Júbilo em Technicolor

A propósito da recente redescoberta, pelo BFI National Archive, de uma série de pequenos filmes em Technicolor datados dos anos 20 — com óbvio destaque para a fugaz visão do que aparenta ser um screen test de Louise Brooks —, a edição de Junho da revista Sight & Sound partilha (num artigo apropriadamente intitulado de "Pretty In Pink") a real importância, histórica e cultural, de um arquivo desta natureza:

«It may be difficult for archives to justify keeping short pieces of old film. They may not seem to have any great purpose and it might not be possible to reconstruct a whole film from these fragments — but they are all pieces of a puzzle. And while I'm glad we have examples of lost early Tecnicolor that we can use to inform future restoration work, I'm not going to pretend that I'm not excited about the content, that little glimpse of Louise in her first credited film role.»



Para além do pequeno trecho de Louise Brooks (referente à sua participação em THE AMERICAN VENUS, de 1926, um filme considerado perdido), foram também redescobertos materiais de títulos como THE FAR CRY (1926, Silvano Balboni), THE FIRE BRIGADE (1926, William Nigh) e DANCE MADNESS (1926, Robert Z. Leonard).

[Imagem: BFI National Archive/Paramount Pictures].
[Fonte: British Film Institute].

"Colourising archive actuality film does not bring us closer to our ancestors"

«We will have to see [Peter] Jackson's film to judge properly. But there is a fundamental issue here about how we treat our actuality film archives. WWI was filmed in monochrome (a tiny amount of colour film was shot during the war in the Kinemacolor process, of which just two minutes survives, showing the British fleet off Scapa Flow in 1915). To understand that inheritance we must look at it for what it is. Colourising archive actuality film does not bring us closer to our ancestors; it increases the distance between us. It threatens to make the WWI film archive we have inherited meaningless, because we can no longer look at it sympathetically. It's the effort that creates the understanding.

Yes, on some occasions archive film can and should be manipulated for particular ends. It need not always be treated reverently in its original form alone — that way elitism lies.

But, to my mind, using it to show what it is not does more damage than good. If we want people to understand the past, we should not be colouring it.»

Na edição de Abril da revista Sight & Sound, Luke McKerman salienta os paradoxos que rodeiam o anunciado documentário de Peter Jackson sobre a Primeira Guerra Mundial, nomeadamente a decisão de colorir imagens em movimento do conflito que foram, originalmente, registadas em formatos monocromáticos.

[Imagem: ScreenRant].