Color is such an important aspect of modern filmmaking. From the sunny pastels of Jacques Demy's playful romances and unconventional musicals to the bleak monochrome of Tim Burton's gothic fairy tales, such as his masterpiece Edward Scissorhands, color plays a key role in setting the mood and tone of a film. We know that movies were not always in color because this technology was developed later. But when exactly? This is hard to pin down because there are many different definitions of the first color film, depending on how you look at it - ranging from short films to documentaries to animated films.

Until the advent of color techniques, cameras could only produce black and white images. While filmmakers were able to play with shadows in visually exciting ways—such as the terrifying presence of Count Orlok in Nosferatu or the futuristic high society in Metropolis—they were finally able to tell visual stories with filmmakers open to completely different forms. of creative expression.

Many moviegoers mistakenly assume early live-action Technicolor films, such as 1939's The Wizard of Oz, as the first ever color film, but the use of color in film has a longer and more complex history. Now considered a film classic for the ages, The Wizard of Oz was one of the first films to be shot in Technicolor, to be exact. Technicolor requires a separate camera that separates three black-and-white negatives for each of the primary colors to make one strip of full-color film. The filmmaking technique has vibrant and detailed colors, making everything really jump off the screen.

The Wizard of Oz revolves around the power and beauty of that strong color. When Dorothy opens the door to her tornado-swept house, leaving behind the dull, sepia-toned world, we're just as awestruck by the picturesque rainbow-colored land of Oz, with its bright yellow brick road and sparkling emerald city. While the use of this new technique was amazing and would take Hollywood by storm for decades to come, animation had been using Technicolor and even other forms of color for some time.

Walt Disney Studios made a revolutionary change using Technicolor for their animated films, starting with their short "Flowers and Trees" about forest romance and rivalry, followed by the full-length "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was Disney's biggest gamble at the box office as studio executives were skeptical of all the elements that would ultimately make it so revolutionary. In the documentary The One That Started It All on the Diamond Blu-ray and DVD edition of the film, animator Ward Kimball shares what Hollywood bigwigs were so worried about:

"It was fine, six or seven minutes, like the shorts, but an hour and a half, no way!" The big reason was that you ran out of funny things, you had to laugh a minute. And bright colors will hurt your eyes, everyone will get up and go outside."

Not only was the story completely captivating, taking us from the horrors of the spooky forest to the sweet, lovable elves bonding with the princess, but the colors were breathtaking and beautiful to look at. We all remember the shot of the bright red apple dripping green poison in the shape of a macabre skull. The rich colors were perfect for the main character whose beauty, with her porcelain skin, ruby ​​red lips and jet black hair, made her the most dazzling of them all.

Disney would go on to use Technicolor for other animated classics such as Pinocchio and Cinderella. Oversaturated palettes became the standard for feature films in the mid-1950s, both live-action and animated. However, other color processes existed before Technicolor, allowing color to appear in films as early as the early 20th century.

Many early short films were originally shot in black and white, but were transformed into color films by manipulating the film - either by manually painting each frame or by applying tint. Early color version of George Méliès' 1902 short A Trip to the Moon, one of the best space films ever made, uses color to make the cosmic adventure feel even more fantastical, bathing the interstellar goddesses in vibrant pinks and turquoises. Similarly, La Vie et la Passion de Jésus Christ from 1903 features the same hand-painting technique, where only certain elements are colored to emphasize their significance in the biblical story, such as the bright yellow star above Jesus' manger Christ.

Technically, 1908's A Visit to the Sea was the first film made in color, but it's only eight minutes short. The collage of young ladies frolicking in bathing suits or beautiful couples strolling on the boardwalk is captured in a new process called Cinemacolor. Cinemacolor was a special camera tool used to apply red and green filters to black and white film. The striking colors made the scenes stand out and resemble real life as closely as possible. Of course, to our modern eyes, the first thing we notice is the limited range of hues, with only red and green visible. Kinemacolor also required a separate projector which had too many problems. In 1912, the documentary With Our King and Queen Through India also used Cinemacolor, showing the coronation and triumphs of King George V and Queen Mary of Teck. It must have been exciting for the viewers to see authentic images of their leaders captured on screen, with the use of colors highlighting their royal importance.

Given the most popular definition of a film as a full-length narrative, The World, Flesh and the Devil made in 1914 can be considered the first color film. Running 50 minutes and shot in Cinemacolor, the drama follows a con woman who conspires to swap babies for rich and poor families. Unfortunately, all footage from this film has been lost. While Cinemacolor's technique paved the way for future color processes and was less laborious than other approaches, it still had many kinks to work out before Technicolor would go on to revolutionize filmmaking.

It's amazing how far we've come with color in film and how much it's changed the way we see movies. Looking back, we can understand how early color techniques transformed films beyond the black and white that came before them. The history and role of color in cinema is as rich and varied as the color wheel itself, and is worth further exploration in books such as Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations in Cinema by Jessica Nibel and Sofia Serrano.