The use of colour in cinema is one of the parts of film that often goes unspoken. Colour can convey a multitude of different aspects, from emotional response to structural importance. Filmmakers often put a lot of time and thought into how they want their movies to feel and look, and sometimes they use colour to convey important information, which would simply take up too much time, or slow the film down, to explain. The following films used colour in the most ingenious way, We look at Amazing Use of Colour in Film .

Pleasantville (1998) – Symbolism 

Pleasantville is fantasy comedy-drama about two teenagers who get sucked into a 1950s television sitcom. Did I mention that the television programme is in black and white? David and his twin sister Jennifer are sucked into the the TV to find themselves in the monochrome world of Pleasantville, where the fireman only save cats from trees, books are blank and no one knows what sex is. As a couple of young and hormonal teens, this does not sit well for the troublesome twosome. Whilst David becomes quite content on the quaint little perfect town, Jennifer sets about the sexual awakening of its residence, setting of a literal explosion of colour and emotion. You see, the lack of colour is one of the most important parts of the story. It’s not a stylistic choice for art’s sake, it’s the main plot point. The black and white symbolizes conformity and defined morality. To put it bluntly, it’s boring! As the people of Pleasantville start to experience real emotions, colours engulf the screen, trees explode in flame (much to the confusion of the firemen), books fill with words and people start to live their lives, instead of following the curve. The introduction of colour symbolizes the introduction of individualism, variety, diversity and pleasure, but more importantly, it represents choice.

Director Gary Ross even uses colour as a metaphor for race. The people who have experienced these new strong emotions are represented in colour, and the unaffected and stubborn townsfolk referred to them as “coloureds” and even begin to segregate and oppress them.

Matrix (1999) – Monochromatic Machines

The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction film written and directed by The Wachowskis brothers, about a man discovering his world is a computer-generated forgery called the Matrix. The film uses a green tint for the matrix to give it a dark dystopian atmosphere. Everything inside the Matrix is bathed in this eerie green, a colour that’s supposed to replicate the monochromatic green of command-line computer screens of the 90’s. A command line screen is one of the very first things we see in the film and the camera even enters into, moving inside of the Matrix.

The colour green suggests that the Matrix is being filtered through something. In contrast, the real-world colours are bright, using whites and yellows in the sets and costumes. This ingenious use of colour helps to separate the two worlds on a visual level. This give the audience the visual ques necessary for them to tell which world the characters are in.  It’s visual information at this level that makes films like the Matrix a more intellectual movie, with its design and concept going beyond that of the written script.

Wizard of Oz (1939)– Colour Magic Transition

People often say that the thing they remember most about The Wizard of Oz is its bright, vibrant colours. And it’s no wonder; the striking yellow brick wall, the glowing ruby red slippers and the gentle glows of the Emerald city. All these colours were possible thanks to new technology that was becoming popular in Hollywood at the time. The Wizard of Oz was shot using Technicolour, not a type of film, but a colour motion picture process that allowed movies to be filmed in colour. The Huge cameras they used (Technicolor DF-24 Beam Splitter Motion Picture Camera) fed in three different strips of film, which would each capture a different primary colour, which would then be processed into one. It was a long and technical procedure and Technicolour would lease out the cameras and personnel to operate and run the entire process. As you can imagine, using Technicolour was an expensive venture, and there was no expense spared in turning L. Frank Baum’s 1900 book into a musical film.  The idea of shooting one half (the real world) in black and white and the other in colour, was inspirational, and made the Land of Oz a place of powerful magic, not just on screen, but to audience watching.

The film’s transition from black and white to Technicolor is one of the most breath-taking moments in cinematic history, and early cinema goers were just blown away.  But the most imaginative use of colour comes at the transitional shot, where a sepia-toned Dorothy opens the door to a world of bright colour. This was achieved by painting the house set in sepia tones and dressing Judy Garland’s double in a sepia dress and make-up, allowing for the whole thing to be shot without any post work (which would have required hand tinting frame by frame). The entire film used colour and tone in the cleverest ways, and stills stands as a landmark in filmmaking history. Whilst The Wizard of Oz was not the first film to use colour, it set a benchmark and transformed Hollywood into a world of dazzling colour.

Sin City (2005) – Bloody Hell

Being an adaption of a Frank Millar’s book, director Robert Rodriguez decided to literally adapt Sin City from the very pages of the comic, turning the gritty crime riddled streets into a dingy black and white world. This did not limit the creativity of the films makers, instead it helped to unify the films atmosphere whilst giving them plenty of room to exaggerate and highlight important parts of the film. The bad guys might be shown in a lighter shade of grey , whilst the heroes are sharper and darker in tone, bringing them front and centre of the screen.  The use of Discordant colours, where an object of person stands out due to its lack of harmony, was a clever way of stressing characters importance and was used most prominently for Roark Junior (That Yellow Bastard) . His yellow skin tone is one of the few primary colours shown in the film, and it helps the audience to “feel” the characters weight in the story. He is described as stinking and disfigured, the result of years of surgery, and his jarring appearance offsets him against the back and whites of everything surrounding him.  

Being a film that has a huge amount of violence, the use of monochrome colour helps to desensitize and emotionally detaches the viewer. But Sin City did not shy away from this, unlike some films that may change the colour of it’s blood to appease film censors (Quentin Tarantino ..I’m looking at you! ), Robert Rodriguez highlighted the blood and violence by colouring in the gore. Whilst the rest of the film is a monochromic tour de force, the blood is a glorious bright red (and yellow) that sits on the screen proudly. The violence in the film is supposed by ugly and nasty, and by keeping the rouge stuff in colour , whilst turning down all the rest, it becomes the prominent element on screen.

Schindler’s List (1993)  – Red Dress

Steven Spielberg decided to use a black and white sepia film stock in Schindler’s List, this was not a case of “Black and white is cool right now” but a serious attempt at adding realism to the film. When you think of WW2, you imagine those grainy black and white pictures of soldiers marching across muddy battlefields that your saw on TV. Spielberg wanted to capture that feeling to make the film feel more genuine, but to also take the edge off the horrific bloodshed he was filming. Schindler’s List is an extraordinarily violent film, with torture and executions portrait realistically on camera. By filming in black and white, these bloody and visceral scenes are dulled, sparing the audience from the full power of these shocking images. But the cleverest part of Schindler’s List is when he DOES use colour.

Using discordant colour to highlight a single victim of Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’, Spielberg is highlighting something of major importance, even if the life taken was seen as so unimportant. The single tone, a deep red (not by any accident), acts as a focal point for the audience and for character of Oskar Schindler. Whilst the camera follows the little girl in a red coat, the use of colour leaves no doubt of Schindler’s focus. The red coat becomes symbolic of the blood on Schindler’s hands, as he is aligned with the Nazis, and it’s the girl’s death that is his big turning point in his decision to help the Jews escape the terror of the concentration camps.

The Shining (1980) – Red (rum)

Stanley Kubrick was an amazing director who oversaw all elements of his films. There was barely a detail that went on screen that did not go through the big man himself. So it’s hard to ignore the choices he makes for elements such as sound, light and colour. You could say that everything is there for a reason, and it’s his choice of colour within The Shining that paints a very clever picture indeed. Kubrick uses the symbolism of colours to convey messages about characters throughout the film. The most important element of this is with Jack Torrance who goes bland grey colours, to adopting a brighter colour as the film goes on. For the first half of the film, Jacks clothes are purposefully lacking the colour red, whilst the surroundings in the hotel are overwhelming rouge. From Bellhops, to sofas, carpets and bathrooms, that murderous colour is ever present.  And as the second half of the film kicks in, Jack too adopts the colour red, as he is slowly taken in by the hotel and it’s spirits.

The Shining is filled with colour, and Kubrick uses it to paint, many different emotions, with blues, greens and reds all conveying their own little messages. At an analytical level, we never know all the hidden nuances Kubrick hid within his films, and to some level we may all just be over analysing things. Kubrick wanted people to analyse and debate his work, and the discussion of his use of colour could go on forever, and that’s what makes his work so brilliant.

Sixth Sense (1999) – Ghostly Reds

Night Shyamalan has gathered a bad rep over the past few years, thanks to a run of terrible movies. Thank god that his debut film, The Sixth Sense is still holds up as a great film. Above all else, it is a masterpiece in storytelling, highlighted by the use of the colour red throughout the film.  The colour palette of the film is quite bland, apart from a several instances of bright discordant red. There’s a reason why Shyamalan included these objects, and its symbolism is directly tied to the central character’s own journey.  

Nine-year-old Cole Sear, has a gift that allows him to see spirits, and the red instances are real world objects that have been tainted by the other side. From door knobs to clothes and even Coles ghost voice scribbles, they are all portrayed in a bright unworldly red. The colour also indicates when something spooky is about to happen, a great example of this is the red balloon and coles red jumper just before he encounters the ghost in the wall. This clever use of colour helps to foreshadow film events and even acts as an early spoiler for the films twist ending. It’s a creative addition to the film that helps to add layers in an unspoken manor. 

“Roses are red, toads are warty, you’re in luck cos here is Morti! Sup Horror Fans, hope you enjoyed our little look at the world of colour. These are a just a handful of films that made clever use of colour. Let’s continue the conversation in the comments below.Let us know your favorite films that used colour in creative ways.

Keep Rotten”

“Morti” The Mortician