While modern day movies are nearly always in color with few exceptions, there was once a time where black and white wasn’t just an aesthetic choice… It was the only choice!

Though there are examples of Filmmakers playing with color during the early days of cinema – typically by hand painting or tinting each frame of film – fully colored movies were not a consideration or even a possibility.¹

Moreover, Directors, Cinematographers, and others working in the film industry had learned how to make exquisite-looking movies in black and white. As many movies of the late 1920s and early 1930s demonstrate, creatives in film became experts regarding how to produce spectacular imagery with monochrome color.

So there wasn’t necessarily any urgency to move to color films. Why change what was working just fine? Especially when the film world was still coming to terms with all the many modifications necessitated by the introduction of sound in the late 1920s, it would take some convincing to get people on board with changing yet another major component of making movies.

That being said, Technicolor would indeed change people’s minds about color.

Early versions of coloring film such as Kinemacolor, which filtered film through red and green prisms, were not able to fully bring to life the range of color that the human eye could see. But with Technicolor’s introduction of the three-color dye-transfer process, it was finally able to achieve realistic and vibrantly colored films.

To carry out Technicolor’s three-color dye-transfer process, special cameras were used that could hold three separate reels to achieve the effect.²

This instructive video demonstrates exactly how the Technicolor dye-transfer process works.

First, a prism inside the camera would split color into cyan, magenta, and yellow, and each reel created what would be a positive copy called a matrix.

Second, each cyan, magenta, and yellow matrix would then be dyed with its complementary color.

Third, a final reel of gelatin film would be pressed into each color via dye inhibition. This last process could mix the primary colors to achieve a full spectrum of color for movie audiences.

The visual sophistication of black and white films wasn’t the only reason why Technicolor didn’t initially catch on. There was also the expense and extra work associated with it.³

Those special cameras we mentioned? Well, to fit three reels inside them meant that they were quite large and unwieldy. To ensure that the filming took place as needed for the Technicolor effect to be achieved, certified technicians were required on set. Due to the lightning needed during the filming of a Technicolor movie, temperatures on set could go into triple digits. And then there was the cost of triple the reels and the process of colorization.

That all being said, though it took more than a decade since its inception for Filmmakers to use it, Technicolor became a highly popular film technique in the late 1930s with some truly dazzling results.

The following films were some of the first to use Technicolor. As you can see, they achieved visually spectacular results with it.

Did you know that one of the earliest popular examples of a Technicolor film is the animated Snow White (1937)? This Disney classic helped to usher in the golden age of Technicolor.

The action-packed The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) demonstrated just how vivid the colors of Technicolor could be and how much those colors could bring to epic films of this kind.

The iconic Gone with the Wind (1939) was another early example of the depth of color and beauty that Technicolor could bring to an already grand story.

There is perhaps no finer example of Technicolor’s glory than that of The Wizard of Oz (1939). The transition from sepia to vivid color demonstrated on a monumental scale what this technique could do.

Yes, it’s another Disney film! This time it’s Fantasia (1940) that shows off the impressive way that Technicolor can add to the whimsy and fanciful stories being told.

Once Technicolor caught on with Filmmakers and audiences, it became the gold standard for film colorization for several decades.⁴ Not to say that there weren’t competing processes.

Both Anscocolor by Ansco and Eastmancolor by Kodak became strong opposition on account of their cheaper and less intensive techniques. What kept Technicolor the leader of the pack was its superior color, which to this day has maintained its vibrancy. Whereas other processes would sooner or later fade to leave only a reddish or sepia hue, Technicolor films continue to amaze with their multifaceted colorization.

It should be noted, though, that one concern with Technicolor – and other color processes as well – was the slight reduction in crispness. This was on account of the inevitable spreading of color that would occur with the three-step dye-transfer process. To sharpen the film footage, Technicolor would print a black and white image before the colorization process to help ensure that every single frame of footage would be as clear as possible.

Even with its efforts to provide the best possible color imagery, though, Technicolor was no longer in demand as technological advances in filmmaking rendered it obsolete by the mid-1970s. Other colorization processes eventually superseded Technicolor, but its influence and importance live on to this day.⁵

For one, with its introduction into cinema, Filmmakers began to understand just how vital the inclusion of color could be in their movies. To this point, they learned how to use Technicolor to great effect for both its pure visual impact and influence on the tone and context of their films.

A well-known example of this is the infamous ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. Initially, the slippers were intended to be silver, as they were in the book by L. Frank Baum. However, during the production of the film adaptation, Filmmakers realized that those silver slippers would not pop as prominently as hoped for against the yellow-brick road that Dorothy and her friends would be traveling. For this reason, Dorothy’s slippers became ruby, and the rest as they say is cinematic history.

Beyond its impact during its heyday, though, Technicolor still serves as a historical document of sorts for the filmmaking world. Not only is Technicolor not used anymore, but also the equipment that once created it is gone as well. The people who invented and worked with this equipment and processes are no longer with us. There is no way to replicate the effect of Technicolor today without considerable time and money going into the revival of it.

For this reason, the films made with Technicolor are truly one of a kind. There will never be movies made like them again, which makes it all the more important for them to be carefully preserved and protected in the years and centuries to come.

Thankfully, because of the superior invention and execution of Technicolor’s three-color dye-transfer process, these films continue to showcase the full spectrum of luminous color with which they were first created. In some cases, the more famous Technicolor films are still impressing audiences 85 years since their first screenings in movie theaters.

Cinema has always been defined by advances in the technical and creative elements of storytelling. The jump from single reels to feature films. The introduction of sound. And then the addition of glorious color with Technicolor.

Technicolor movies could finally display what the human eye sees every day. But on the big screen, this inclusion of vivid color only made film all the most compelling to watch in awe and fascination. Used to great effect for more than 50 years, Technicolor helped to usher in a new period of film that has since become the standard for visual storytelling.

While no longer a part of the filmmaking process, Filmmakers and movie lovers alike continue to benefit from Technicolor’s lasting impact and legacy.