Movie: “An Affair to Remember” (1957)

Re: Boris Reitman’s post 13003 of 9/12/16

   One-line summary: Movie title info.

The movie title is actually An Affair to Remember. This is actually a remake of Love Affair (1939). So you combined the two titles!

I highly recommend Love Affair, which I think is a better movie. (If you’re not allergic to black and white!)

/sb

Re: Ken Douglas’ post 114958 of 9/12/16

   One-line summary: The black and white allergy needs an esthetic antihistamine.

Ken Douglas says, “The movie title is actually An Affair to Remember. This is actually a remake of Love Affair (1939). So you combined the two titles! I highly recommend Love Affair, which I think is a better movie. (If you’re not allergic to black and white!)”

I agree with Mr. Douglas about those two movies, but I am very curious about this allergy. I am not taking exception to Mr. Douglas’ description. Modern moviegoers do have an aversion to black and white. I will say at the outset that I think older movies, by and large, are superior, philosophically and esthetically. But leave aside for the moment the content of the movies and other issues such as script, acting, or direction, and just consider the use of color vs. black and white.

As an artist (painter and draughtsman), I have been trained that value (which here means the range of dark to light) is of primary importance in visual rendering, far more important than color. If you could see no color, but only light and dark, you would by and large get along just fine in the world. You would be able to discern with clear focus every object you now see in color. You could perceive size, shape, distance, position, texture, and employ your night vision and peripheral vision. These features appear to be due to the type of sensitivity of the rods, while the cones apprehend color and give somewhat better acuity when extreme focus is required.

Hence, artists for centuries have in preparing their works employed drawing tools that use black and white (or some other very dark medium, such as sepia or walnut) – charcoal, ink, chalk, etc. Often they have produced exquisite drawings by these means alone, studying for years to be able to produce a powerful range of dark to light.

Now I do not mean to denigrate color. It is wonderful, in life and in art. But a skilled visual artist knows that he must first get his values right, and then color will be able to play its role (and that role is itself an intriguing issue). The early cinematographers understood this. The movies of the twenties and thirties to a large degree employed a wondrous range of values in the use of black and white. The “silver screen” got its name in part from this sophisticated modulation of values.

A novice painter frets constantly about color, and ignores the values he is creating, when he should be doing the opposite. Similarly, when color became common in film, second-hand directors were often satisfied to employ color without regard to the underlying values of light and dark. The result of this has been decades of movies that end up using neither value nor color to any special cinematic end.

Very few directors have integrated value and color to achieve the full visual impact that they might. Those of the earlier era seem to have been much more aware; the moderns are unaware, in my view. Consequently, most color movies from the fifties to date are truly lacking in the kind of visual impact (in the respect that I am considering) that the older movies had.

All of which leaves me baffled. I truly do not understand the aversion to black and white. I know this is only one facet of a very complex issue, but can anyone shed light on this “allergy”?

/sb

Re: John Pattillo’s post 114971 of 9/14/16

   One-line summary: Thoughts on black and white versus color in film

As someone interested in film, I have no aversion to black and white. I think B/W is better suited to certain genres. For example, film noir stories, because of excellent lighting and B/W work by the directors and cinematographers, are, in my view, much better rendered in B/W. Shadows, “dark corners,” etc., suit that kind of storytelling esthetically. Fans of older films, for example, followers of TCM, may not only embrace B/W but also rebel against colorization of their old favorites.

As for the “allergy” some people have to B/W, I think that may be their general aversion to the storytelling from another era. Nowadays, people are accustomed to stories set in a malevolent universe replete with anti-heroes, etc. They find stories from the B/W era jarring and so associate B/W with stories that, because of their basic premises, make them uncomfortable or that they find distasteful.

/sb

Re: John Pattillo’s post 114971 of 9/14/16

   One-line summary: How the eyes see color.

A link to this article came to me from the publication “Science News” this morning, and I thought it had some relevance to John Pattillo’s post about color vs. black and white in film and other art.  If there are further posts along the lines of this research, a new thread should probably be started.

If the results of the study can be replicated, it would give us surprising information about how the eyes see color.

If you look at the short video, you may need to keep your cursor ready at the “pause” button to better follow what you are seeing.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/color-vision-strategy-defies-textbook-picture

Note:  I abandoned my subscription to this “science digest” publication two years ago because its writers have been so strongly in favor of “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming” hypotheses for the last 5 or 10 years.  I had been a subscriber for over 30 years and had ignored some of their earlier forays into questionable areas, because many of their summaries were quite good.  But to my knowledge none of the writers has ever indicated any skepticism about catastrophic AGW hypotheses, and that became a deal-breaker for me.  I still receive an email bulletin from SN, because that is free and does not involve giving the publishers any money.  That is how I received the link to this article.

*sb

Re: Boris Reitman’s post 13003 of 9/12/16

   One-line summary: An Affair to Remember is a very tightly integrated movie with an important theme.

I also enjoyed An Affair To Remember. It is definitely clear that this move is the product of an era in Hollywood that had very different esthetic values from today.

One of my favorite scenes, which illustrates how integrated even the subtlety of the actors’ movements is with the theme, is the scene in which the notorious playboy male lead (played by Cary Grant) first kisses his female interest, a woman like none he has ever met. The scene is shot in such a manner that the camera only see their legs as they are on a staircase. Grant’s character literally has to “step up” to kiss her — a fact that, to me, illustrates this woman is figuratively (and literally) on a different level compared to his previous conquests.

The theme, to me, is about striving for the highest values in life and not sacrificing those values for those that are “easier” or “safer.”

/sb

Re: Ken Douglas’ post 114958 of 9/12/16

   One-line summary: Love Affair is excellent.

Based on Ken Douglas’ recommendation, I just watched Love Affair and agree with him that it is of higher quality than the remake An Affair to Remember (which I just watched a few days prior). 

I found the acting to be even better than the high bar set by An Affair to Remember. I especially liked the more dignified manner in which the male “playboy” lead was written and acted. I also think that being shot in black and white did not detract from the film but actually added to it. 

/sb