Monochromatic For the People
An examination of cinematic reality through the lens of Noir & Chrome
by Hunter Bush
Movies used to be black and white (and silent to boot, can ya believe it!) until it stopped being cost-prohibitive to shoot them in color, at which time color films began to overtake them in frequency until b&w seemed largely like a thing of the past, foreign and/or independent films. Occasionally something like Schindler's List would come along and remind everyone about the undiluted power of b&w cinema, which essentially brings us to the subject of this article: the semi-recent semi-trend of converting films to black & white to better appreciate the language of film.
Illustration by Mary Tomcavage - Instagram @marytom_makes
Specifically Mad Max: Fury Road: Black & Chrome directed by George Miller and Logan: Noir directed by James Mangold. Fury Road proper was released in summer 2015, with Black & Chrome getting a limited theatrical run in December the following year and was included on a later physical release. Logan was released in March of 2017 and, aside from a few specialty screenings, the Noir version was only included on the physical release. There was a feeling that perhaps this was a way to entice film lovers to continue buying physical media at time when it looked like digital would overtake physical the way color had done to b&w (I would argue that an true lover of film would intrinsically have a love and appreciation for its preservation via home libraries, but that's for another column entirely). I was curious what benefits - or detriments - the b&w viewing experience brought to these films.
