Which version should i watch first, the color version has about 5mins extra footage.
shareI've just watched it myself and opted fro the original B&W. It's in widescreen for a start and the colourized version looks poor, it's pan and scan and is clearly a video release. It does seem to be longer but I only flicked through it to see but being a purist, I would always opt for the original print any day.
shareA director films differently in monochrome so artistically the colourised version will always be missing something. I agree it's nice to see extra footage but vintage films should be watched in context, in my opinion. Sit down and watch like it is 1956, basically. A work of art in any medium should always be good enough - you wouldn't tart up the Mona Lisa with graffiti tags, would you? This is why I dislike George Lucas constantly tampering with his original Star Wars trilogy...why? Left alone they are still light years better than the second trilogy, he hasn't improved anything!
Sorry, straying from the point! As I'm posting a year later than your original post I realise you've already made your decision and watched - I hope you watched the original b&w classic and then the later version!
Colours - no doubt.
Loved the B&W version but love the colour version more. Also, it is much more accessible to the younger audience (including my nephew).
"More accessible"? Maybe they should CGI in some Teletubbies, maybe have Jar-Jar Binks appear in many scenes. Nevermind that neither Teletubbies nor Jar-Jar Binks existed at all in 1956, I mean are you sure the movie is "accessible" enough yet...?
shareWho colorized it?
shareI don't know, but maybe Ted Turner...?
Colorization was somewhat of a "fad" for a rather brief time in the 1980s because of advancement in technology that allowed for Classic films filmed in what was previously the standard B&W celluloid film to be "Colorized" rather quickly and easily, a good deal of the work done by special computers, IIRC.
But nobody really wanted nor needed that and the somewhat gimmicky fad failed to catch on, fortunately. (In fact, using such new technologies to, on the contrary, restore old films was [and is] much, much preferred.)
Nevermind for a moment the complete change in, more or less, the entire aesthetic of such Classic films, but the Colorizings typically looked blandly pastel and washed-out, the overlaid colors thick and pasty, nearly always diminishing the sharpness of the original moving pictures, covering visual details from view---Well, *beep*! It looked like crap, okay!?, and was a bad idea in the first place, see!
Hmm, I've never seen ye olde Colorized version of this milestone 1956 film, and don't know why I ever would either. I'll just stick with the original Classic in B&W, that it was optimised for when filmed, instead, while hoping that this great film will always be available to see again and again throughout the ages via time to time restoration techniques of increasing technological sophistication.
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P.S.: The above is about as accurately as I can remember about Colorization (without looking up stuff while writing this), so corrections of inadvertent inaccuracies are welcome and encouraged.
The movie works a whole lot better in stark'n'shadowy noir-style black and white.
I've been chasing grace/ But grace ain't easy to find