Colored Cinema

From Berlin came reports of a new photochemical process for producing naturally colored cinema films at no greater expense or effort than black and white effects require. An ordinary camera was used and an ordinary monochromatic film, treated specially but simply. No "screen" or "color filter"* was needed on camera or projector. Fringes of color--bane of films made with filters by superimposing sets of negatives--were unknown. The only features of the invention described by correspondents were: 1) that the film had to be run twice as fast as a black and white film (i.e. 32 instead of 16 exposures per second); 2) that the negative film, after exposure, was stained alternately red and yellow. Witnesses reported that all colors of the spectrum were faithfully reproduced, delicately shaded even at the violet (short wave) end. The inventor, Herr Professor Emil Wolff-Heide, was hailed by colleagues for having made "the greatest advance in photochemical research of the decade." The cinema public waited to see its evening's joy illuminated with radiant sunsets, hot colloquial color, ravishing flesh tints.

*For definitions of these photographic technical terms see p. 30, THE PRESS.