B&W imagery from 1940-1960 movies - observation

Since gas is $2.20/gal, I'm becoming more of a homebody, seeming to get out less. Occasionally I get older movies on video from the public library for entertainment. After doing the B&W bit for a while, I pay more attention to the photo quality of the old B&W movies from the 40s-60s. I'm struck by how good a lot of the 40s-early 60s B&W cinematography was. The exposures, filtration, the sets, and totalities are perfect in a lot of these movies - they work well in B&W and have no need for colorization, and I'm not only talking about the gritty film noir, Orson Wells stuff. Not sure if they used the zone system type development for films, or how good their films and meters were, but it's obvious that the filmmakers and their technicians were extremely skilled when it came to B&W imagery.

I think we'd all agree that getting consistently good B&W negs requires a fair degree of skill and a thorough knowledge of the process. Often for me it's a real struggle as I'm still in the learning mode and make my share of mistakes. While movie making is different in processing, B&W is still B&W. So after seeing the quality of many older B&W movies, I can really appreciate how good these filmmakers were.

Do any of you ever find yourself looking at these old films, or even today's B&W productions, and magazine ads, in terms of your own B&W photographic endeavors?

RJ

I feel that the really best B&W cinematography was in the late 1920s, just before the introduction of sound shook up the industry.

Where all the lighting could be measured and controlled on the studio set there would have been no need for the zone system. I don't use + or - development for studio portraits--much easier to change the contrast ratio by changing the lighting. They also pretty much used only one shutter speed, so any variation in aperture would have to come by changing the amount of light on the set (or changing the film stock, but that would potentially create an inconsistent look).

All good points, but some of what I see was shot outside, and not in the studio (of course they still probably used fill lights). Also it's obvious that the colors of the props and customes was thought out as to not have tones merge. This is so critical and I see a lot of current color and B&W ads which ignore this concept and aren't as effective as they could be.

RJ

Motion-picture DPs, then and now, have a lot of time, money, and a lifetime's worth of experience in getting just what they want on the film. Not to mention a large crew and lighting gear beyond the wildest dreams of your average still shooter. So it's not surprising those films look good!

Maybe its kind of a lost art, to "see" in B&W? To mentally translate color into tone comes by way of training or experience and maybe thats lost in the digital age when the click of a mouse can convert color into B&W and everything tonal gets "tweaked" from there. It would make for an interesting experiment to take two students, one color blind the other not, and turn them loose with a couple of cameras loaded with B&W film and see what they come up with. OTOH, maybe the difference between the old films and the new stem from what the intent is of the cinematographer. Is the intent simply to make a film(like it was in the olden days) using light and tone to help tell the story, or is the intent to make a copy capturing the "look" of old film with light and tone being simply elements to copy for the sake of the "look?" I think this would be as much of a distraction as any other "gimmick."

Me, personally, I like the films from the 1940s. That, and 1940s jazz. I might have been before my time, but I definitely understand the style.

It's interesting to look at some of the films that were all about style. That is, were designed to give depression and war-weary people an escape into a nice, clean, cheerful place for a couple of hours. For example, some of the old Astair/Rogers flicks. Everything was done to produce a stunning B&W image, from the perfectly reflective black bakelite floors to Roger's dresses.

But if you want seriously interesting B&W, used an an integral part of telling the story, I think you have to look to some of the amazing thrillers like "Double Indemnity" and "The Maltese Falcon." And who could forget the famous entrance in "The Third Man" which is a classic example of something that is stunning in B&W and wouldn't work, or work poorly, in color?

Since this thread is mostly about aesthetics, it is quite clear that YMMV.

But the question is, "Do any of you ever find yourself looking at these old films, or even today's B&W productions, and magazine ads, in terms of your own B&W photographic endeavors?" I do, actually. Not to emulate, but to learn from the past masters. Same reason I go to shows and exhibits, like the Bourke-White show I saw just a couple of weeks ago. Now there's a photographer who had composition down cold, but that's another thread maybe.

Anyone see The Man Who Wasn't There, by the Cohen Bros.? Great movie. After seeing the Making of O'Brother Where Art Thou (another great movie), I wonder if The Man Who Wasn't There was really shot on B&W stock, or just digitally desaturated?

A recent movie shot in B&W by Roger Deakins, and really a treat, is the Coen Brother's "Man Who Wasn't There". Different parts of the movie are like prints with different paper/developer combinations. Some scenes have a warm tone, some cool to blue tone. Features a good deal of "noir" lighting.

Regarding the Technicolor look--indeed there were Technicolor consultants who would make sure that the colors chosen for costumes and sets were colors that reproduced well and separated nicely in the Technicolor process. From the perspective of these consultants, apparently, the main purpose of the film was to show off the virtues of Technicolor--story, scene and character be damned--and this sometimes resulted in conflicts with directors, set designers, costume designers, and I'd imagine even the actors ("I look terrible in that color!").