Whose Film Is It?
Artistic control over a film following its initial release has long been a subject of debate among studios, directors, academics, and audiences. With the exception of a few prominent directors, most creative people who work in movies do so under the “work for hire” concept, which means they do not own their own artistic contributions to the film or the rights to it. Since the early days of television, motion pictures originally created for theatrical release have been altered regularly for TV broadcast. The pan and scan technique is used to alter the aspect ratio from its original widescreen format to the 1:1.33 ratio of a traditional television set. Films have been sped up and scenes cut both for content and running time to allow for the insertion of commercials. While purists bemoaned these alterations, the general public paid little attention to the changes and there was no major uproar from Hollywood. Then came colorization.
Colorization is a digital process that was developed in the 1960s and used primarily by two large American companies: Colorization, Inc. and American Film Technologies, Inc. The colorization process, originally named by Colorization Inc., uses computers to add color to film or other moving image material, such as a commercial, that was originally printed in black and white. While the technique was used for less than a decade, colorization sparked fierce debate in the academic and production community about its legality and morality. In 1988, the National Film Preservation Act was passed into United States law in response to the Hollywood creative community’s outrage over colorization. Ultimately the act provided no actual protection from colorization. As Anthony Slide elaborates in Nitrate Won’t Wait, “the bill permitted a thirteen-member panel to classify twenty-five films a year as worthy of ‘protection’ through listing in a national film registry. If one of the films selected by the panel were ‘materially altered,’ a disclaimer label was required to be placed on the film indicating such alteration was made without the participation of the film’s creators” (130). Slide is correct in his conclusion that all the act does is create a bureaucratic entity with no actual power to prevent any movie from being colorized.
In 1987, just prior to the enactment of the National Film Preservation Act, the United States Senate Subcommittee on Technology and the Law of the Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing entitled Legal Issues that Arise When Color is Added to Films Originally Produced, Sold, and Distributed in Black and White. Famous actors and directors pleaded the case that while they did not own or control the copyright to the films that they had worked on, it was morally wrong to alter an artist’s creative expression. Opponents who presented their arguments included Woody Allen, Sydney Pollack, Milos Forman, and Ginger Rogers.
A key point in this argument was expressed very eloquently by Elliot Silverstein on behalf of the Director’s Guild of America: “We believe that ‘colorization’ represents the mutilation of history, the vandalism of our common past, not merely as it relates to film, but as it affects society’s perception of itself” (4). He went on to say that “if we do not preserve with fidelity images of how we once viewed ourselves, we will increase the likelihood that we will arrive at a distorted understanding of who we are and how we got that way” (10).
Also opposed to colorization of motion pictures by the studios, but for much different reasons, is Woody Allen. He believes that a film does not belong to history, but to its director. He feels that if a director wants to colorize the movie he shot in black and white, only he should have every right to do so. However, “if he prefers it to remain in black and white, then it is sinful to force him to change it” (24). The problem with this assertion is that filmmaking is a collaborative process. While many in the film community ascribe to the auteur theory, which suggests that a film is “authored” by its director, the labor of many creative individuals is required to make a film. Submitted to the hearing were letters from the International Photographers Guild, Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists, Local 706, and the Costume Designers Guild to name a few. For these professionals, colorization defaces the work that they did on the film. A make-up artist works very differently when designing an actor’s look for a black and white rather than a color film. All of the careful testing and planning required to make color pigments give the proper mood and effect in black and white can be suddenly painted over with a flat pancake orange in a colorized film. The Local 706 that represents make-up artists feels that the colorization process is detrimental to the careers of its members because their names remain on work that is not an honest representation of their craft.
In the Senate hearing, one of the primary experts brought in to defend colorization was Roger Mayer. Mayer was there in his capacity as president and chief operating officer of Turner Entertainment Company. One example cited by Mayer of how colorization could be good for a film and its longevity is The Maltese Falcon. In his testimony, Mayer asserted that “since it has been colored, it seems to have been seen by at least five times as many people in the last six months in color as had seen it in black and white in the prior ten years” (68). He mentioned John Huston’s abject horror to the addition of color to the film, and Huston’s use of the phrase “violated children” to describe colorized films. Mayer is quick to point out that Huston signed away his artistic rights when he signed his personal service contract.
Buddy Young, the president of Color Systems Technology, a company that colorized movies, argued that colorization was actually beneficial for all involved, including those who preferred the black and white versions. He ascertains that “since the telecast of the colored versions of ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ and ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ the original black-and-white versions have had increased exposure via telecasts and home video sales and rentals” (58). It is undeniable that the color versions of these movies allowed them to have a new life, at a time television networks would not purchase rights to play black and white movies in primetime. However, a poll from the April 18, 1985 New York Post, cited by Anthony Slide, “found readers opposed to colorization three-to-one” (126). By reminding viewers opposed to colorization of their favorite old movies, but not broadcasting the original version they desire, a demand is created. I believe that it is fair to speculate that when a colorized film is released, this creates a desire for a copy that is more faithful to the original theatrical version.
In addition to the economic and legal issues surrounding colorization, there are also major aesthetic issues. In Flo Leibowitz’s 1991 article “Movie Colorization and the Expression of Mood,” she asserts that “a movie is not just a narrative, it is a pictorial narrative” (363). She uses several examples of how the addition of color changes the mood and, as a result, changes the pictorial narrative. In Orson Well’s Citizen Kane, “had it been made in color, Xanadu might have looked more like a luxurious estate and less like a cage” (364). If Kane is dying in a pastel mansion (since pastel was the only color space available in the colorization systems), his story arc would loses much of its gravity.
In his letter to the Senate, Jimmy Stewart, in reference to the colorization of It’s a Wonderful Life, lamented, “the scenes were washed away in a bath of Easter egg dye” (40). A factor worth considering in the public’s ultimate rejection of colorization is that it was simply displeasing to the eye. In the example below, provided by Bronwen Clark of GotchaMovies, not only is the colorized version aesthetically displeasing, it alters the emotional tone of the shot quite significantly.
While Hollywood abandoned colorization in the 1990s, Bollywood has jumped on the bandwagon over the past decade. In 2005 Mughal-e-Azam was released theatrically in a colorized version to resounding commercial success, grossing $8.3 million in India (Iyer 11). In this instance, the director wanted to shoot in color, but because of technological restrictions was unable to do so. Unfortunately the director died before the colorization process could begin, but his heirs felt confident in their decision to create the version they believed he had always wanted. Personally I found the painted-on colors to be a distraction that made the movie difficult to watch. Even though I disliked the look of the final color version of the film, from an archival perspective, colorization was perhaps one of the best things that could have happened to the film. As both proponents and opponents to colorization have noted, before the process of adding color to a film can begin, a high quality black and white print must be made. For an article in The Moving Image, Deepesh Salgia describes the massive restoration that Mughal-e-Azam, originally shot in 1960, underwent before colorization. He shows examples of fading rectified through gamma correction, scratch removal, and the repair of torn frames. The predicted profits of the colorized version allowed for a digitally-restored black and white master of this historical drama that I believe to be important to India’s cultural history.
Salgia gives the following example showing the condition of the master film and one of the many digital repairs done to the film (160).
Considering the public’s eventual rejection of colorized films, are there lessons that can be learned when considering the current trend of converting previously-released movies into 3D for subsequent re-release? At present there seems to be very little discussion, at least in the academic world, about this trend. In my opinion, this trend of 3D conversion is simply the result of movie studios trying to produce increased revenue from titles that they already have in their catalog. Disney proved just how lucrative the re-release of a film converted to 3D can be with The Lion King. In the fall of 2011, The Lion King 3D topped the box-office charts with a $29.3 million opening weekend (nydailynews.com), ultimately grossing $94 million in North America (Stewart 25).
Toy Story and Toy Story 2 have also been converted to 3D, and more films are set to be released in converted forms, such as Monsters Inc. and The Little Mermaid. In my opinion, while changing a 2D movie into 3D is not as aesthetically jarring as the colorization of a black and white film, it still constitutes a significant alteration. To date I have not heard any rumblings from the community about this process and its infringements on the moral rights of the director or other creative agents involved.
Sometimes it is the director himself who spearheads the 3D conversion of a film. Case in point is James Cameron’s Titanic, which was released in its new form in time for the one hundredth anniversary of the ship’s fateful voyage. In economic terms the conversion paid off grossing over $57 million (boxofficemojo.com).
Studios and directors are not the only participants in the alteration of motion pictures; third party companies are also getting in on the action. A prime example is the now defunct CleanFlicks.com. CleanFlicks was a Utah-based company that catered to the large Mormon population of the state by removing profanity, nudity, violence, and other potentially offensive material from Hollywood movies. These movies were “advertised with their original posters and publicity materials” (Hiatt 375). In an interesting move, CleanFlicks decided to preemptively sue the Director’s Guild of America for the right to edit these movies. In Eric B. Hiatt’s article “The ‘Dirt’ on Digital ‘Sanitizing’: Droit Moral, Artistic Integrity and the Directors Guild of America v. CleanFlicks et al.” he cites the DGA’s counterclaim “that CleanFlicks, in particular, violated the Lanham Act [commonly referred to as the Trademark Act] by editing its members’ films without proper consent, thus creating a false designation of origin for the altered films” (380). The directors on whose behalf the suit was filed won their case. While limited in its scope, this case demonstrates that the law in the United States does offer some protection to film as an art form.
But at what point does a piece of art, such as a movie, stop belonging to its creator and instead becomes the property of its audience or the property of film history?? It is at this point, that I would like to shift my focus away from methods typically employed by someone other than the original artistic creator to alter a film in order to continue to profit from that work, toward the phenomenon of films that are deliberately altered by their director or creator. A salient example for many fans (or fanatics, reflecting the word’s origin), is the original Star Wars trilogy.
In 1997, George Lucas re-released the initial Star Wars trilogy for the home video market. By using digital technology he was able to finally “finish” what he had intended to make in the 1970s but could not because of budgetary and technological restrictions. Through new technology, Lucas was able to create wider establishing shots and populate scenes with more alien fauna. While this does constitute an aesthetic change to the original version of the film, most audiences are willing to forgive the alterations because they were made by Lucas himself.
Where fans become agitated is when changes are made to the plot and not just the background. The most often cited example of this is the debate around the question of whether or not “Greedo shot first.” Graham Lyons and Janice Morris’ article “The Emperor’s New Clones” discusses this crucial difference between the version released in theaters in 1977, and the version that was released in 1997 and again on DVD in 2004. In the original version, Han Solo, “cornered by Greedo in the Mos Eisley Cantina, shoots first and establishes his character as the calm, cool, but impassioned anti-hero,” in Lyons and Morris’ reading (198). While technical problems, such as being drastically under-lit, exist in the original, most fans feel that these technical issues are not sufficient justification to alter a plot point and the motivations of a primary character. By having Greedo shoot first and miss, Han Solo transforms “from an ice-cool space pirate to simply a lucky guy acting out of retaliation” (198).
Another alteration made for the 1997 re-release of Star Wars was the reinsertion of a scene between Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt. Initially dissatisfied with how the scene turned out, Lucas cut it from the final 1977 edit (Magic 58). Jabba the Hutt was originally conceived as a human, and his slug-like form was not decided upon until The Return of the Jedi. So the animators at Lucas’ ILM painted the slug-like Jabba the Hutt over the actor who originally played him. This reinserted scene disrupts the flow of the narrative in the first Star Wars and we loose the dramatic reveal of Jabba the Hutt that takes place in the sequel. Below is a frame grab from Philippe’s documentary of the original human Jabba and the CGI that he was replaced with for the 2001 re-release.
In 1978 Star Wars won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Film Editing, and Best Effects-Visual Effects. In the 1997 version, some of the special effects created by John Stears’ team have been removed and replaced with CGI effects. While Lucas as the film’s director and creator has the final say, is it right for him to be able to discard the artistic work of those who collaborated with him? At the same time that he advocates for the sanctity of the creator, through his changes he is desecrating the work of the creative individuals who originally worked with him. If it is wrong to colorize a black and white film because it tampers with the artistic expression of the cinematographer, then surely the director altering the work of his editors, set decorators, and special effects artists is also in the wrong.
Extrapolating from his 1987 statement to the Senate, Woody Allen would seem to stand in the minority of those who believe that a director, twenty years later, and after a film has entered into the popular culture canon, has the moral right to continue to make alterations to the film. While I am sure many support the concept of complete directorial control and indefinite freedom of artistic expression, they are not nearly as vocal as those who believe that Lucas simply needs to stop changing things. Alexandre O. Philippe’s 2009 documentary The People vs. George Lucas gives us a glimpse into the lives of those who have passionate feelings about the issue.
Below is an example that Philippe uses of the changes that Lucas made to the setting of Star Wars through digital manipulation. As we can see, Lucas didn’t merely restore the color that had faded over time, but entirely re-drew the landscape in which the film takes place.
These changes allowed 1990s technology to overwrite 1970s aesthetics.
The show South Park has weighed in on the betrayal felt by Star War fans in the episode “Free Hat.” The plot revolves around the animated boy Stan trying to wrest control of Raiders of the Lost Ark away from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas in order to protect it from continual re-editing and re-releasing by its director and producer. In this episode Stan succinctly states what many of those who testified at the Senate hearing were trying to say:– “movies are art and art shouldn’t be modified.”
Later in the same South Park episode, when Steven Spielberg re-releases E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, he digitally replaces the guns in a scene with walkie-talkies. It is a minor change in an attempt to make the film even more “family-friendly.” Through satire South Park takes us down the horrifying slippery slope of minor changes. In the episode, Spielberg, after seeing how profitable the safer and cleaner version of E.T. was at the box-office, decides to do the same thing to Saving Private Ryan. The soldier’s horrific deaths become farce when all of the guns are replaced by walkie-talkies in the epic opening battle scene.
Although George Lucas’ case is the most notorious, he was by no means the first filmmaker to continue to make changes to their films for artistic and or financial reasons. In Kevin Brownlow’s book Napoleon, he discusses how the director Abel Gance altered and released subsequent versions of the film decades after it was originally shot. In one of the later versions of Napoleon, Bonaparte and the Revolution “Gance used a great deal of his original film, but he treated it like a TV documentary producer treats stock footage” (215). For Brownlow, who spent much of his life attempting to restore the film as closely as possibly to its original form, Bonaparte was an abomination. Brownlaw said “had the film been re-edited and reissued by someone other than Gance, my anger would have been explosive, and I would have fought tooth and nail to have it suppressed” (215).
In this essay I have tried to show several of the ways that motion pictures have been corrupted from their original form. Colorization, the conversion to 3D and other augmentations made by studios, directors, and third parties constitute an assault on film history. As Gary Kurtz, the producer of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back affirms, “film is a product of its time and conditions, all of the conditions that we had in 1977, the constraints of money, the constraints of time and everything else created that original film” (qtd. in Philippe). And to quote a younger George Lucas in his 1988 testimony on colorization, “in the future it will become even easier for the old negatives to become lost and be ‘replaced’ by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.”
Works Cited
Brownlow, Kevin. Napoleon: Abel Gance’s Classic Film. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983. Print.
Ferguson, Douglas. “The Importance of Colorization of Motion Pictures and Syndicated Television Programs to Broadcasting, 1985-1990.” Transmitting the Past. Ed. Winn, J. Emmett, and Susan L. Brinson. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2005. 92-110. Print.
“Free Hat.” South Park. Writ. Trey Parker. Dir. Toni Nugnes. Comedy Central, 2002. Television.
Hiatt, Eric B. “The ‘Dirt’ on Digital ‘Sanitizing’: Droit Moral, Artistic Integrity and the Directors Guild of America v. CleanFlicks et al.” Rutgers Computer and Technology Law Journal Vol. 30 (2004): 375-397. Print.
Iyer, Shilpa Bharatan. “B’Wood Gets Dose of Color. Variety April 18, 2005: 11. Print.
Leibowitz, Flo. “Movie Colorization and the Expression of Mood.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 49, No. 4 (Autumn, 1991): 363-365. Print.
Lyons, Graham and Janice Morris. “The Emperor’s New Clones; or, Digitization and Walter Benjamin in the Star Wars Universe.” Culture, Identities and Technology in the Star Wars Films: Essays on the Two Trilogies. Ed. Silvio, Carl and Tony M. Vinci. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, 2007. 189-213. Print.
Magic, Ron. “Saving the ‘Star Wars’ Saga.” American Cinematographer: The International Journal of Film & Digital Production Vol. 78 No. 2 (Feb 1997): 55-59. Print.
The People vs. George Lucas. Dir. Alexandre O. Philippe. Exhibit A Pictures, 2010. DVD.
Salgia, Deepesh. “Mughal-e-Azam: Restorationcum-Colorization for 35mm Release.” The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists Vol.5, No. 1 (Spring, 2005): 128-135. Print.
Slide, Anthony. Nitrate Won’t Wait: A History of Film Preservation in the United States. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, 2000. Print.
Stewart, Andrew. “3D retrofits light up B.O.” Variety Vol. 426.2 (20 Feb. 2012): 25. Print.
Titanic 3D. Box Office Mojo. Web. <www.boxofficemojo.com>.
United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Technology and the Law. Legal issues that arise when color is added to films originally produced, sold, and distributed in black and white: hearing before the Subcommittee on Technology and the Law of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundredth Congress, first session on May 12, 1987. Washington: U.S. G.P.O. 1987. Print.