Color Them Angry

Perhaps it is inevitable in this color-crazed world that color is being added to 100 old movies that were filmed in black and white, but our sympathies lie with John Huston, the Directors Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild and the National Council on the Arts, which oppose this technology and its aesthetic results.

Oh, the color itself is remarkably good. Computer color is realistic enough. But the atmosphere of the original movie is destroyed in the process. Black-and-white is an integral part of many of these films, and, oddly, it adds something to them--a mood, a style, a tone. At least with the legitimate classics, color is not an improvement. Does anyone think that the lack of color detracts from “Citizen Kane,” which may be the greatest movie ever made? Does “Casablanca” suffer from being in black and white? Or “M”? Or “The Maltese Falcon,” which aired the other night in its new colored look?

Ted Turner, who owns the 100 movies now being colored (please don’t say colorized again), has a legal right to do with them what he wants. The question is why he wants to. Is it really the case that current audiences, who have grown up with color television, will not watch movies in black and white? If so, more’s the pity. They are missing a lot. (Presumably at least one black-and-white print of each movie will be retained so that it will still be possible to see these films as they were originally intended.)

This is hardly the first conflict in history between mammon and art, and if the past is any guide it won’t be the last. And, alas, money almost always wins. But maybe Ted Turner can be reached by the words of John Huston, who watched a few minutes of “The Maltese Falcon” --the first film that he directed--and turned away in disgust, declaring, “I can’t even think of it as color, any more than pouring tablespoons of sugar water over a roast constitutes flavor. Color is an art form in itself. This is not color.”