The fashions in that section are so ridiculous that they remind me of the THINGS in which Lady Gaga allows herself to be seen in public.
God is subtle, but He is not malicious. (Albert Einstein)
It's a couture show. Couture is more about showing the art of clothing than showing practical clothes.
shareThen I am right that it is a put on. Female form divine indeed! Walt Whitman must be absolutely outraged at the profanation of his beautiful poem.
God is subtle, but He is not malicious. (Albert Einstein)
Exactly! And now, in living color! I'm watching this on TCM on Demand. I went to the store in the middle of it and was right before the couture show. I turned it back on and all of a sudden it's in color. I said to myself, "Hey! Wait a minute here...".
I love Jesus....but I drink a little.
What was the reason for the color print fashion show?
Im sure its mentioned somewhere.
The reason for the color fashion sequence?
Well, the movie is by, about and FOR women, so a fashion show could be expected.
Obviously...I was curious as to why it was FILMED in color...
shareAt the time, Technicolor was a draw to audiences because it was still considered a novelty. Filming the entire movie in Technicolor would have been expensive and probably wouldn't have been a sensible choice from a fianicial standpoint so someone chose just that sequence. It wasn't George Cukor because he reportedly hated it and wanted to remove it from the film.
I also I read somewhere that Adrian requested that the sequence be shot in Technicolor because it showed the clothes better (take that bit with a grain of salt). Whatever the case, I've always found that scene a bit odd. The clothes are terrible and thw whole thing seems like it's a missing scene from a weird musicial.
Agreed. Consider also that the film was released at the beginning of WW ll and when the depression was still in force, so you have to consider what an extraordinary experience it was for people to go to the cinema in 1939 and see color, for it didn't become the norm until the mid to late sixties.
I think it also had something to do with, at least on some level that filming on the same MGM lot and at the same time, was Gone With the Wind which of course was completely in color. Consider the director of the film had been fired as director of GWTW, that Crawford was up for the role of Scarlett and been turned down, a don't blink cameo of Butterfly McQueen and Fountain's sisters' casting in the movie, filming the fashion show in color was slightly lifting the leg on the epic being filmed down the street.
I'm with Cukor - the color sequence is jarring, absurd and totally
unnecessary. For years, there were prints released to TV that weren't
in color (of course, they were faded, scratched 16 MM copies, and the
"black-and-white" fashion sequence wasn't TRUE black-and-what
photography, but it still looked less jarring).
The Wizard of Oz did the same shift from monochrome to Technicolor.
Why does it get a free pass (and accolades) for doing it, while people constantly rag on the same gimmick when it's used in this film?
Both films are frothy fantasies shot in 1939 and contain high color sequences to both generate and underscore a sense of surprise and wonder, so I don't see the difference.
A frothy fantasy is a frothy fantasy is a frothy fantasy. Anything goes, and should go.
Incidentally, in pre-dvd prints of the film, the part of the stage with closed curtains, which begins the sequence, was shown against a bare white background because it couldn't be solved how to integrate the dazzling color stage into the center of the black and white salon audience.
In the dvd copy, there is a halfhearted attempt to "fix" it by matting the color stage cutout over an out of proportion, black and white still of the salon wall.
Perhaps, if the two images could have been incorporated successfully in the first place, it would now be viewed with less confusion by some.
And both of these fantasies had the same costume designer. Adrian gets laurels for Oz, and seemingly nonstop bitching for The Women. Makes no sense.
shareFashions created for the screen at the time this film was made were often deliberately exaggerated and larger than life. Look at some of the creations of designers like Walter Plunkett and Travis Banton during the 1930s - quite over the top (Adrian was probably the master in this area). As Ginger Rogers said, no one would wear those outlandish clothes in public.
shareIn the dvd copy, there is a halfhearted attempt to "fix" it by matting the color stage cutout over an out of proportion, black and white still of the salon wall.
The original 1939 version of the scene shows the Technicolor stage surrounded by the rest of the room IN BLACK AND WHITE, using a stenciling process developed for (but ultimately unused in) The Wizard of Oz (1939). Presumably, because the reel starts right BEFORE the transition, it was either too much trouble and expense to process the small bit of stray black and white footage for television (it would have to have been printed separately onto each release print in 1939)or, more likely, the footage has been lost.
It is tantalizing the think that the information in imdb is 100% accurate and reliable, and that, just waiting to be discovered, there may indeed be an original theatrical print languishing somewhere which contains the integrated color/black and white piece. However, I take the notion with a grain of salt, given that it's as easy to produce and publish paragraphs of erroneous information on imdb as it is on a wikipedia page.
Still, when "lost" footage from The Wizard of Oz can be unearthed, and a virtually complete print of Metropolis can be salvaged and reconstructed after decades of being thought lost, maybe a surviving theatrical print of The Women doesn't sound so outlandish.
All pre-dvd prints of the film which I have seen have only ever had a blank white void in place around the color insert.
If you are able to produce an authentic pre-dvd copy of the film in any format, showing otherwise, some avid collector would assure your fortune.
In the early 1990s, I was lucky to able to view a theatrical film print coming from the Turner archives and, in it, the sequence also showed only the blank white field.
From the condition of the print (quite poor sound, dust, scratches, one bad splice, and yellowing of the blank white field) it was obvious that it was not remotely a fresh print - certainly not a new or restored copy; it had been clearly been run through countless projectors for untold years prior to the viewing I attended.
From the condition of the print (quite poor sound, dust, scratches, one bad splice, and yellowing of the blank white field) it was obvious that it was not remotely a fresh print - certainly not a new or restored copy; it had been clearly been run through countless projectors for untold years prior to the viewing I attended.
If you are able to produce an authentic pre-dvd copy of the film in any format, showing otherwise, some avid collector would assure your fortune.
MGM had originally planned to incorporate a "stencil printing" process when Dorothy runs to open the farmhouse door before the film switches to Technicolor; each frame was to be hand-tinted to keep the inside of the door in sepia tone. This process-cumbersome, expensive, and ineffective-was abandoned in favor of a simpler and more clever alternative (a variation of this process was used, however, in 1939 release prints of The Women (1939)).
THE WOMEN had some of the same problem, where the color sections of the fashion show survived, but the B&W surrounding image in the introductory part was gone, leaving a color image "floating" with a blank background.
They've played around some more to try to recreate the stencil look of the original black and white to color transition as the original transitional footage is lost. On the DVD the small color image was placed over a black and white still image from later in the fashion show and here they've put the audience members from the still OVER a portion of the color footage so it now appears to be partially "behind" the black and white audience.
It's funny but each home video incarnation is one step closer in trying to "fix" this transition (it should be the color stage in the middle of the frame with the black and white room surrounding it, only the shot of the black and white room is long gone as it was never more than an odd bit printed onto the beginning of the color reel.)
You ARE joking, right? To even compare the use of black-and-white/
Technicolor in "Oz" to "The Women" is nothing short of ABSURD.
In "Oz", Technicolor is used to ADVANCE THE STORY and move the film forward
in in its fantasy storytelling. "The Women" is a BLACK-AND-WHITE film.
Suddenly throwing in Technicolor for a five-minute fashion sequence
was stupid, garish and pointless.
If you don't know what you're talking about, do us a favor and don't
post. Good grief.
I wouldn't express it quite so brashly, but I agree with your sentiment. ;-) IMO, the fashion show could have been cut from The Women entirely, to the movie's immense benefit.
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