Like Dorothy waking up over the rainbow in the Land of Oz, Hollywood discovered a vivid new world of color in the 1930s. The introduction of three-color Technicolor technology in 1932 gave filmmakers a powerful tool with which to guide viewers' attention, punctuate turning points, and express emotional subtext. Although many producers and filmmakers initially resisted the use of color, Technicolor designers, led by the legendary Natalie Kalmus, developed an aesthetic that complemented the classical Hollywood filmmaking style while still offering innovative novelty. By the end of the 1930s, color in film was thoroughly harnessed to narrative, and it became elegantly expressive without threatening the coherence of the film's imaginary world. Harnessing the Technicolor Rainbow is the first scholarly history of Technicolor aesthetics and technology, as well as a thoroughgoing analysis of how color works in film. Scott Higgins draws on extensive primary research and close analysis of well-known movies, including Becky Sharp, A Star Is Born, Adventures of Robin Hood, and Gone with the Wind, to show how the Technicolor films of the 1930s forged enduring conventions for handling color in popular cinema. He argues that filmmakers and designers rapidly worked through a series of stylistic modes based on the demonstration, restraint, and integration of color—and shows how the color conventions developed in the 1930s have continued to influence filmmaking to the present day. Higgins also formulates a new vocabulary and a method of analysis for capturing the often-elusive functions and effects of color that, in turn, open new avenues for the study of film form and lay a foundation for new work on color in cinema.

How did the coming of colour change the British film industry? Unlike sound, the arrival of colour did not revolutionise the industry overnight. For British film-makers and enthusiasts, colour was a controversial topic. While it was greeted by some as an exciting development – with scope for developing a uniquely British aesthetic – others were deeply concerned. How would audiences accustomed to seeing black-and-white films – which were commonly regarded as being superior to their garish colour counterparts – react? Yet despite this initial trepidation, colour captivated many British inventors and film-makers. Using different colour processes, these innovators produced films that demonstrated remarkable experimentation and quality. Sarah Street's illuminating study is the first to trace the history of colour in British cinema, and analyses the use of colour in a range of films, both fiction and non-fiction, including The Open Road, The Glorious Adventure, This is Colour, Blithe Spirit, This Happy Breed, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, The Tales of Hoffmann and Moulin Rouge. Beautifully illustrated with full colour film stills, this important study provides fascinating insights into the complex process whereby the challenges and opportunities of new technologies are negotiated within creative practice. The book also includes a Technical Appendix by Simon Brown (Kingston University, UK), which provides further details of the range of colour processes used by British film-makers.

Defining Cinema: Rouben Mamoulian and Hollywood Film Style, 1929-1957 takes a holistic look at Mamoulian's oeuvre by examining both his stage and his screen work, and also brings together insights from his correspondence, his theories on film, and analysis of the films themselves. It presents a filmmaker whose work was innovative and exciting, who pushed hard on cinema's potential as an artform, and who in many ways helped move cinema towards the kind of entertainment that it remains today.

The companion book to an upcoming museum exhibition of the same name, Places of Invention seeks to answer timely questions about the nature of invention and innovation: What is it about some places that sparks invention and innovation? Is it simply being at the right place at the right time, or is it more than that? How does “place”—whether physical, social, or cultural—support, constrain, and shape innovation? Why does invention flourish in one spot but struggle in another, even very similar location? In short: Why there? Why then? Places of Invention frames current and historic conversation on the relationship between place and creativity, citing extensive scholarship in the area and two decades of investigation and study from the National Museum of American History’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. The book is built around six place case studies: Hartford, CT, late 1800s; Hollywood, CA, 1930s; Medical Alley, MN, 1950s; Bronx, NY,1970s; Silicon Valley, CA, 1970s–1980s; and Fort Collins, CO, 2010s. Interspersed with these case studies are dispatches from three “learning labs” detailing Smithsonian Affiliate museums’ work using Places of Invention as a model for documenting local invention and innovation. Written by exhibition curators, each part of the book focuses on the central thesis that invention is everywhere and fueled by unique combinations of creative people, ready resources, and inspiring surroundings. Like the locations it explores, Places of Invention shows how the history of invention can be a transformative lens for understanding local history and cultivating creativity on scales of place ranging from the personal to the national and beyond.

Global Film Color: The Monopack Revolution at Midcentury explores color filmmaking in a variety of countries and regions including India, China, Japan, and Russia, and across Europe and Africa. Most previous accounts of color film have concentrated on early 20th century color processes and Technicolor. Far less is known about the introduction and application of color technologies in the period from the mid-1940s to the 1980s, when photochemical, “monopack” color stocks came to dominate global film markets. As Eastmancolor, Agfacolor, Fujicolor and other film stocks became broadly available and affordable, national film industries increasingly converted to color, transforming the look and feel of global cinema. Covering a broad range of perspectives, the chapters explore themes such as transnational flows, knowledge exchange and transfer, the cyclical and asymmetrical circulation of technology in a global context, as well as the accompanying transformation of color film aesthetics in the postwar decades.

Color is one of cinema’s most alluring formal systems, building on a range of artistic traditions that orchestrate visual cues to tell stories, stage ideas, and elicit feelings. But what if color is not—or not only—a formal system, but instead a linguistic effect, emerging from the slipstream of our talk and embodiment in a world? This book develops a compelling framework from which to understand the mobility of color in art and mind, where color impressions are seen through, and even governed by, patterns of ordinary language use, schemata, memories, and narrative. Edward Branigan draws on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and other philosophers who struggle valiantly with problems of color aesthetics, contemporary theories of film and narrative, and art-historical models of analysis. Examples of a variety of media, from American pop art to contemporary European cinema, illustrate a theory based on a spectator’s present-time tracking of temporal patterns that are firmly entwined with language use and social intelligence.

This new AFI Film Reader is the first comprehensive collection of original essays on the use of color in film. Contributors from diverse film studies backgrounds consider the importance of color throughout the history of the medium, assessing not only the theoretical implications of color on the screen, but also the ways in which developments in cinematographic technologies transformed the aesthetics of color and the nature of film archiving and restoration. Color and the Moving Image includes new writing on key directors whose work is already associated with color—such as Hitchcock, Jarman and Sirk—as well as others whose use of color has not yet been explored in such detail—including Eric Rohmer and the Coen Brothers. This volume is an excellent resource for a variety of film studies courses and the global film archiving community at large.

A history of color and commerce from haute couture to automobile showrooms to interior design. When the fashion industry declares that lime green is the new black, or instructs us to “think pink!,” it is not the result of a backroom deal forged by a secretive cabal of fashion journalists, designers, manufacturers, and the editor of Vogue. It is the latest development of a color revolution that has been unfolding for more than a century. In this book, the award-winning historian Regina Lee Blaszczyk traces the relationship of color and commerce, from haute couture to automobile showrooms to interior design, describing the often unrecognized role of the color profession in consumer culture. Blaszczyk examines the evolution of the color profession from 1850 to 1970, telling the stories of innovators who managed the color cornucopia that modern artificial dyes and pigments made possible. These “color stylists,” “color forecasters,” and “color engineers” helped corporations understand the art of illusion and the psychology of color. Blaszczyk describes the strategic burst of color that took place in the 1920s, when General Motors introduced a bright blue sedan to compete with Ford's all-black Model T and when housewares became available in a range of brilliant hues. She explains the process of color forecasting—not a conspiracy to manipulate hapless consumers but a careful reading of cultural trends and consumer taste. And she shows how color information flowed from the fashion houses of Paris to textile mills in New Jersey. Today professional colorists are part of design management teams at such global corporations as Hilton, Disney, and Toyota. The Color Revolution tells the history of how colorists help industry capture the hearts and dollars of consumers.

Color was used in film well before The Wizard of Oz. Thomas Edison, for example, projected two-colored films at his first public screening in New York City on April 23, 1896. These first colors of early cinema were not photographic; they were applied manually through a variety of laborious processes—most commonly by the hand-coloring and stenciling of prints frame by frame, and the tinting and toning of films in vats of chemical dyes. The results were remarkably beautiful. Moving Color is the first book-length study of the beginnings of color cinema. Looking backward, Joshua Yumibe traces the legacy of color history from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the cinema of the early twentieth century. Looking forward, he explores the implications of this genealogy on experimental and contemporary digital cinemas in which many colors have become, once again, vividly unhinged from photographic reality. Throughout this history, Moving Color revolves around questions pertaining to the sensuousness of color: how color moves us in the cinema—visually, emotionally, and physically.

A Cultural History of Color in the Modern Age covers the period 1920 to the present, a time of extraordinary developments in colour science, philosophy, art, design and technologies. The expansion of products produced with synthetic dyes was accelerated by mass consumerism as artists, designers, architects, writers, theater and filmmakers made us a 'color conscious' society. This influenced what we wore, how we chose to furnish and decorate our homes, and how we responded to the vibrancy and chromatic eclecticism of contemporary visual cultures.The volume brings together research on how philosophers, scientists, linguists and artists debated color's polyvalence, its meaning to different cultures, and how it could be measured, manufactured, manipulated and enjoyed. Color shapes an individual's experience of the world and also how society gives particular spaces, objects, and moments meaning. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Color examines how color has been created, traded, used, and interpreted over the last 5000 years. The themes covered in each volume are color philosophy and science; color technology and trade; power and identity; religion and ritual; body and clothing; language and psychology; literature and the performing arts; art; architecture and interiors; and artefacts. Anders Steinvall is Senior Lecturer in English Linguistics at Umeå University, Sweden. Sarah Street is Professor of Film at the University of Bristol, UK. Volume 6 in the Cultural History of Color set. General Editors: Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf