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Salomé (USA 1922, Charles Bryant). Credit: George Eastman Museum. Photographs of the tinted, toned and Handschiegl nitrate print by Barbara Flueckiger.
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Image

Salomé (1922)

Color systemTinting

GallerySalomé (1922)

The Affairs of Anatol (USA 1921, Cecil B. DeMille). Credit: Library of Congress. Photographs of the tinted and toned nitrate print with Handschiegl intertitles by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay
- butterfly

Image

The Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Color systemTinting

GalleryThe Affairs of Anatol (1921)

The Affairs of Anatol (USA 1921, Cecil B. DeMille). Credit: Library of Congress. Photographs of the tinted and toned nitrate print with Handschiegl intertitles by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay

Image

The Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Color systemTinting

GalleryThe Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Technicolor Collection, frame no. 14. Credit: George Eastman House Moving Image Collection. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay

Image

Technicolor Collection

Color systemTechnicolor No. II

GalleryTechnicolor Collection

Gallery | (11 images)

Farbige Fragmente

Color systemToning / metallic toning (French: virage, German: Tonung)

Credit: Courtesy of BFI National Archive. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger. Film: Kino the Girl of Colour (GB 1920, William Friese-Greene, Claude Friese-Greene).
Tags
- decay

Image

Kino the Girl of Colour (1920)

Color systemFriese-Greene

GalleryKino the Girl of Colour (1920)

Technicolor Collection, frame no. 19. Credit: George Eastman House Moving Image Collection. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay

Image

Technicolor Collection

Color systemTechnicolor No. II

GalleryTechnicolor Collection

Salomé (USA 1922, Charles Bryant), long exposure. Credit: George Eastman Museum. Photographs of the tinted, toned and Handschiegl nitrate print by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay

Image

Salomé (1922)

Color systemHandschiegl / DeMille-Wyckoff / Wyckoff Process

GallerySalomé (1922)

The Affairs of Anatol (USA 1921, Cecil B. DeMille). Credit: Library of Congress. Photographs of the tinted and toned nitrate print with Handschiegl intertitles by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- splice
- decay

Image

The Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Color systemTinting

GalleryThe Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Credit: Courtesy of BFI National Archive. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger. Film: Kino the Girl of Colour (GB 1920, William Friese-Greene, Claude Friese-Greene).
Tags
- decay

Image

Kino the Girl of Colour (1920)

Color systemFriese-Greene

GalleryKino the Girl of Colour (1920)

Technicolor Collection, frame no. 16. Credit: George Eastman House Moving Image Collection. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- faded
- decay

Image

Technicolor Collection

Color systemTechnicolor No. II

GalleryTechnicolor Collection

Salomé (USA 1922, Charles Bryant). Credit: George Eastman Museum. Photographs of the tinted, toned and Handschiegl nitrate print by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags

Image

Salomé (1922)

Color systemHandschiegl / DeMille-Wyckoff / Wyckoff Process

GallerySalomé (1922)

Malombra (ITA 1917, Carmine Gallone). Credit: Cineteca di Bologna. Photographs of the tinted and toned nitrate print by Barbara Flueckiger.
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Image

Malombra (1917)

Color systemTinting

GalleryMalombra (1917)

Technicolor Collection, frame no. 17. Credit: George Eastman House Moving Image Collection. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- faded
- decay

Image

Technicolor Collection

Color systemTechnicolor No. II

GalleryTechnicolor Collection

Gallery | (17 images)

Technicolor Collection

Color systemTechnicolor No. II

Technicolor Collection, frame no. 15. Credit: George Eastman House Moving Image Collection. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay

Image

Technicolor Collection

Color systemTechnicolor No. II

GalleryTechnicolor Collection

La vie et la passion de Jésus Christ (FRA 1907, Lucien Nonguet and Ferdinand Zecca). Credit: EYE Film Museum. Photographs of the stencil colored nitrate print by Olivia Kristina Stutz, ERC Advanced Grant FilmColors. Edge mark: Pathé (1911 onward), thin italic letters, on one edge, PATHE FRERES 14 RUE FAVART PARIS and on the other, EXHIBITION INTERDITE EN FRANCE EN SUISSE EN BELGIQUE ET EN ITALIE (partially visible). Cf.: Ill.PM.6: Brown, Harold (1990): Physical Characteristics of Early Films as Aids to Identification. Brussels: FIAF, on p. 9. View Quote on Page: Edge Codes and Identification Trade mark in scene: Pathé cockerel (until 1909). Cf.: Ill.TM.5: Brown 1990: on p. 30. View Quote on Page: Edge Codes and Identification
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Image

La vie et la passion de Jésus Christ (1907)

Color systemPathecolor / Pathéchrome / stencil coloring

GalleryLa vie et la passion de Jésus Christ (1907)

Technicolor Collection, frame no. 14. Credit: George Eastman House Moving Image Collection. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay

Image

Technicolor Collection

Color systemTechnicolor No. II

GalleryTechnicolor Collection

Credit: Lichtspiel / Kinemathek Bern. Film: Dagli Appennini alle Ande (ITA 1916, Umberto Paradisi). Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger.
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Image

Dagli Appenini alle Ande (1916)

Color systemTinting

Salomé (USA 1922, Charles Bryant). Credit: George Eastman Museum. Photographs of the tinted, toned and Handschiegl nitrate print by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- splice
- decay

Image

Salomé (1922)

Color systemTinting

GallerySalomé (1922)

The Affairs of Anatol (USA 1921, Cecil B. DeMille). Credit: Library of Congress. Photographs of the tinted and toned nitrate print with Handschiegl intertitles by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay

Image

The Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Color systemTinting

GalleryThe Affairs of Anatol (1921)

The Affairs of Anatol (USA 1921, Cecil B. DeMille). Credit: Library of Congress. Photographs of the tinted and toned nitrate print with Handschiegl intertitles by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay
- butterfly

Image

The Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Color systemTinting

GalleryThe Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Gallery | (29 images)

Massafra (1911)

Color systemPathecolor / Pathéchrome / stencil coloring

Technicolor Collection, frame no. 18. Credit: George Eastman House Moving Image Collection. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- faded
- decay

Image

Technicolor Collection

Color systemTechnicolor No. II

GalleryTechnicolor Collection

Credit: Courtesy of BFI National Archive. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger. Film: Kino the Girl of Colour (GB 1920, William Friese-Greene, Claude Friese-Greene).
Tags
- decay

Image

Kino the Girl of Colour (1920)

Color systemFriese-Greene

GalleryKino the Girl of Colour (1920)

Gallery | (34 images)

Forbidden Fruit (1921)

Color systemTinting

The Virgin Queen (USA 1928, Roy William Neill). Credit: George Eastman Museum. Photographs of the Technicolor No. III dye-transfer nitrate print by Olivia Kristina Stutz, ERC Advanced Grant FilmColors.
Tags
- decay

Image

The Virgin Queen (1928)

Color systemTechnicolor No. III

GalleryThe Virgin Queen (1928)

The Affairs of Anatol (USA 1921, Cecil B. DeMille). Credit: Library of Congress. Photographs of the tinted and toned nitrate print with Handschiegl intertitles by Barbara Flueckiger.
Tags
- decay

Image

The Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Color systemTinting

GalleryThe Affairs of Anatol (1921)

Quote

Cherchi Usai, Paolo (1996): The Color of Nitrate. Some Factual Observations on Tinting and Toning Manuals for Silent Films. In: Richard Abel (ed.): Silent Film. New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, pp. 27–30.

Tinting

“Archival Implications

The 1922 edition of the Eastman Kodak tinting and toning manual cautioned that toning and mordanting were not advised for films that were to be preserved for a long time, because a chemical alteration of the emulsion was considered inevitable and the results were impossible to forecast. Therefore it was suggested that high-quality reference prints in black and white be made before a valuable film was altered by toning or mordanting. And indeed, many of the original colored versions of films have already been lost.

By and large, film archives today are forced to preserve duplicates of early films in black and white, both for financial and practical reasons. Even without considering the huge cost of restoring a film in color, the fact remains that current technology has proved unable to avoid the progressive decay of color film stock, even under the best possible conditions of preservation.

When color restoration is attempted, film archives usually follow one of two possible strategies. The most common approach is to reproduce the original tints and tones on a modern color negative. The result can be relatively satisfying, but technicians agree that the reproduction obtained is not completely faithful to the original. The materials employed at the beginning of the century (the nitrate bases and dyes) have a unique appearance that cannot be reproduced. A second and more rudimentary strategy involves reproducing tinted scenes by printing on color stock from black-and-white negatives, using a color filter. This system has the obvious practical advantage of not requiring the printing and preservation of a master color negative. The result, however, is not accurate in its color reproduction, as the tints obtained are usually rather cold and too bright. Furthermore, this solution cannot be used at all when the original print has any kind of toning, stenciling, or mordanting.

A few film archives¹⁴ in the forefront of film restoration are trying to reproduce the actual techniques employed during the silent period, using machines and dyes that approximate as closely as possible those utilized in the early years of the century. The results obtained so far are tentative, and the work is extremely time-consuming. Given the current situation, with an overwhelming amount of nitrate film needing preservation and the relative lack of available time, money, and human resources, only a fraction of silent film will be restored according to these criteria. But there is little doubt that, following this direction of research, film restoration can acquire a scientific status comparable to the practices already established in other disciplines, such as painting and architectural restoration.

For those who work in the restoration of moving images, the importance of the original tinting and toning manuals is self-evident. Film archivists are often at a loss in knowing how a silent film looked at the time of its release. These books provide an extraordinary amount of primary evidence that is otherwise unavailable. All the volumes offer precise information about the chemical formulae used in order to prepare the dyes, the timing and methods of their use, the technical problems arising from inaccurate treatment of the film, and the possibilities of combining different coloring methods on the same positive print. Without these manuals, the ambitious enterprise of recreating the original techniques would be impossible.

Preservation and restoration are urgent tasks. Cellulose nitrate is a very unstable material whose estimated life barely reaches 100 years, according to the most recent scientific research. The phases in the process of decomposition are, sadly, well known in film archives. The cellulose base becomes brittle and shrinks so much that it cannot be projected anymore; the photographic emulsion fades; reels develop a layer of brown powder on the surface, then become so sticky that it becomes impossible even to rewind the film, and the image is lost. In the last stage of decay, nitrate film is reduced to a potentially explosive crystallized mass.

It is likely that within a few years, these tinting and toning manuals will be the only primary resource available for anyone trying to understand silent film’s aesthetics of color and how it was shaped by a technology that was extremely complex for such a young industry.

But the same effects of nitrate decomposition are beginning to be apparent on the individual frames of nitrate preserved within these manuals. Even under the best storage conditions, the nitrate frames in these books are bound to disappear eventually. Fortunately, the samples of films contained in the Eastman Kodak and Pathé manuals have barely reached an early stage of decomposition. Most of their original beauty is still intact. If it is not possible to guarantee their existence for an indefinite future, we can at least undertake an accurate study and reproduce some of their characteristics. This is a scientific challenge and an ethical issue that involves the expertise and commitment of librarians and film archivists alike.

NOTES

¹⁴ For example, the Ceskoslovensky Filmovy Ustav in Prague and the Cineteca Comunale di Bologna. Some of the foremost specialists in film restoration have discussed similar issues at the first school for film restoration ever established on a permanent basis in Bologna, under the auspices of the Cineteca Comunale di Bologna. See also Ray Edmondson, “Towards a Philosophy of Film Archiving,” FIAF Bulletin 41-42 (1991), 6-7.”

(Cherchi Usai, Paolo (1996): The Color of Nitrate. Some Factual Observations on Tinting and Toning Manuals for Silent Films. In: Abel, Richard (ed.): Silent Film. New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, pp. 27-30.)

Hertogs, Daan; De Klerk, Nico (1996): Disorderly Order. Colours in Silent Film. The 1995 Amsterdam Workshop. Amsterdam: Stichding Nederlands Filmmuseum, on pp. 6–7.

Tinting

“The silent era witnessed innumerable attempts, applying widely varying levels of technical sophistication, to show films in colours. Such attempts fall into two major categories: ‘natural’ or photographic methods depending on the mechanical combination of two or three differently coloured but otherwise identical monochrome images on the celluloid or screen (in systems such as Kinemacolor, Dufaycolor and Kodacolor, to mention some betterknown examples), and applied colour methods, in which a black-and-white print was treated in some way with coloured dyes after photographic processing. The applied colour systems comprise hand-painting, stencilling, toning and tinting. The Workshop focused mainly on these techniques, partly because they are far better represented than early photographic colour in the archive of the Nederlands Filmmuseum, but perhaps more importantly – a virtue of this necessity – because they jointly present the full range of early colouring from black-and-white and the varieties of whole-image monochrome to complex local and multiple colours. Hand-painted and stencilled images, which are particularly resistant to casual or stereotypical interpretations of early coloured film, have too often been overlooked or marginalized in early film history. To disregard stencil colouring is, moreover, virtually to disregard an entire genre – the feerique – and a significant part of the output of such studios as Pathé and Gaumont.

The variety in colours found on early films is also, finally, a result of their instability. The Nederlands Filmmuseum has a certain reputation for its preservations of silent coloured films. But no preservation process is ‘perfect’ (whatever exactly that might mean to different people) and we wanted, among other things, to demonstrate to participants of the Workshop (and eventually, to readers of this book) that any process of preserving coloured film on acetate safety stock tends to depart in some measure from the applied colours on the original nitrate prints. We also wished to emphasize that there is more than one way to preserve coloured film and that each method has specific advantages and limitations as a way of reproducing applied colours. The choice of methods partly determines, for example the extent to what, an archivist or technician can choose between reproducing colours as they now appear on the nitrate or as they are thought to have appeared when the nitrate print was in circulation. This consideration itself reflects the fact that applied colours have, from the time of their initial application to the black-and-white positive print, been subject to unrelenting changes occasioned first by the wear and tear of projection in the silent era and then by ageing and decay in the vaults of film archives.”

(Hertogs, Daan; De Klerk, Nico (1996): Disorderly Order. Colours in Silent Film. The 1995 Amsterdam Workshop. Amsterdam: Stichding Nederlands Filmmuseum, on pp. 6-7.)

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