Not just the war was in color

[selenak]

Thinking further on just when the Rembrandt look came into fashion for the majority of historical movies and tv shows, independent of setting - i.e. not just when we're talking WWI movies or stories set in a Benedictine monastery - just when did producers decide to abandon all colours? watervole might be on to something when saying a man in bright primary colours (with or without a hat) instead of a dark leather must have stricken said producers as gay, and they couldn't have that. But in the 1980s, at least those historical movies based in the 18th century are still committed to the full Rokoko colour spectrum - I'm thinking of Amadeus (bless you, Milos Forman, for giving us Punk!Mozart) or Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liasons. And the Jean-Jaques Annaud version of The Name of the Rose has the medieval monastery excuse. But on the other hand, you have young Kenneth Branagh in deliberate visual contrast to Olivier's (very colorful) Henry V going for the Rembrandt look in his Henry V., and not just in the battle scenes, while just a bit later even fluff like Kevin Costner's Robin Hood with no pretensions at historicity (or geography, see Robin notoriously arriving at the beach and making it to Nottinghamshire in a few minutes from there) avoids dressing up the not so Merry Men in Green, and as far as I recall goes for black and white colour schemes with the Sheriff and Marian, too. As for the various Musketeers, sometimes I think a main reason why the Touchstone film has the regiment dissolved right (which like 99% of the movie has no basis in Dumas, let alone history) at the start is that none of the main characters have to wear the mainly blue uniform and its hats right until the big climax. You sort of have to put Richelieu in red in most Musketeer adaptions (it comes with the "Cardinal" territory), but everyone else seems to shy away from anything but black and brown. And look, the Baroque age was not into that. At all.

Tv is slightly less committed to the Rembrandt look in that Rome laudably used the Cinemacitta set decorations for what they were worth and went for a colorful ancient world, up to and including Atia's and Servilia's changing wigs (more Flavian than late Republic, but I don't care! Color!), and The Borgias, whatever else it can be accused of, had fun with a multicolor Renaissance, dress wise. But no dice for the BBC Musketeers, committed to the black and brown look. Speaking of BBC shows, Merlin never pretended to any historical setting and dressed up its version of Camelot colorfully, but not so coincidentally, those Arthurian movies with an eye to claiming some historical background (like the one where Arthur & knights are declared to be Sarmatians) embraced the Rembrandt look.

Basically: during the last three decades, there seems to have been some visual consensus that brown-in-black is where true historical looks are at, and with a few exceptions, lots of colors signal either fairy tales or phoneyness. Also that Tough Guys Don't Wear Hats. I mean, even Versailles the tv show, which does allow color at the court of Louis XIV (and otherwise can't be accused of much history), gives us the flowing locks of Louis and Philippe and most of their entourage without hats. If Amadeus were filmed today, I am very much afraid even Josephinian Vienna and Mozart himself would have less color, fewer wigs, certainly not outrageous wigs, and I shudder to tihnk of the Rembrandtian opera settings...

Comments

[ratcreature]

Now that you point it out, it's really weird. I think it's also partly because ever since synthetic colors became so cheap, brilliant and durable colors just lost their status, so they have associations like garish or cheap for modern viewers that they could never had when extremely expensive colors were a great luxury signal that would be obvious. So the visual language has changed.

[selenak]

You might be on to something. As I recall when the restoration of the Sixtine Chapel was finally finished, people were shocked when instead of "dark and deep" Michelangelo they got what some sneeringly referred to as Disney colors for a while, until the new visual impression settled (and there was acknwoledgment that yes, these had been the original colors.) Anyway, colorful = cheap, garish was the argument made there, too.

[ratcreature]

And also many natural colors aren't lightfast, so whenever we find something old or ancient the colors frequently are faded (or just gone almost entirely as with the ancient Greek statues) so some drab mud colored cloth could have been quite colorful when it was new, but 300 years on when you see it in a museum it's only a shadow of its former brilliance.

[muccamukk]

I was just thinking of The Favourite, which is absolutely gorgeous, but also makes the All the Colours! Every one! approach taken by the late Stuart Court and changes it to black and white.

[selenak]

True about The Favourite. One would think that the Puritans won!

[muccamukk]

Bright colours were a status symbol! We're not poor! We don't have to do laundry!

[liriaen]

I suppose it's a narrow-minded approach to perceived authenticity - confusing "dirty and grubby" with "authentic". OMG those poor people, most roads weren't paved! Pigs roamed the streets! Everyone stank! So they've all got to be grubby brown, no?

No, actually... not.

[selenak]

Preach it.

[greenwoodside]

Yup. Just - yup.

Reconstructions of Roman interior decoration almost makes me want sunglasses. Or at least sepia glasses.

The past was not khaki.

[lirazel]

I love this post because YES this drives me absolutely batty!!!!!!

[moon_custafer]

Some of it might be related to the whole “the past was in black-and-white/sepia” idea that people get from 19th and early 20th-century photography. You’d think we’d be over that myth, but the Steampunk aesthetic might have brought it back—I remember someone a few years ago describing steampunk as “Goths discover brown;” and another person being frustrated by a costuming article that, while it did encourage brighter colours, did so through the completely wrong argument of “it’s an AU of the Victorian era, so they can have brightly-coloured dyes if you want them to.” (Yeah, you just heard all the historians screaming in frustration too, didn’t you? Or quite likely you’re one of them.)

[jesuswasbatman]

Otoh authentic Victorian dyes might have poisoned the cast.

[selenak]

There's undeniably that. :)