Charles Bramesco’s beautiful book “Les Couleurs du Cinéma” (published by Pyramyd) offers detailed but synthetic notes that make you want to see dozens of films again and again, offering them up for analysis as paintings and flat tints of colour.
Fans of the photographic cinema of Wes Anderson, Stanley Kubrick or Agnès Varda often refer to the composition of the shots. But there’s another element in the making of a cinematographic image that’s rarely analysed, yet essential: the colour palette of a shot, and of a film in general.
Yet it’s fascinating, as Charles Bramesco proves in his book “Les Couleurs du Cinéma”: every film has its dominant colours, which tell us a great deal about the director’s intentions. In this richly illustrated, easy-to-read two-hundred-page book, the author analyses fifty films, from “Chantons sous la pluie” to “Voyage de Chihiro”, from Jeanne Dielman to “Black Panther”.
We learn how George Miller built his film “Mad Max: Fury Road” around a digitally accentuated colour contrast, the blue of burning air and the orange of desert soil. And then, in contrast to Miller’s saturated colours, we rediscover the hostile universe of Antonioni’s Red Desert, which is composed of grayish, desaturated hues. Further on, you’ll enjoy revisiting the bright, bold colours of Dario Argento’s Suspiria, all the more so as each of the many film shots presented in the book is accompanied by colorimetric indications in solid colours and RGB code.
A fine analysis of the colours of cinema, and a reminder that while there are a thousand shades of black and white, there are just as many varieties of the same colour. Thus, there are as many blue skies and green meadows as there are directors and films.
The “Colors of Cinema” by Charles Bramesco
Pyramyd Editions
209 pages
Price: €29.95