Essay: Casablanca In Color? I'm Shocked, Shocked!

From all the fuss, you would have thought it was a theft of the Elgin Marbles or the rape of the Sabine women. "Criminal mutilation," says Woody Allen. "Artistic desecration," says the Directors Guild of America. "Cultural vandalism," says the Western branch of the Writers Guild of America. Not since Ingrid Bergman was run out of town on a morals charge has Hollywood been & in such a pious fit. Directors, actors, critics, even the odd editorialist, have risen as one to denounce the depredations of -- colorization.

Colorization is the gimmick by which a computer and an "art director" team up to apply color to an old black-and-white movie. The colorizers, to their credit, have few pretensions. The idea is to make money. "People don't like black and white," says the president of Colorization Inc. "When we color it, they buy it."

The guardians of the culture are not pleased. The Screen Actors Guild, the American Film Institute and the American Society of Cinematographers have denounced the practice. John Huston has suggested a boycott of products advertised on TV showings of colorized movies. The Directors Guild is looking for legal ways to block colorization. Its British counterpart has simply called on the government to outlaw it. Conspiracy to colorize: three years to life.

Simple justice. Is not turning an elegant film noir like The Maltese Falcon into a lurid color riot a travesty? Like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa?

Travesty, yes. Mustache, no. Colorizing leaves the original black-and- white prints unmolested. (In fact, they are rendered in mint condition before colorizing begins, which is why some film archivists like the idea.) Only a tape of the film is colorized. Nothing is altered. Colorization is not like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. It is like painting a mustache on cheap prints of the Mona Lisa. The original remains in the Louvre, pristine. Copies of the original, sans mustache, remain readily available. Where is the loss? What is the damage?

Not physical, admit the outraged. The damage is to art and to taste. Colorization turns art into junk.

Well, yes. The colors are dismal. The film is distorted. The director's intentions are trashed. It is true that most old films are junk anyway, so colorizing them would turn dank junk into juiced-up junk. It is also true that watching Casablanca for the chiaroscuro lighting rather than the dialogue is a bit like buying Playboy for the articles. The charge of philistinism is slightly overdrawn. But, on the whole, only slightly.

Nevertheless, it is not as if artistic intent is never compromised in pursuit of a wider audience. Hollywood has for decades tolerated dubbing. There is much money to be made in overseas markets. Dubbing spares unlettered foreigners the strain of subtitles. For the sake of a few deutsche marks, Hollywood is quite prepared to have Gary Cooper mosey up to a bar and say, "Ein Bier, bitte." Colorization is, in principle, no more than visual dubbing for a generation that is deaf to black and white.