silver nitrate notes

what this is

11 oct 2008

This is the first post on what I am calling silver nitrate notes. The plan is straightforward: a place to write about the films I love most, which is to say the classic cinema of the era when black and white was the default way of making pictures. Silent era through the late 1950s, roughly. The site will keep that focus.

I am not anti-colour. I love Vertigo. I love Days of Heaven. I love what Wong Kar-wai does with red. It is just that the films I return to most were made before colour was standard, and I want a corner of the web that takes that era seriously.

Black and white, as the default stock of the classical period, asked certain things of its filmmakers. The director and the cinematographer had to think about value, contrast, and texture instead of hue. They had to decide where the eye goes using light alone. Some of the most rewarding visual thinking in the medium happened for that reason, and the books I am working through (Bordwell, Eisner, Richie, Sarris) keep making the case that this is true in ways I had not fully registered before.

I will write about silent films, pre-Code Hollywood, noir, postwar Europe, postwar Japan, and the edge of the New Wave where monochrome still made sense. Posts will be short or long depending on what the film needs.

First proper post will be on Murnau, probably. Until then.

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