No doubt this comes as four-year-old news to many Ray Harryhausen fans, but in the whirl and rush of so many DVD and Blu-ray releases of interest, I’d completely missed out on (or perhaps simply forgotten about) the fact that special effects genius Harryhausen had very recently given us the results of his ambitious efforts to colorize—yes, colorize—three movies dear to his heart: She, Things to Come, and The Most Dangerous Game. I came upon this information intending first to offer simply a look back at Game, RKO Pictures’ 1932 jungle-action-horror movie, a compact and entertaining thriller adapted from the Richard Connell story. I knew there was a Criterion release of the film (that I’d seen ages ago but don’t own), but the existence of this re-issue came as a genuine surprise. After all, there are some word pairings that appear pretty unnatural at first. Harryhausen-colorization was one of those to me.
Well. Now I had a different project to pursue altogether.
Like many devoted movie fans, I have a visceral dislike of the very idea of colorizing black-and-white movies. One can experience frustration with many a compromised way of watching a movie—pan-‘n’-scan, dubbing, commercial interruptions, editing for language and other “objectionable content,” and so on—but few gestures intended to make classic (that is, old) movies “more accessible” to younger generations rankle quite like that of colorization.
But there were a few factors that stood out about these re-issues, enough to make me want to have a look at the results.
First, Harryhausen went on to perform similar work (with what was then termed a “new” process) on three of his own first four films for Columbia Pictures: It Came from Beneath the Sea, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, and 20 Million Miles to Earth. (7th Voyage of Sinbad already being in glorious Technicolor) Harryhausen wasn’t the director of any of these films—an interesting wrinkle that could bring up an entirely separate discussion about the venerable auteur theory and who should “own” the “right” to do with films as they will after their completion—but clearly, those films are most identified by his contributions. While he had no direct involvement with the three earlier films he aimed to transform, he was acquainted with producer Merian C. Cooper’s reported desire to shoot She in color, only to be forced into monochrome by RKO budget cuts, and thus took special care in designing the film’s new look as a tribute to the renowned co-producer of King Kong.
Does this necessarily translate to the “rightness” of colorizing Cooper’s The Most Dangerous Game? Well, no, but that was the film I’d wanted to look at, and, having been moved (ever so slightly) by the notion of Harryhausen attempting to fulfill Cooper’s original vision for She, I could not help but be curious.
Would one of cinema’s greatest effects craftsmen settle for anything less than shockingly brilliant results when it came to…let’s call it “adjusting”…the works of fellow artisans? Could this new colorization technique be something truly special? Would it give the film an entirely new charge, new energy, new life?
The answers to those questions, in my opinion, turn out to be, in order:
Apparently. Not exactly worth writing home about. Yes and no.
So, let’s look at the film once more.
For the uninitiated—if there are any left?—this first adaptation of the Connell story follows the wild and frightening adventure of big-game hunter and author Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea), who survives a freak shipwreck only to fall into greater danger when he swims ashore to a nearby Caribbean island. There, he makes the acquaintance of Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks), an aristocratic Russian who is also a hunter and admirer of Rainsford’s exploits. Zaroff is oddly energized by Rainsford’s arrival and quickly introduces him to two other guests, also castaways from a previous tragedy at sea: the beautiful Eve (Fay Wray) and her booze-swilling brother, Martin (Robert Armstrong).
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
Their cocktail-party conversation quickly turns to hunting, and Zaroff tries to entice Rainsford to join him in hunting “the most dangerous game.” Literally overnight, Rainsford discovers (quite gruesomely) that Zaroff is referring to hunting man, and then, we’re whisked into a fast-paced “survival of the fittest” saga with Rainsford and Eve taking to the wilderness as part of Zaroff’s cruel (and non-negotiable) bargain: evade him until dawn, and go free. Fail, they wind up mounted in the sadistic Cossack’s trophy room.
Co-directors Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack (Cooper’s directing partner for the original Kong one year later) deliver a brisk, enthrallingly melodramatic thriller. It’s reasonable to say it suffers from its fair share of creaks today—Banks, decked out in full evening dress (these guys are always ready for company, no matter the hour of day or night), offers a performance of serpentine, satanic villainy, stylized in a manner today easy to brand as “ham.” And, speaking of chewing the scenery, Armstrong clearly had a year to go before his talents were adequately revealed in a Cooper production. His swagger made for the perfect, peerless Carl Denham, but his drunken act here is a bit broad without being terribly unique. McCrea makes for an effective, upright hero, but it’s future scream queen (and Kong leading lady) Wray who perhaps comes off best. Her considerable beauty is well exploited by careful cinematography and strategically flimsy wardrobe, and while there’s not any great depth to her part, Wray’s work feels to me the most contemporary.
So, what’s the verdict on Harryhausen’s colorization?
A mixed reaction from me–but certainly nothing here is so persuasive as to win me over as a convert for the process in general. I can’t speak to what technological advances were made in this “new” colorization technique, but to my eye, it seems to suffer from many of the same liabilities as the “old” techniques. Let’s have a look at a few of the screen captures for more vivid illustrations.
With interior shots, or tightly composed exteriors where we’re dealing with structures like Zaroff’s castle or the dark of a cavern, where the range of color can be strong but naturally limited, the effects can be crisp and not distracting:
In fact, in many sequences and individual shots, it achieves something close to very exciting with Wray. Indeed, the erotic qualities of her performance are brought out with even more strength by way of adding color:
I have little doubt in my mind that the very deliberate lighting here is meant to draw attention towards, rather than cover up, Wray’s plunging neckline, and the eye is pulled even more strongly to the ornamental shadow play:
The sweat of the jungle on her skin feels more vivid, the storytelling more scandalous:
However, the more time we spend in the jungle, the more disappointment comes. Here’s where we get into serious trouble. In the long shots especially (and in the numerous matte shots), the limitations of colorization become very, very clear. When we should be looking at tremendous gradations of hue, we’re instead given huge splotches of barely differentiated greens, browns, or greys.
In the fog, it gets even…well, murkier:
All isn’t lost in the exteriors. Occasionally we do get a striking and pleasing enough image:
Of course, none of the images can be said to “work” as well as they do in the original black-and-white version, because of the simple fact that cinematographer Henry W. Gerrard was lighting for black and white, not for color. Those are two very different activities, and despite what was no doubt a considerable amount of detailed decision-making and thoughtful artistry on the parts of Harryhausen and Legend Films, the transformation here cannot adequately translate Gerrard’s skilled monochrome work into color images of equal potency.
We return, as we must, to the issue of colorizing at all. It’s said (sometimes) to be done in order to make classic filmmaking accessible to younger viewers who would surely be alienated by black-and-white. While even that point is obviously arguable—can anyone claim with any authority at all that it’s “nature” and not “nurture” that determines a youngster’s artistic tastes?—there’s a contrary point to be made that the addition of color only heightens the film’s sense of “age” in other ways.
Robert Armstrong in The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
The actors appear to be largely taken prisoner by way of performance techniques that went out of style quite some time ago in favor of a much greater naturalism. Bringing the film “up to date” in one sense only accents the now-alien nature of their work. Their choices feel older, and odder, than they do when seen through the aesthetics of vintage films in general. Their style of delivery and characterization feels at home in black-and-white. In full color, not so much.
All that said, I enjoyed romping through The Most Dangerous Game all over again, this time in color. The Legend DVD release has a quick and illuminating interview with Harryhausen where he discusses not the change to color, but the impact and novelty of Max Steiner’s thrilling music score. Apparently, he provides an audio commentary for the set of his own freshly re-hued films, which I’d be curious to hear, especially to learn about what it was in this new process that led him to it and persuaded him of its effectiveness.
What also separates Harryhausen’s project from others of its ilk is, most valuably, the presence of the original release version of the film. This puts it miles above what I would regard as the strange and misguided efforts of certain other filmmakers determined to alter cinema history entirely by transforming films that were great (if perhaps unsatisfying to them) upon release into something they believe closer to their original vision and subsequently doing their best to eliminate access to the pictures audiences saw and loved on their initial exhibition.
There’s no objective truth at play here, of course, just one film fan’s opinion. Dare I say it’s shared by many others who may be less sympathetic to Harryhausen’s efforts and rabidly eager to bark their disapproval?
