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":
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55 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.
remember Stanley Kubric's Barry Lyndon?
they (supposedly) filmed the movie WITHOUT ANY electric lights
(to make it seem "real!")
it was a pretty good movie... if you were blind
Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called it "the motion picture equivalent of one of those very large, very heavy, very expensive, very elegant and very dull books that exist solely to be seen on coffee tables.
to be fair; the movie was SO WONDERFUL, that it made SO MUCH MONEY, that the studio ended up only losing MILLIONS on it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Lyndon#Cinematography
Austen's "funniest book"? Uhm...
The 1995 production was funny, but that was a deliberate nudge by the director and the casting director.
Your bestbdays are behind you. The world really sucks now boomers...Talk yourself into that before you take your leave?
Ah the decolorizing of art rears its gray head again, grinning at the loss of Peter Max and everything he did to brighten our culture.
Blech... isn't Austen for young women who haven't yet experienced sex or life?
Never saw the attraction to returning to ye olden days of stilted courtship, myself... I guess you old girls like it ann, but want younger prettier dress colors?
I've watched a few of the versions. PBS ran a version repeat not so long ago. I enjoyed it. Watched the version with Emma and Hugh Grant. Well done for the most part.
This latest version might be too woke-American? hard to tell.
You colorists and color-normals are weak and pathetic. Muted colors and sharp grays are awesome if you know what to look for. It's only depressing if your already suspectable to anxiety and depression. Since color blindness is a masculine trait, maybe it's an attempt to make these fem-feline stories more male adaptive
"R C Belaire said...
OK, now let's talk about sound,
9/27/26, 10:13 AM" As I mentioned above, I saw the new Oddyssey movie last week in the iMax theater. It was SOO fucking loud! I had to put my fingers in my ears like a little kid through about half of it. I play in a 70 piece community band. We practice in a relatively small band room iwith tile floors and concrete walls. It's not even close to as loud as that movie theater was. Never again unless I'm wearing my Earasers musician's ear plugs.
Althouse, you would like last night’s SNL UK. They had an Austen spoof sketch in which a promising suitor is rejected for wearing cargo jorts. Those look horrible, muted or not. CC, JSM
I'd credit the demise of Kodachrome film. Once the go-to for autumn colors.
Here's a YouTube video attempting to explain what's going on with movie making and darkness, but if you prefer a read, here's the same guy discussing it for Filmmaker.com.
A year ago, we put in a home theater room with high end audio and 150" projection. It made movies better to watch and hear (the article discusses "aural mud" as well as "visual mud"). The gist is two items both dealing with technological advancements. Home streaming is so much brighter so there is compensation in the filmmaking. The other is so many new standards for color gradients that are confusing for both the filmmaker and the consumer to match.
When I first saw Oliver in previous century the transition from drab orphanage to colorful rows of houses was shocking.
This reminds me of the 1966 movie version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. That stage musical is a bright, comedy, but when they made the movie, they made all the sets, costumes and outdoor locations look realistic and historically accurate. They even filmed on some old ruins. The result was that the film looked dreary and dirty.
It made a profit and the critics like it. Except for Rex Reed. It was directed by Richard Lester. He's the guy that a lot of people think ruined, Superman 2, after Richard Donner was fired.
Even "Barry Lyndon" (1975) which was made without a single artificial photon, has more vibrant colors than the current version trailer of "Sense and Sensibilities" (2026)
Ps. I had Vivrant, instead of vibrant and it's a good thing I looked it up and was re-acquainted with yet another word. Had I not looked it up (as I did not, just last night) it would have been called 'malapropism' btw. I looked it up.
Neo-noir lighting doesn't work for everything. To be realistic, though, everything in an Austen adaptation would be dark and brownish, except the ball scenes, which could be one reason why Austen's young ladies so looked forward to them.
Barry Lyndon wasn't supposed to be meant for everyone or for a mass audience. Think of it as the "literary fiction" of the film world.
Story has it that Kubrick wanted to be as faithful to the times (when there was only candle light at night) as possible.
ai : Stanley Kubrick used NASA-derived Zeiss f/0.7 lenses to film candlelit scenes in Barry Lyndon—achieving 0.001 lux exposure. We dissect lens serial #5049, its optical tolerances, and why no modern cinema lens matches its light-gathering physics.
Kubrick went NASA on that MF. I did not know that.
The way the world is, it's surprising that the sisters -- or the lovers -- weren't being played by Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.
Every once in a while Hollywood gets its collective head stuck up its collective ass and decides that it's going to show The Public what good film making is. The Public, ungrateful slobs that they are, go 'ick!' and stop going to the movies. This angers the Hollywood auteurs and they keep doubling down until you get a George Lucas who puts out a fun bit of fluff and the whole edifice collapses.
Love me some Barry Lyndon, which according to a recently watched video did use artificial lighting in some scenes.
The worst part of that movie IMO was O'Neal, but apparently Kubrick's choices were use him or don't make the movie at all.
I think he made the right choice.
Lem Vibe Bandit said...
Kubrick went NASA on that MF. I did not know that.
And what's more after the film came out every director in Hollywood shat themselves and started scrambling to get some of those lenses. They found out very quickly that Kubrick had bought up nearly every one.
Barry Lyndon was Kubrick's substitute for the Napoleon epic he dreamed of making. It's a shame that it was left to dreck-meister Scott.
The way the world is, it's surprising that the sisters -- or the lovers -- weren't being played by Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.
You must be referring to Maurice (1987) which came out only a year after "A Room With a View" (1986). Costume dramas were all the rage in those days.
"Downton Abbey" brought it back... or, maybe, it's always been there, just beneath the observable universe.
If I had to pin it down to one culprit, his name is David Fincher and David Fincher's success
In a world where less people are going to the movies, everybody starts copying what has been steadily making money? Granted, I'm no expert. Just opining.
Perhaps consider culture steering as a reason for sad music and muted color palettes
yes that Barry Lyndon analysis just showed up in my YT feed as well- they did use artificial light in certain ways. This S&S looks like a deliberate period aesthetic. Baroque or English landscape…
…if you miss the bold colors set your tv to the retail setting…
"...but apparently Kubrick's choices were use him or don't make the movie at all."
A face with the voice to match; as far away from John Wayne as possible?
ai: "Warner Bros. conditioned their financing on casting a proven box-office star from the annual Top Ten Money-Making Stars poll. That list featured older, hyper-masculine titans—including John Wayne, Charles Bronson, and Clint Eastwood—who were wholly unsuited for an 18th-century Irish opportunist. After Robert Redford declined, O'Neal was the obvious viable option."
I dunno about the vibrant colors, but on this side of the pond colors lost the “u” two centuries ago.
I can't brook any negativity about Barry Lyndon, that movie is a comedic masterpiece and it's quite beautiful in that northern european dark and dismal way.
That's how you can tell it's human slop as opposed to AI slop.
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