Scene from 1932 Technicolor Doctor X
Toronto. The first time I saw a Technicolor two colour process colour film was the other evening when I viewed the 1932 film “Doctor X” via TV courtesy of TCM who ran the UCLA Film Archive recreated version on safety film. When it comes to colour, I usually think of still images and the struggle I had to process and print three process colour media in the 1970s.Today, digital media and smartphones make the task dead simple be it still or movies (I mean videos).
I found Doctor X interesting for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was a talkie made just a few years after talkies first came on the market. As such, the film was rife with audible sound effects. The industry wanted to fill every moment with sound of some sort.
Secondly, it used the two colour Technicolor process aiming to make skin tones realistic resulting in everything else looking greenish or brownish. In Technicolor movie cameras, the process made clever use of prisms and filters on reels of film made on nitrate based B&W film. With a bit of film magic, positive dye sublimate prints were made for projection in big cities of the States while the rest of us abroad or in small American towns saw only black and white prints.
I had read about Technicolor’s two colour process but didn’t realize how old it was nor how many process updates occurred to reduce grain and improved colour clarity. Since it was a subtractive positive colour, it took much less light to project, allowing standard projectors to be used.
