Chromatic Modernity: Color, Cinema, and Media of the 1920s (Film and Culture Series)

Arts & Photography

Street, Sarah

Yumibe, Joshua

History & Criticism

Columbia University Press

The era of silent film, long seen as black and white, has been revealed in recent scholarship as bursting with color. Yet the 1920s remain thought of as a transitional decade between early cinema and the rise of Technicolor―despite the fact that new color technologies used in film, advertising, fashion, and industry reshaped cinema and consumer culture. In Chromatic Modernity, Sarah Street and Joshua Yumibe provide a revelatory history of how the use of color in film during the 1920s played a key role in creating a chromatically vibrant culture. Focusing on the final decade of silent film, Street and Yumibe portray the 1920s as a pivotal and profoundly chromatic period of cosmopolitan exchange, collaboration, and experimentation in and around cinema. Chromatic Modernity explores contemporary debates over color’s artistic, scientific, philosophical, and educational significance. It examines a wide range of European and American films, including Opus 1 (1921), L’Inhumaine (1923), Die Nibelungen (1924), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), The Lodger (1927), Napoléon (1927), and Dracula (1932). A comprehensive, comparative study that situates film among developments in art, color science, and industry, Chromatic Modernity reveals the role of color cinema in forging new ways of looking at and experiencing the modern world.

We normally think of early film as being black and white, but the first color cinematography appeared as early as the first decade of the twentieth century. In this visually stunning book, the editors present a treasure trove of early color film images from the archives of EYE Film Institute Netherlands, bringing to life their rich hues and forgotten splendor. Carefully selecting and reproducing frames from movies made before World War I, Fossati, Gunning, Rosen, and Yumibe share the images here in a full range of tones and colors. Accompanying essays discuss the history of early film and the technical processes that filmmakers employed to capture these fascinating images, while other contributions explore preservation techniques and describe the visual delights that early film has offered audiences, then and now. Featuring more than 300 color illustrations for readers to examine and enjoy, Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema will engage scholars and other readers of all ages and backgrounds.

Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema (Framing Film)

Rosen, Jonathon

Gunning, Tom

Fossati, Giovanna

Photography & Video

Amsterdam University Press

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