Chromatic Borders, Cosmetic Bodies: Colour in the Films of Nicolas Roeg

Abstract

Colour is the uncharted aesthetic terrain of Nicolas Roeg’s art. Barring a few superficial exceptions, the role and function of colour has been absent from previous writing on his work, partly due to a greater focus on Roeg’s ‘mosaic manner’ (Milne 1980: 43), and his ‘complex time games’ (Lanza 1985: 94). But we could also argue that it is also due to film theory’s lack of in-depth engagement with the chromatic. As film theorist Brian Price succinctly argues, ‘despite the centrality of color to the experience and technology of cinema, it has most often been no more than the occasional subject of the theorist, historian, or practitioner; a source more of fleeting observation than of rigorous conceptualization’ (Price 2006: 1). The intention of this article is both to contribute to the emerging debates surrounding film colour, and also to attempt to fulfil Roeg’s demand that we ‘read the images’ (Kennedy 1980: 24). While adopting an auteurist approach I do not perceive Roeg’s work with colour as unusual, but argue that through considering colour we open up Roeg’s work to alternative ideas and questions as exemplified by analyses of Performance (Cammell and Roeg, 1970) shot in Technicolor, Don’t Look Now (1973, Technicolor) and Bad Timing (1980, Eastman Kodak). Each film reveals a specific preoccupation with colour: the transition through colour from gangster to counter-culture aesthetics in Performance, the obsessive search for an elusive ethereal red in Don’t Look Now and a Klimtian-inspired femininity in Bad Timing.