3rd International Conference Colour in Film 2018

Much has been written about the technology and aesthetics of three-strip Technicolor and its place in classical Hollywood cinema. A similar literature on the German color process Agfacolor, extending beyond its role as an instrument for political propaganda during the Third Reich, is not yet present in the academic discourse on color film.
Taking the different technological principles as a starting point—mechanical versus chemical—the presentation will explore the aesthetic distinctions and similarities that arose from working with the respective film stocks in vastly different institutional contexts, albeit during roughly the same time period.
On the basis of detailed film analyses with the computer-assisted method applied in the research project, the paper focuses on the aesthetic aspects of mise en scène as described by André Bazin (1955). In the tradition of David Bordwell’s (1989) Historical Poetics, different strategies regarding the staging of the characters and their relation to the filmic space will be elaborated on and linked to the technological properties of the film color processes.