[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we're revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published May 23, 2011.] A few weeks back, we mentioned that list of Steven Soderbergh’s “cultural diet” (films viewed and books read and TV watched over the course of one year), noting that, in one week, he took in Raiders of the Lost Ark no less than three times — and that he carefully pointed out that each viewing was in black and white. In writing about that list, I said that this was something “we’re totally going to do now,” and last week, I did. Guess what? Soderbergh’s right. Raiders is way better in black and white.
That little experiment got me thinking about other modern movies that might play better in this decidedly less-than-modern format. There is, we can all agree, just something about black and white. In his wonderful 1989 essay “Why I Love Black and White,” Roger Ebert wrote: “There are basic aesthetic issues here. Colors have emotional resonance for us… Black and white movies present the deliberate absence of color. This makes them less realistic than color films (for the real world is in color). They are more dreamlike, more pure, composed of shapes and forms and movements and light and shadow. Color films can simply be illuminated. Black and white films have to be lighted. With color, you can throw light in everywhere, and the colors will help the viewer determine one shape from another, and the foreground from the background. With black and white, everything would tend toward a shapeless blur if it were not for meticulous attention to light and shadow, which can actually create a world in which the lighting indicates a hierarchy of moral values.”
Once I picked the movies that we thought would work for this experiment, I realized that trying to just describe them in a standard post wouldn’t work at all. So I’m doing something different with this post: I made a little video for each title, with clips transformed to black and white and commentary explaining why each one was selected. Check out Raiders and my other choices after the jump.
Better in Black and White: “Raiders of the Lost Ark” from Flavorwire on Vimeo.
Director: Steven Spielberg
Director of Photography: Douglas Slocombe
Comments (62)
Just watched L.A. Confidential in black and white- awesome.
The leg lamp! Yes!
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Bubba Ho-Tep is amazing in B&W.
I don’t know. OUT OF SIGHT has some lovely color-timing in the cinematography. Can’t argue with the others, though.
Heat works, for the same reasons The Departed does.
I wonder if The Strangers would benefit in ways similar to those of Halloween.
I thought The Road would have improved a lot in black and white.
Not for the noire/nostalgic look, as is the case with most of the above, but for the bleakness.
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Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan seems like a natural choice. It’s pretty much a teenie-bopper Manhattan anyway. And I love what Malick does with color, but I bet Badlands would look great in b&w.
[...] list of 10 Modern Movies That Are Better in Black and White takes a range of movies from recent ones like The Departed to classics like A Christmas Story and [...]
Any reason you uploaded to five different video services?
@Bryce- In a continuing and frustrating attempt to find one that would not pull them.
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The road to perdition, blade runner, Donnie Darko, Traffic, The graduate, 28 weeks later
Don’t forget Die Hard!
When I first saw the movie Old Boy, it was in B&W, and that seemed to really do that film justice
PULP FICTION!
[...] that was a good thing. Flavorwire recently took 10 great films and converted them into black and white in an argument that it makes the movies look [...]
Interesting idea!
I’ve never tried it, but I’ve always thought Glengarry Glen Ross would work great in B&W.
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We used to have a copy of Star Wars in b&w which a relative taped off TV on the wrong settings. I can definitively say that it did NOT work in black and white. Perhaps a couple of scenes, but overall, no. Just to save some poor bastard the time.
[...] to Flavorwire, anyway. Includes Raiders of the Lost Ark, A Christmas Story, and Halloween. Includes b/w video [...]
K, why the hell did you post these videos on five different hosts? Youtube wasn’t satisfactory or something? I got to Fargo and now I don’t give a shit.
Regardless, check out “Focus” if it’s not already in this list. I actually thought it was in B&W because I had a bad S-Video cable at the time, so my TV just played it in B&W instead of color. It was awesome. Later I watched it in color and was actually distracted by all the saturation going on.
It’s set in the 50′s and is about a white guy who falls in love with a black woman in the south. William H. Macy. Great flick. Check it out.
@Squiggly_P: As I explained above, different clips kept getting pulled from different hosts, so I had to keep trying new ones. Which meant uploading some of them three, four, five times. Which was a pain in the neck.
But I can’t apologize enough for burdening you with the incredibile inconvenience of having to move your cursor to a different play button. Hope you recover soon.
haha….maybe he has RSI ;o)
Frank Darabont wanted to shoot “The Mist” in B&W, but the investors wouldn’t let him. He got his way on the DVD, though, with a converted version that is, in many ways, superior to the original color one. I would have loved to have seen it using B&W film, though.
i really think Seven should be on this list. the noire feel of the film fits perfectly. everyone should watch it in B&W at least once.
Fright Night is amazing in black and white.
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I would put “Black Dahlia, LA Confidential, Gosford Park, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, True Grit, Black Swan” in the mix, but taking “Silence of the Lamb” out, because there is a “night vision” scene that definitely rendered “moot” in B&W
I think Raiders and Halloween work particularly well here.
Memento would work brilliantly I think – there are many lowly lit scenes in Leonard’s hotel room and it would be a throwback to the movie’s film noire roots.
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I’ve watched “Silence of the Lambs” probably a hundred times but seeing in it black and white I saw things in facial expressions I’d never noticed. While I do somewhat agree that de-colorizing a film is slightly akin to colorization, I do think that watching a film in black and white after you’ve seen it in the original color format can open up a whole new world of view. The less distraction there is from color the more you can focus on the details.
@joe
Memento is already part black and white
@this post
I don’t agree with most of the choices here. some of these movies have some of the best cinematography, of course you can make them black and white and it still looks good, because the good work of a cinematographer can’t be undone simply by taking out color, nor can’t you really improve it. by making a movie black and white only improves as far as a style can. I would go as far as to say a inferior cinematography could be improved by black and white to a more acceptable level.
Fight Club. Shutter Island. Batman Begins. There Will Be Blood. Rocky. Probably dozens more where the overall mood of the film would benefit from the deeper contrasts of black and white.
Gangs of New York would have been great in B&W.
this is the best thing you guys have ever done.
Without a doubt, `The Usual Suspects.`
Three words: HOUSE OF GAMES
American Psycho
How about Invasion of the Body Snatcher (1978)? From what I understand, Philip Kaufman and Michael Chapman shot the film like it was in B&W even though it is in color.
how do you make your tv black and white? please help!!!
@/zachary- find your TV’s color settings and turn your saturation all the way down to 0. Maybe tinker with your contrast and brightness settings a little bit too. Happy viewing!
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Interesting idea. It’s hard for me to imagine enjoying some of these movies in black and white because I’ve seen them several times in color, so I have that connection with the films. I suppose it might be a good way to see new things in films one has seen several times, and it might be an interesting experience on films that have not been seen previously. Thanks.
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@Jason Bailey, if you haven’t already, I very strongly recommend watching “Reservoir Dogs” in black and white, I know it sounds impossible but it is positively a much more enjoyable experience, paticularlly Michael Madsen’s infamous “torture” scene, it is just indescribable. By the way, “The Departed” just feels like it was meant to be in black and white, thanks for the recommendation.
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A really nice idea i’d never tried…i think i will try There Will Be Blood and Let Me In. Kudos!
[...] the plus side, if they decide to change it at the last minute into a black and white, German Expressionist, silent movie, Edward’s all set and ready to go. Maybe it’s because he’s from the Silent [...]
One of my fave movies is Aliens as it’s haunting and atomospheric. I discovered by chance though that it’s even more so and more theatrical in black and white. Probably prefer watching it in black and white really. Never thought to try Raiders though. Will give it a look. Nice one.
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You converted them to black and white. All these movies are originally color. Stupid. Black and white is not better its worse. Why buy black and white tv now when you can still get black and white with a color tv? Geez some people are stupid.
I never thought black and white was good. Even in old days. Why make new old?
That scene of Silence of the Lambs was spectacularly terrifying. I never want to watch it in color again.
All of Frank Darabont’s films would be excellent in black and white, but particularly The Shawshank Redemption. Rocky would be interesting to see in black and white, as sort of an homage to films like The Set-Up, Champion and Body and Soul. Goodfellas would also be amazing in black and white, for the same reasons you stated for The Departed.
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Back in days of VHS I taped ‘Black Hawk Down’ but something went wrong with the the recording because it played back in black and white. I assumed that the film was made that way – to give a deliberate gritty feel. It worked.
When I later saw it on DVD I was disappointed that it was in colour.
I’ve found that the best looking black and white modern films use harsher lighting – either actual sunlight or studio-made sunlight. I’ve been going through my films looking for the ones shot this way, and here’s what looks best so far:
1. The Others
2. Misery
3. Dante’s Peak
4. The Hours
5. Signs
6. Deep Impact
7. Jaws
8. Poltergeist
9. Inception
10. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
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