on TV consistently.
"Mansfield Park" could not possibly be done faithfully by any studio today. In any case, its been done at least once, and flopped.
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 4 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith. Also: No italics, even briefly. Use asterisks for emphasis. And don't play with the format by changing fonts or using boldface or all caps. Never include more than one extra line break between paragraphs.