Modelling in Light and Dark

Abstract

It is perhaps opportune at this point to raise the question of black-and-white film. In some ways it is an addendum, or at least a detour, but at the same time, because of its accent on the visual, it also seems quite germane. Most of the films discussed in this book, with the exception of Vertigo, The Searchers and The Red Desert, were shot in black-and-white. My bias was not a conscious one. It was determined by my tastes and by the fact that many of the generally accepted film classics were made in the black-and-white era. It may even be the case that black-and-white cinema constitutes a stylistic category, one that crosses national boundaries, genres and even artists. My emphasis has been on Eisenstein’s cinema, Dreyer, Italian neo-realism, Hitchcock and Ford, in all of whom black-and-white cinematography plays a large part. The monochromaticism of cinema’s greatest achievements (I am excluding early tinted film)2 includes the major films of Eisenstein, much of Ford, Hitchcock, Wilder, Capra, Welles, Hawks, Fuller, the two Rays, Pabst, Lang, Renoir, Mizoguchi, Vertov, Vigo, Bunuel, Deren, Dreyer, Ozu — the list is endless. In other words, the classic cinema of both Hollywood and international art cinema remains defined largely by works shot in black and white.