Casablanca In Color?

By Charles Krauthammer

From all the fuss, you would have thought it was a theft of the Elgin Marbles or the rape of the Sabine women. "Criminal mutilation," says Woody Allen. "Artistic desecration," says the Directors Guild of America. "Cultural vandalism," says the Western branch of the Writers Guild of America. Not since Ingrid Bergman was run out of town on a morals charge has Hollywood been & in such a pious fit. Directors, actors, critics, even the odd editorialist, have risen as one to denounce the depredations of -- colorization.

Colorization is the gimmick by which a computer and an "art director" team up to apply color to an old black-and-white movie. The colorizers, to their credit, have few pretensions. The idea is to make money. "People don't like black and white," says the president of Colorization Inc. "When we color it, they buy it."

The guardians of the culture are not pleased. The Screen Actors Guild, the American Film Institute and the American Society of Cinematographers have denounced the practice. John Huston has suggested a boycott of products advertised on TV showings of colorized movies. The Directors Guild is looking for legal ways to block colorization. Its British counterpart has simply called on the government to outlaw it. Conspiracy to colorize: three years to life.

Simple justice. Is not turning an elegant film noir like The Maltese Falcon into a lurid color riot a travesty? Like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa?

Travesty, yes. Mustache, no. Colorizing leaves the original black-and- white prints unmolested. (In fact, they are rendered in mint condition before colorizing begins, which is why some film archivists like the idea.) Only a tape of the film is colorized. Nothing is altered. Colorization is not like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. It is like painting a mustache on cheap prints of the Mona Lisa. The original remains in the Louvre, pristine. Copies of the original, sans mustache, remain readily available. Where is the loss? What is the damage?

Not physical, admit the outraged. The damage is to art and to taste. Colorization turns art into junk.

Well, yes. The colors are dismal. The film is distorted. The director's intentions are trashed. It is true that most old films are junk anyway, so colorizing them would turn dank junk into juiced-up junk. It is also true that watching Casablanca for the chiaroscuro lighting rather than the dialogue is a bit like buying Playboy for the articles. The charge of philistinism is slightly overdrawn. But, on the whole, only slightly.

Nevertheless, it is not as if artistic intent is never compromised in pursuit of a wider audience. Hollywood has for decades tolerated dubbing. There is much money to be made in overseas markets. Dubbing spares unlettered foreigners the strain of subtitles. For the sake of a few deutsche marks, Hollywood is quite prepared to have Gary Cooper mosey up to a bar and say, "Ein Bier, bitte." Colorization is, in principle, no more than visual dubbing for a generation that is deaf to black and white.

Grant, nevertheless, that colorization does turn art into junk. Our culture produces megatons of junk every year. Why not let the market decide? What's with the boycotts? If the colorized version is as bad as the critics claim, it will fail for good capitalist reasons. No one will watch it. When enough people lose enough money in any venture, it dies; 3-D died. At best (or worst), colorization might carve out a market niche for a small group of cultural illiterates, the video equivalent of Classic Comics.

Let the individual choose. Anyone can rent the black-and-white Casablanca. And even when the philistines insist on putting a tainted Casablanca on TV, all you have to do to restore artistic integrity is turn off the color on your set. Why the panic?

The critics are panicked that you won't turn off the color. They propose to do it for you. "It's a decision the public shouldn't be forced to make," says Critic Gene Siskel. The Minister of Culture could hardly have said it better, though some of the subtlety might be lost in translation from the Russian.

The critics' real fear is that colorization will win the market. Colorization will so corrupt tastes that people will lose their appreciation of the beauty of the black-and-white original. The original print will exist, but in a vault. In the culture it will die. Junk will drive out art.

"If colorizing is popular," writes the New York Times's Richard Mooney, "it will inevitably drive the original versions out of circulation." The sheer volume and, with improvements, prettiness of colorization will dull the taste, then the demand for the original. "What worries me," says Producer George Stevens Jr., "is that, psychologically, the films will cease to exist in black and white. The new version will replace the old in the public's mind." In short: the market shapes tastes; a corrupt market will corrupt tastes.

My, my. An industry that feeds teenagers three helpings of Porky's and six of Friday the 13th now complains about the corruption of tastes. But more than mere hypocrisy is at work here. There is a logic problem. For decades Hollywood has flooded the market with every conceivable variety of junk and then defended itself against the charge of degrading public tastes with a "Who, us? We just give them what they want." Tastes shape the market.

Except, it now seems, for colorization. Moreover, whenever bluenoses demand restraint against the porn and violence that are the staple of popular culture, they are met with "Who appointed you guardians of the public taste? Let the people decide. If they want junk, that's their prerogative. What did we fight two world wars for if not the right to buy Penthouse at the 7- Eleven?" But not, you see, for the right to rent a colored Casablanca.

Of course, the premise of the anticolorizing purists is correct. Even if you don't watch junk, the sheer weight of mass-produced junk, in the end, flattens and debases the culture and leaves you poorer. The market does shape demand. In a mass culture of such power, the very presence of junk corrupts, like secondhand smoke.

But if so, let the great black-and-white crusaders stand up and boycott and protect us from other debased and debasing junk in our culture. Otherwise, we have a right to conclude that they are not serious, just a bunch of effetes moved by nostalgia, snobbery and fear. A Puritan, goes the old joke, is a person who lives in mortal fear that someone somewhere is having fun. A Hollywood Puritan is a person who lives in mortal fear that someone somewhere is watching Ingrid Bergman blush red in Rick's Cafe.