Cinematography technique · used in 16 films
Choosing to shoot in black and white to take away the comfort and pleasure of color. The film feels more serious, and you watch as a witness.
Examples
Fritz Lang · 1953
The black-and-white photography is stark and hard. Without color, the violence looks blunt and unglamorous, and the Library of Congress calls the style stylized and brutally realistic.
Where to see it: The syndicate scenes: plain, high-contrast frames make the crimes feel like facts, not entertainment.
Ingmar Bergman · 1960
Sven Nykvist shot the film in black and white with natural-looking light, so the forest and the farm look plain and harsh. There is no color to make the setting pretty. You watch what happens as a witness.
Where to see it: The forest ride: Karin rides to church with candles for the Virgin and shares her lunch with 3 herdsmen.
John Ford · 1962
Ford shot a Western in black and white on soundstages, and the choice gives the film a grittier, less romantic look. Without the golden desert light, the story feels more like a moral argument than a postcard.
Where to see it: Valance's showdown: Stoddard goes after Valance, is disarmed, then retrieves his gun and kills him.
Woody Allen · 1979
Gordon Willis shoots Manhattan in black-and-white Panavision, the format that makes New York look like its own legend. The choice shows the film's love for the city. It also raises the question of whether beauty can make up for moral failure.
Where to see it: The opening Gershwin montage. Manhattan's landmarks are shot in Willis's deep-shadow black-and-white. The city is so beautiful that Isaac's voiceover, where he keeps correcting himself, seems beside the point at first. Then it seems like exactly the point.
David Lynch · 1980
Lynch and cinematographer Freddie Francis shoot in black-and-white so the film looks like Victorian photography and early cinema. Those are the media that recorded Merrick's world. Alongside that, the lack of color stops the film from turning him into a spectacle. The film can't be pretty in the usual sense, and Lynch wants it that way.
Where to see it: The opening sequence. The surreal black-and-white images of Merrick's mother set the film's tone and give it the stark look of Victorian photography.
Woody Allen · 1984
Gordon Willis shot the film in black and white. Critics noted a harsh look. It strips the glamour from small clubs and fringe acts. You see the loneliness under the comic gags.
Where to see it: The Waldorf Astoria show. Lou Canova, the singer Danny sobered up, gets his big break, and the black-and-white image makes the glamour look thin.
Wim Wenders · 1987
The angels see the world in black and white. It looks beautiful and eternal, but they can't feel anything in it. When Damiel becomes human, the film switches to color. From then on, color means being alive, which includes suffering and feeling warmth.
Where to see it: Damiel's fall into mortality. Color floods the image. The black and white of the angels' watching gives way to the deep red of his first mortal blood.
John Carpenter · 1988
Through the sunglasses, the world turns black and white and the hidden messages appear. The missing color strips away the glossy look of ads and the comfort of everyday life. You see the same street as stark orders, which feels like someone pulled off a mask.
Where to see it: The first look: Nada puts on the sunglasses and sees the world as a monochrome place full of subliminal messages telling people to consume and conform. He also sees that many people are ghoulish aliens.
Steven Spielberg · 1993
Janusz Kamiński and Spielberg shot almost the entire film in black and white despite pressure to use color. That makes it look like the historical record (newsreels and photographs). The choice insists that you treat the film as a record too.
Where to see it: The opening shift from color to black and white as the candle flame dies. This is the film telling you how it is going to look and feel.
Woody Allen · 1998
Sven Nykvist shot the film in black and white on location in New York. You can read the black and white as giving the film an old-fashioned seriousness. It also drains the shine from the celebrity world it satirizes.
Where to see it: The film premiere. Robin runs into Lee there at the end, in the same world he has been chasing.
Denis Villeneuve · 2009
Villeneuve shot in black and white, with Pierre Gill as cinematographer. He has said the choice was partly to avoid showing blood on screen. The grey images remove any comfort from the violence, and you watch as a witness.
Where to see it: The classroom. The gunman orders the men out and keeps the women, then fires into the ceiling to show he is serious before he shoots them.
Alfonso Cuarón · 2018
Cuarón shoots in black and white, so you can't easily rank the family's world above Cleo's. Color would mark social status through the family's fashionable clothes and Cleo's work uniform. Without it, both worlds sit in the same range of grays. The image treats them as equals, even though the society in the film does not.
Where to see it: The opening courtyard sequence. The soapy water reflects the sky. For a moment, the black and white puts housework and outer space on the same level.
Robert Eggers · 2019
Eggers shoots in black and white with a near-square 1.19:1 aspect ratio, the format of early sound films from the late 1920s and early 1930s. The black and white moves the film away from everyday realism and into the tone of a fable. The events play as a clash of basic forces, and you stop reading them as a psychological case study.
Where to see it: The establishing shots of the lighthouse against storm clouds. The format gives the film the feel of a myth. The frame shape makes the rock and the tower feel timeless.
Kenneth Branagh · 2021
Haris Zambarloukos shoots Belfast's past in high-contrast black-and-white. The childhood memories end up looking like treasured photographs and like war documentary, so they feel tender and unstable at once.
Where to see it: The film's opening sequence. It is shot in saturated color and drops to black-and-white the moment it steps into the past, so the color change works as a doorway into memory.
Mike Mills · 2021
Robbie Ryan shoots in black-and-white so that color can't distract you from the emotions. With no color, you pay attention to faces, to how well people listen and to how the relationship feels. The surroundings stay in the background.
Where to see it: Johnny and Jesse walking through New Orleans. In black-and-white, the city becomes a textured backdrop. All your attention goes to the 2 faces moving through it.
Joel Coen · 2021
The film is black and white and uses a boxy 1.37:1 frame. Without color, the story feels like a fable about guilt. You look at faces and shapes with nothing to soften them.
Where to see it: The banquet: Macbeth is tormented at the banquet by Banquo's apparition.
Questions