COLOUR CINEMA

Several researchers are dealing with colour, as a basic expressive element of cinema style. Nevertheless, the difficulty in analyzing a large number of images and describing their nature and characteristics in non subjective terms are still among the problems faced in this area.
This research presents a quantitative methodology that enables a systematic, objective and verifiable study of colour, by automatically obtaining accurate colour data from large amounts of images. The proposed scheme also allow us to find possible meanings when relating quantitative information obtained to the narrative content.
In order to test its efficiency, the methodological tool is applied to Career Girls (Mike Leigh, 1997). As a result, hue is found to follow an expressive program evolving within the narrative content, as it is closely linked to the different periods present in the film.

This chapter proposes a category of 'early marvellous cinema' to link serpentine dance films (produced internationally) and French trick and feerie films by Georges Melies and Pathe frères (Segundo de Chomon, Gaston Velle, Ferdinand Zecca) as two types of the cinema of attractions that especially thrived on presentations of visual opulence and material excess. The chapter explores the use of costume as a ‘living screen’ and argues that early costume films were antecedents of the later fashion films, which began to proliferate in the 1910s.

During the earliest film exhibitions across Britain, the Serpentine Dance was exceptional for its intricately hand-painted colours imitating the lights of its theatrical antecedent. The popularity of the original stage routine transcended social classes, and was widely lauded as a poetic expression of modernity. Yet, such connotations were not ubiquitously upheld, especially in Inverness, where the routine was controversially executed in a den of lions. Public outcry deemed it a defamation of the female form, and as the town’s only local filmmaker, John Mackenzie omitted any associated hand-painted films from his exhibitions. The perceived moral case for this omission was compounded by Mackenzie’s aesthetic principles as a photographer. Late-nineteenth century photographic journals reveal an aversion to hand-painted photographs; dyes corrupted the purity of light on emulsion. As founder and president of the Highland Photographic Society, Mackenzie was sensitive to such discourses. In addition to introducing John Mackenzie to the historical record, this paper uncovers overlooked yet significant discourses in press and trade journal materials, which are crucial to our understanding of early colour cinema in Scotland.

Keywords: Serpentine Dance; colour; John Mackenzie; modernity; chromophobia; Scotland; hand-painted film; female body

John MacKenzie was the first indigenous filmmaker of the Scottish Highlands, yet his name is not recorded in any historiography or database. In 1896, under the auspices of the Highland Photographic Society, MacKenzie arranged for the first exhibition of the cinematograph in Inverness, before purchasing his own camera and projector the following year. Encapsulating the motto of Inverness as “The Gateway to the Highlands”, MacKenzie brought the cinematograph to remote areas unacquainted by his professional contemporaries. Recent scholarship has directly tackled the nuanced composition of early film practices in Scotland, which this paper builds upon.

“John MacKenzie’s Famous Cinematograph” became intertwined into the fabric of the local community; it was a galvanising force used to strengthen the identity of the town, through the topics it depicted and the venues chosen for exhibition. The late-nineteenth century marked a turbulent time for Inverness; the press maintained an alarming rhetoric about youth delinquency and the pervasiveness of alcohol. Such discourse was implicitly evoked within press reports on the local tourist trade, under the heading ‘Oorsels as Ithers See Us’. MacKenzie adopted this phrase as the marketing slogan for his local actualities, tapping into local anxieties about the representation of Inverness, and quelling them through films depicting local and respectable pursuits.

In 1902, MacKenzie attracted the attention of London-based magnate Charles Urban. He soon after cut all ties with Inverness, and began work on a contracted travelogue series entitled Bonnie Scotland. The tentative cinematograph market in Inverness subsequently imploded, and the town lost a valued tool for self-representation. The romanticised images of the Bonnie Scotland series were targeted for an international marketplace. Using John MacKenzie as a case study, this paper explores the tension between local and national orientated films, and the cinematograph’s position in solidifying, and then eliding, the self-expressed identity of Inverness.

On 22 April 1899, the gas engine on the fifth floor of William Bisset’s grocery warehouse exploded, leading to what was described as ‘one of the most alarming and destructive fires that has ever taken place in business premises in Aberdeen’ (Aberdeen Journal, 1899). The vast stores of grocery items on the premises created a fire of unusual spectacle, sounds and smells, which permeated the city centre. Responses to the fire were shaped by a long-standing political struggle. To the chagrin of the public, Aberdeen Council had squabbled over founding a permanent fire brigade for ten years, yet failed to act decisively.

The atrocity was filmed by Walker & Company, and exhibited that same night while the ruins were still smouldering. The film was subsequently hand-painted in imitation of the kaleidoscopic flames, in order to generate interest in a special screening. Marketed as The Great Fire of Bridge Place (1899), the film was more than an aesthetic curiosity or technological novelty; it engaged local audiences, generated debate and helped to instigate social change in Aberdeen. In congruence with Richard Maltby’s assertion that film historiographies can resonate further by transcending disciplinary boundaries, this paper will place The Great Fire of Bridge Place in its social and political contexts. Such an approach mitigates the absence of the film itself in archival holdings. This paper foregrounds the importance of composite methodologies in realising the significance of historical film texts, and in turn highlight the value of film for social historians.

During the earliest cinematograph exhibitions across Britain, the Serpentine Dance was unique for its intricately hand-painted colours imitating the lights of its theatrical antecedent. The popularity of the original stage routine transcended social classes, lauded as a morally intact and poetic expression of modernity. Yet, these connotations were not upheld across the various interpretations of the dance; especially in the case of Sanger’s Travelling Circus, which gained notoriety for performing it within a den of lions. Sanger’s troupe were the only ones to present the dance in Inverness, making it a fascinating microcosm to explore how intermedial contexts influenced early film screenings.

Research on Serpentine Dance films hitherto centred upon their aesthetics and positive reception, and the beginnings of Invernessian cinema have been neglected in favour of metropolitan case studies. Inverness’s position as a gateway to the Highlands, and its designation as its capital, encouraged a distinct identity at odds with the rest of Scotland and Britain. Through analysis of fin-de-siècle Invernessian newspapers, this paper will delineate a clash in moral values between local entertainments and the circus’s serpentine dance. As Inverness’s “cinematograph man”, John MacKenzie sided with the town’s moral guardians, thus ensuring local cinema remained a black-and-white phenomenon.

William Walker, Aberdeen’s earliest filmmaker and exhibitor, was arguably the most successful Scotland-based practitioner during the medium’s first ten years. Yet there remains a tendency to merely exemplify him as one of many travelling exhibitors, and his influence on the experience and development of early film remains unappreciated and under-researched. The recent growth of digital archives has enabled this void in cinema history to be addressed, and in the process trace some of the most distinctive features of his programmes.

Research into colour, film and synaesthesia to date has focused predominantly on abstract applications of colour within the realm of modernist art. This paper illustrates that synaesthesia had a wider context relevant for early cinema-going audiences. Empirical research evidences experimentation with coloured lights and tinting techniques within some of Walker’s earliest film programmes. When placed in context it becomes apparent such uses of colour had a localised significance for the audience, motivated to provoke or guide a reaction.

Drawing on contemporary medical journals to illustrate how synaesthesia was viewed, its relevance to early film shows will be documented by referencing two of Walker’s exhibitions. Each example illustrates diverging ends for the use of colour. I will argue the tint of Bridge Place Fire (Walker, 1899) was motivated by a desire to excite the audience, and build on a catalyst for social change triggered by a recent disaster. My second example looks at the perceived soothing properties of coloured lights, and its function in mitigating the potentially distressing flicker of images symptomatic of the earliest projectors. These localised contexts reveal a complexity to colour in early cinema that has often been overlooked in contemporary scholarship.