So You Don't Want to Watch a Black & White Movie? 

Turn on CC to see which movies are featured in this video!

I don´t see why people don´t wanna watch old movies.. They´re still new to those who haven´t seen them.

For me, the film that made me first appreciate black & white was 12 Angry Men

Personally, my favorite thing about black and white photography is that the absence of color creates a less distracting image and lets me focus more on the substance. Of course color can be a part of that substance as pointed out with Fury Road, but there's something about not having to process extra information that allows the image and subject shine through that much brighter.

Anyone avoiding b&w is missing out on a good 50 years of cinema and some of the true masterpieces.

Orson Welles expressed his pleasure at having retained the rights to Citizen Kane, saying that he wanted to keep Ted Turner's goddamned crayolas off his film.

I feel so proud to recognise a lot of these without CC...

It's absolutely bizarre to me as someone who's grown up watching old movies and black and white movies specifically that people don't like them. I understand how it could seem strange if you haven't seen it a lot, (although to me it's perfectly normal), but I don't get why people my age will often just refuse to watch them.

Black and white image allows the filmmakers to paint with light and shadow in ways that simply wouldn't be possible in color. I'd love to see more modern movies use it, because it feels like a huge and rich part of film language has been abandoned.

I like the times when video games have used black and white. Like in Splinter Cell (forget which one) when it got black and white when you were in shadow, and colorful in light. And in some FPS games you lose color when you're hurt. I think it's a great way to use light to convey things like security or pain.

The first black & white film I ever watched was "High Noon". My father had just bought a DVD player and there was a DVD collection on sale in newstands. He bought it thinking it would be the kind of western he watched when he was a kid, with indians and gunfire galore, but instead he got this very dramatic film, where the only gunfight felt inevitable and you really didn't want it to happen though it had to. I fell in love with the film because it wasn't what I (10 years old at the time) was expecting and it was so very well done in every department. Since then, I've never avoided a black & white film just because it is in that format.

one of the many reasons I want to see 'The Lighthouse'

Interesting that so many films use digital color correction to create a limited color palette giving them a lot of the aesthetic advantages of black and white - a focus on shape and layout, or an 'unreal' quality.

One of my favorite quotes, I believe came from Roger Ebert, "Citizen Kane is more colorful than the majority of film that were shot in color," or something like that.

Now my favorite ALL B/W Films - Just going to list them (in order of recalling them): Touch of Evil - Orson Welles Some Like It Hot - Billy Wilder Sunset Boulevard - Billy Wilder The Maltese Falcon - John Houston's debut! Treasure of the Sierra Madre - John Huston The Big Sleep - Howard Hawkes To Have and Have Not - Howard Hawkes Bringing Up Baby - Howard Hawkes Strangers on a Train - Hitchcock Notorious - Hitchcock The Thirty Nine Steps - Hitchcock Modern Times (and City Lights, and The Gold Rush, and The Circus, and...) - Charlie Chaplin Steamboat Bill Jr. (and Sherlock Jr., and The General, and The Navigator, and...) - Buster Keaton Casablanca - Michael Curtiz To Kill a Mockingbird The Last Picture Show Seven Samurai - Kurosawa Throne of Blood - Kurosawa Rashomon - Kurosawa Redbeard - Kurosawa Yojimbo - Kurosawa Sanjuro - Kurosawa (there are more!) Beauty and the Beast - Jean Cocteau Orpheus - Jean Cocteau Les Enfants Terribles - Jean Cocteau Blood of a Poet - Jean Cocteau Exterminating Angel - Luis Bunuel Viridiana - Luis Bunuel The 400 Blows - Francois Truffaut This list could go on and on. Thanks for the memories!!!

Nothing frustrates me more than people who wont watch B&W films! The art of light is on full display in B&W films!

I'd be seriously interested in seeing an edited version of Mad Max Fury Road. Just as some filmmakers in the past made use of color in predominatly black and white films to highlight certain objects, I'd love to see the color of green infused into Mad Max so that there is that extremely stark contrast that will be able to let the viewer visually see the power of a moment. Something akin to the Red Coat Girl in Schindler's List, except obviously spanning much more of the movie.

Still here x) that's awesome, I love how there were such great examples of Black and white. I haven't seen many but there's set of 'cliche' black and white films and scenes that are usually pointed to. The fact that you guys showed examples outside of the cliche was very helpful! Thank you

0:40 -- The best black and white film I recommend to others to prove that colour isn't required is "Rashomon". It is easy as heck to imagine all the green in the forest scenes. In some ways, black and white is more like written fiction in that regard, since it engages the audience's imagination actively, prompting the Mind's Eye to fill in the details.

If you have watched the movie “Come and See” watch it again in Black and white. It is so much better in B&W! That is my preferred way of viewing the film!

Rhythm in movies changes every day. Today, in mainstream Hollywood movies, we are used to a much faster pace than twenty years ago. Black and white is associated to old movies, so that's why people link it to something slow. And most of the times, that's true. Watching old movies takes some training; we have to a adapt to a pace we are not used to. Once we get past that, it's a whole new world of amazing movies. My favourite b&w film is Sunset Boulevard, which was featured in the video :)

When I was a kid I didn’t like black and white movies because I didn’t know that movies weren’t always colored but As I grew older I started to really love black and white movies

I really appreciate you making content like this. A terrific balance of big picture thoughtfulness with in the weeds technicality.

In addition, there's Alan Parker's Angel Heart. Parker wanted to shoot in black and white, but the studio wouldn't allow it. So, Parker shot it in color like it was a black and white. You can see many of the elements discussed in this video on display in Angel Heart.

these videos where you go into this kind of detail, are just amazing, always love to watch them

Invaluable video, 10/10, currently working on a project and i was on the fence about whether to make it black and white or not, this video along with the examples gave me my answer and some great references! cheers.

One great B&W film not mentioned here was Double Indemnity. The shades of gray tones, along with Fred Macmurray's narration made it a classic.

This is probably my favourite channel ever! So well done, you can definitely learn a lot about film making watching this channel!! Thanks a lot!

Mel Brooks uses black and white to comedic effect in Young Frankenstein too. You showed a clip from the film, but didn't touch on it. Young Frankenstein being black and white really makes the film feel authentically older, which just makes it's parody that much stronger. It's fantastic.

You guys do such a great job on these essays. I love them.

I am a film student and I work almost exclusively in black and white. However, the reason why is because I'm a firm believer in only using color when needed. I rarely make a film where I need color to tell the story, so I opt out of using it. It feels generally sloppy when I watch a colored film and the colors in frame serve no purpose other than that's their color. With that said, it is equally frustrating to see someone make a black and white film because they think it's artsy. For me, it ultimately boils down to knowing what you need to tell your story. If you don't need color to tell your story, make it monochrome. If you need color to tell your story, use color.

This makes me want to watch every movie he gave as an example so I can understand black and white more.

You are right."The Mist" was SOOO much better in B&W!!!

WOW! What a thoughtful, articulate and wonderful thought piece on a much under appreciated aspect of film. THANK YOU!

Fantastic video The mist looks perfect in B&W That shot at the end was breathtaking

Fantastic video!! One simple way I see black and white that you touched up on is it reduces information so your eyes and your Brian have to process less so you can focus on the story more. It also makes most things look cool with much less effort than color and that seems to be a good enough reason to mess around with it, color is just an option it doesn't have to be the standard.

Wow. I'm so happy to watch this. I'm Working on my own b&w short film. Definitely can add more power and drama to a film.

Great video that I'll show my friends who refuse to watch B/W films. I love B/W. I grew up on it and I'm only 30. And thanks for the honorable mention of Godzilla! I wish more people pointed to it as an example of artistic film making. A real classic.

My first interaction with B&W was Night of the Living Dead, the film had me entranced from beginning to end.

Imagine if they made Mad max black and white WITH just green being the only color within the movie? That would be amazing!

Fantastic essay!! You nicely summed up a whole heap of fascinating points and observations in one video! Wonderfully edited, great clip choices!

I love watching the old B&W movies because they often had a great story to tell. After a while, you don't notice they are B&W; your brain kind of adds colour. You know the sky is blue, that person's hair is blonde etc., so you fill in the blanks.

I LOVE black and white movies! Always have. Lauren Bacall once said: "It's not an old movie if you haven't seen it before"

I missed these types of videos thanks Rocketjump

Most of my DVD collection is black and white movies, along with some serials. Could have mentioned Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which was filmed in black and white, then colorized for effect.

holy balls this is amazing. one thing i've been thinking about when watching this is how the audio style is different too in black and white films. i'm curious whether this style of audio can be applied to modern/color films, or vice-versa, to enhance a movie's experience, or whether i'm just imagining all of this.

That was an amazing essay - I'm going to show it to my Film Studies students when I begin focusing on B/W films! You asked for us to list some of our favorite B/W films - there are so many! I thought I'd start by listing my favorite modern films that use both B/W AND Color as storytelling techniques: Living in Oblivion - Tom DeCillo's brilliant low-budget comedy starring Catherine Keener and Steve Buscemi alternates between B/W and color as a way of contrasting both dream vs. reality and the world outside the lens vs. the world inside the lens. Memento - my favorite mind-bender by Christopher Nolan uses B/W versus Color to help distinguish two storylines (or rather, two different parts of the same storyline); one moving forward, the other backward in time - and in so doing forces us to experience the world in the same way the damaged protagonist does. Pleasantville - The most CGI-drenched movie of its time, this amazing allegory of social change uses B/W first to evoke American society of the 1950's (by hilariously parodying the early sit-com's of the period), then deepens the meanings (and the colors) to draw parallels with such diverse historical, cultural and artistic references as the Garden of Eden, Moses' burning bush, Kristallnacht, book burnings throughout history, George C. Scott's epic speech to the troops in Patton, and the trial scene in To Kill a Mockingbird. There is a chilling moment in the movie when the word "colored" changes meaning to become a racial slur - the entire brilliant film is worth that moment alone! The Wizard of Oz - Let's not forget this great and simple fairytale that transposes L. Frank Baum's Kansas of the 1880's depression into an homage to WPA photography of the 1930's depression, and an imaginative escape from (and return to) it. The Purple Rose of Cairo - Woody Allen pays homage to, among others, Buster Keaton when he has characters move back and forth between the real world and the romantic (and B/W) world of a Hollywood romance. Wings of Desire - The aching beauty of the B/W angel discovering the world of both color and desire is sooo elegant! Rumble Fish - What a simple way to transform the fish of the title into a mesmerizing metaphor for hope amidst despair. Schindler's List - 'nuff said. Raging Bull - ditto. Some others I haven't yet seen but am planning to now that I've seen your essay: If - Lindsay Anderson She's Gotta Have It - Spike Lee A Matter of Life and Death - Michael Power

Films today are very complex. I've always believed in taking things away from film - avert the attention onto more important things. Haneke (personal favourite film maker) is always removing things from his films such as score/soundtrack, depictions of violence, colour and camera movement to focus the viewers attention on what's important. Black and white, especially as a conscious and stylistic decision, is something I would love to see more of in modern films.

With all the movie directors, producers, famous actors, directors of photography, editors out there. Joey is the one with whom I would love to spend a day with xD I want moar in depth theory and new perspective into movies !

Personaly, I think what's great about black & white is that there are alot of contrast, mysterious mood, some surprising reveals, & different feelings. Having colours tend to give sense of alive, blending pallete, imaginative dreamlike, & specific informations. I think of this like the filmmaking version of Vermeer & Caravaggio. In paintings, Caravaggio always use contrast (this is symbol for black & white) while Vermeer likes to make whimsical gradient (this is what I think color film is.....alike Vermeer artist). Whatever the point is, it's good to know that we must conclude to be more analiticaly having critical thinking to open to some possibilites that we could use.

Fantastic piece, and the exclusive applications of black and white goe even further in cinematography. I've been learning lately about the use of filters while shooting black and white to create different effects that simply don't work the same way with color. A #25 Red filter over your lens on black and white film, just as one example, creates very strong contrast, creates dramatic sky effects, can lighten faces, can simulate day for night and cuts through fog and haze. You can use all of these to draw emphasis to objects and their relationships to their surroundings. If you put that filter in front of a color capture, you get a very red image. It may still exhibit those other qualities, but joe-public watching the film is going to be distracted by the intense red hue.

This is one of the best video essay's I've seen. Dang, wasn't expecting RJFS to do it.

Nosferatu, The Blob, Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, and the list goes on and on...All great B&W films!

My first time I realized how Black and White vs Cokour works, was in the mid ninetees movie Kafka - which is predominantly Black and white but also does have color scenes. Watching it as a kid I remembered wondering "Hey.. was that color just then?"

One of the best videos i've ever seen, thanks for creating such content!

Nice work, Joey. Did you ever hear about the movie "Eyes of my Mother?" That was in black and white, I was able to meet the cast and crew of that. Also, I really enjoyed the short, "Harold." A lot of the ideas with light were used in it.

Great job, I believe as filmmakers we should open ourselves to all forms of cinema, old, new, black or white. I am a big Stephen King fan but wasn't very happy with the film version of the book, but just what you showed in black and white opened me up to watching it again.

Roman Holiday. Casablanca. The Apartment. Citizen Kane. 12 Angry Men. ...and Frances Ha is one of my current favorites. I really enjoyed Manhattan, too.

Love this! Thank you for sharing.

This was beautiful man. Thank you for having me appreciate these films

When I was young we had a black and white television and when we got a color television things just were not the same. It's almost like a book to a film. If I had read a book first, my imagination would always be better than the book. The Stand for instance. I did not realize this was a film school until the end but it felt like a really good lesson. I always liked the way they did The Wizard of Oz. I actually thought it was all black and white and that they colorized it when I saw it on the color TV. The Mad Max clip was very cool. Thank you for the video and lesson.

if they made Mad Max black and white but all of the plants were green...

Terrific narrative and demonstration of how and why black and white films can be used even today. Whenever I heard a new movie made within the last 25 years would be coming out in black and white, I immediately didn't want to see it because I thought it would look old and outdated. But it is just like Steven Spielberg said, "After awhile you wont even notice the black and white, because you will be so involved with the story". I cannot picture Schindler"s List in color!. And some movies like What A Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart were just better in their original black and white. When they turned it into a color film something was definitely lost. If you haven't watched this video yet it is a must see because you will notice how much work went into it! Great job RJFS! Huge thumbs up!

Solid essay on what is unfortunately a problem with film students (I speak directly from experience, and other people's experiences). I never saw black n white or colour as better/worse/different etc; I watched Laurel and Hardy from a young age- I never thought anything of it, but I have always thought about how powerfully it can be used as you explain. Great essay and loved the use of Scorsese who always has something enlightening to say.

No mention of To Kill A Mockingbird or Harvey... for shame! In all seriousness, great video folks. And a topic that merits deep discussion, thanks for making this. :)

I didn't know mad max looked so good in b&w. I thought the color was one of the best parts of the film but it looks really good in black and white.

Amazing essay! Great points

I'm sorry but I don't believe you call regard yourself as a film fan if you limit yourself by not watching black and white movies and non-English language films. You're missing out on so much.

My first ever black and white movie was "To kill a Mockingbird" and holy shit I loved it, a lot of the movies in the past are pretty slow paced but it's really a work of art and it's done so well that it makes up for the slow progress and black n white itself gives it a cool style anyways ❤

Outstanding Work. Thank You!

I lucked out, i was raised on Black and white movies. Never did I balk at watching such films. My only sadness today about them is that i remember so few of them by name, that I struggle to come back to them now all these years later.

i've always loved B&W films , never understood how any one could dismiss a film simply cos its in B&W. His Girl Friday,12 Angry Men, Arsenic & Old Lace ,The Thin Man Returns are just a few of my favs, and im an 80s kid from Nigeria, who has never been to the States. TNT Classics was really good for me.

Some absolutely killer films in this video and I'm only 1/3rd in! Night of the Hunter, Eraserhead, Eyes Without a Face, all excellent and well worth seeking out for those who haven't seen them (and all three have exquisite Criterion Collection releases)

The best review ever made about b&w films thank you very much for the explanation

cool cool, chill chill great video, good points. I feel as though noir films almost have to be in b/w, when they're in color they are just noir-esque. That hard contrast of black against white is so integral to noir aesthetic that it can't be left out. If I look a film like Brick, no matter how self destructive the main antagonist his or how deadly the femme fetal is, unless it has b/w, it doesn't feel like a noir film. The decisions film makers had back then to film in b/w is so important, you can't make a noir film unless it is included. Also i thought it would have been cool if you had mentioned films like Memento or Living in Oblivion where b/w is used alongside color in a more modern approach, because it really reflects the main points made in the video regarding, feel, seamlessness, and appreciation.

Even a mix can be especially powerful, like Park Chan-wok's "Fade to Black and White" version of Lady Vengeance.

I didn't know there were color versions of those 40s and 50s films!

GREAT VIDEO! MAKE A VIDEO ON WHAT MAKES GREAT ACTION MOVIES like die hard, the raid, etc

Wow, you guys are really using my pieces in the videos. And also, is it weird that I don't wanna watch color films?

It was my understanding that Schindler's List was shot in black and white because Spielberg thought that colour represented life and that it wouldn't suit the movie and the reason that the little girl was in colour was because she was innocent and that she represented hope.

Makes me want to go back and watch some Tarkovsky films! The transition from sepia, to black/white, to colour is so daunting, and surreal. At the end of it all, it's as though the whole thing was inevitably in black/white, and the colours were all made up by the characters...

man, did this take more than a month to make? Actually, I have no idea how lone this would take. Marriage of B-roll to VO is amazing.

Nowadays I'm interested in films and filmmaking in general so I also look at the technical aspect and recently I have started watching old movies (mostly Hitchcock) but I remember a few years ago I watched a newer version of The Wizard of Oz (I think James Franco played the main character) and at first it started in black and white and I was like "wtf are we seriously gonna watch a black and white movie??" but at some point it turned into being colored and we all (my father, my brother and me) didn't even recognize it. But then later into the movie I realized that by then it was colored somehow and when I told my father and my brother we all wondered at what point it changed because we all were so focused on the story that we all didn't recognize the moment the transition was made.

Releasing colored version of black and with films can help to have the audience discover them. You are total right about the conception of someone else for the specific color, but I do think that if people can be introduced to those classical film and begin to be more critical about film in general because of this, this is totally fine.

that bela tarr shot at the end

This is the best video on the beauty of black and white film I have seen so far!!!

psycho in black and white is one of the best I ever seen! 💯👍👍

11:20 I was doing a research project on black and white in movies, and upon hearing this information, I instinctively said, "That's so cool!" only to be met two seconds later by the same exact phrase, in the same tone, pitch, and tempo. Amazing

Two of my most favorite movies are in black and white. Good Night and Good Luck, and The General. The Buster Keaton movie. Funny thing is The General was one of the first movies I remember seeing, and I loved it right away. I loved the action and the comedy, and it didn't matter that it was in black and white because it was fun.

Because chairoscuro is most evocative when monochromatic.

You should really list song titles in the description.

When I was young, I used to think these were animated portraits

Cool! So besides from Good night and good luck and the light house. What other modern black and white movies are there?

Wonderful. I was expecting a word about the The Artist (2011). Thanks a lot.

Great video yo! Wings of Desire is my favorite BnW film. When talking realism in use of BnW, you gotta include Battle of Algiers. Bonus points including Bela Tarr and at the end there for so long. That boosted your street cred.

Excellent video

Calling film noir a style and not a genre. Ooh this guy gets it.

First Black and White movie I saw was “Shadow of the Vampire”. It was shown in this video. I also watched a lot of the classic Universal Monster movies.

Anything b/w shot by Gregg Toland or Robert Krasker. Roger Deakins' "The Man Who Wasn't There".

HOLY CRAP! that scene with the helicopter and the foot actually made my heart stop.