Well, they’ve done it now. Apparently, there’s a lost Christmas episode of I Love Lucy, and it has been colorized and will be shown on television this year.
Why this bothers me so much, I’m not sure. Life is in color, and when Gorky saw the very first silent movies, he thought it made everyone look like they were trudging through an ashen wasteland.
It must be a sentimental attachment to what one first knew and associated with the character. My limitation, I’m sure. Or maybe spending too much time staring at the “blanc et noir” of my piano keys.
Lucy (1911-1989) went on to do more TV shows, in “living” color, where her hair could properly flame its red. But she had been an MGM chorine, shown in color on the big screen, so maybe “I Love Lucy” was, in that sense, a step backward.
And who can forget “The Stone Pillow,” in which she was a cantankerous homeless woman in NYC, ministered to by the idealistic Daphne Zuniga? I wonder if Lucy appreciated the irony in acting that.
I guess I’ve always appreciated black and white photography as well as moving images, for the true master has to pay more attention to line, composition, and shading. Then, when I think it through, I realize the “seductions” of color may call for even greater control in just those areas.
If Google Glasses really wants to do something radical, maybe it should innovate a filter that would decolorize daily life.
© 2013 by Frank Daykin, for Innovative Music Programs
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