The Marlon Brando Collection

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Gordon
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2004 8:03 am

#51 Post by Gordon » Fri Dec 08, 2006 5:19 pm

I don't anything about Lars von Trier's films as I have not seen any, but I was going to mention John Badham's 1979 film of Stoker's immortal novel. It was released in full color on its initial release, but the recent home video editions have been supervised by Badham and he desaturated the color (2.35:1 Panavision) as he badly wanted to shoot in the film in black and white, but Universal wouldn't let him. Curious that the color wasn't fully removed, though. It has an interesting look on the remastered anamorphic DVD, though fans have longed to see the original color version for many years. Gil Taylor was the cinematographer and I have wondered what he thinks of the changes Badham made. Having said that, he was probably bemused enough by George Lucas fucking around with Star Wars. "Put more light on the dog!" Gil would shout on the set referring to Chewbacca. Legend.

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Lino
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#52 Post by Lino » Fri Dec 08, 2006 5:41 pm

Gordon wrote:I don't anything about Lars von Trier's films as I have not seen any
What? What planet you live on, Gordo? Just kidding of course and I'm sure you have your own personal reasons not to do so. Anyway, this is what I was talking about when comparing the color schemes used in Reflections and the ones von Trier uses in his movies:

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All from the Beaver and from various von Trier movies. As you can see, he's after that sepia-toned kind of cinematography in almost every film he makes.

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Gordon
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#53 Post by Gordon » Fri Dec 08, 2006 5:54 pm

The fourth capture is very beautiful - is that Dogville?

The tinting of black and white films in the Silent days was a powerful tool. Sadly, like many great aspects of Silent Cinema, it was (more of less?) abolished when sound came in. Orange and blue tinted monochrome is to die for! Technicolor sealed the fate of tinting techniques.

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davebert
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#54 Post by davebert » Fri Dec 08, 2006 6:40 pm

It's Manderlay.

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The Fanciful Norwegian
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#55 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Fri Dec 08, 2006 7:33 pm

The fourth one is Dogville (if Nicole Kidman isn't a giveaway than the presence of "dogville" in the URL definitely is). The fifth one is Manderlay.

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zedz
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#56 Post by zedz » Sun Dec 10, 2006 7:36 pm

The Element of Crime (first image above) is a bit of a dog's breakfast of a film, but photographically it's fascinating. The sepia effect you see is not achieved through processing or filters, but lighting. The entire film was drenched with sodium light, which effectively leached all real colour from the image unless the scene included a non-sodium light source (e.g. lightbulb, TV screen). So the cinematographer could achieve such effects as a monochromatically orange scene with a single cool blue light bulb hanging in the foreground - all achieved without post-production visual effects.

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davebert
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#57 Post by davebert » Sun Dec 10, 2006 7:49 pm

Sigh, that's what I get for reading too quickly. I was responding to the balcony pic, naturally.

I've been meaning to watch Reflections, so I suppose I'll put myself through it tonight.

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Lino
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#58 Post by Lino » Thu Dec 14, 2006 7:08 pm

From the imdb.com boards:
For those of you who watched the golden tinted version in its release, do you know if the print switched to full color in its very last scene or did it stay golden all the way through?
There was no full color, it stayed tinted all the way. I just watched it on DVD. A masterpiece!!!

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Gordon
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2004 8:03 am

#59 Post by Gordon » Thu Jan 04, 2007 2:54 am

In his autobiography, Huston, We Have a Problem, the brilliant British cinematographer, Oswald Morris, who worked with Huston on eight films, states that Aldo Tonti was fired after a few days from Reflections in a Golden Eye and that he basically lit every scene that's in the movie. As he wasn't part of the production from the start, he had no say in the golden hue aesthetic and he found it overdone. He also states that he was not bothered about going uncredited. But I'll submit it to the IMDb anyway. :wink:

The book is a damn good read. He didn't like working with Kubrick on Lolita, feeling that Kubrick was disorganized and interfered with the lighting to detrimental effect at times. His memories and anecdotes about working with John Huston and Sidney Lumet are priceless, though and now I badly want to see The Hill and Equus and for the first time, Carol Reed's, The Key (1958) which was shot in black and white scope on rough seas.

Mark Metcalf
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Re: The Marlon Brando Collection

#60 Post by Mark Metcalf » Sun Jun 12, 2011 8:03 pm

I just watched Reflections in a Golden Eye, rented from Netflix. I really like this film, even with Brando's awful Southern accent, almost as bad and distracting as his German accent in Morituri. The DVD is available only in the Warner box (5 films), and the cheaper TCM box (4 films). Does anybody know if the TCM box has the same version--wide-screen and golden-hued image?

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domino harvey
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Re: The Marlon Brando Collection

#61 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jun 12, 2011 8:14 pm

Undoubtedly-- all the titles in those Warners budget sets are just a repressing of the original disc (or the first disc only if they're 2-disc titles)

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