The color version

I saw it many years ago. It was even worse than most colorization, which means it was dreadful beyond description. For example, in street scenes (outside the house, the church, etc.) all the trees, cars, houses, everything in the distance wasn't even colorized; the most ridiculous were the black & white leaves in the distance, behind a few trees whose leaves had been smeared with a green tint that obliterated any trace of the individual leaves. Even the soundtrack was affected by the colorization process: the entire film sounded as if it was raining outside, a by-product of the damage to the print required to bleach it out sufficiently to allow the colorizers to butcher it.

That was typical. But by far the worst shot in this crap (it would be laughable if it weren't such a travesty) was the one where Elizabeth Taylor turns from the altar right after being married and walks up to the camera (supposedly her parents' POV) in close-up. Her skin tone, like everyone's, is a pastel, jaundice yellow, and her uncolorized teeth look deep gray. Everyone's eyes are the same color as their yellowish skin since the colorizers were so incompetent and imbecilic. But because Liz has those storied violet eyes, as she approaches the camera in this shot, her eyes abruptly change from jaundice yellow to where they're suddenly shooting out laser-beam violet rays, which aren't even properly centered on her pupils. Just the usual unfocused smear of some kind of bright violet shade that doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to her actual eyes.

I remember reading an interview in the late 80s with some idiot who worked as a colorizer in a lab that specialized in marring motion pictures this way. He was rhapsodizing over his craft and as an example of their supposed care and fealty to accuracy said, "Take Liz Taylor's violet eyes -- you can't fake that." Of course, this moron was too arrogant and stupid to realize that that was precisely what he and his cohorts WERE trying (unsuccessfully) to do -- fake it. Then again, he was also correct, though in a different way to what he meant -- you cannot, indeed, fake that, or anything, which is why all colorization is a cinematic, esthetic and moral affront, and, thank God, a commercial failure.

Anyone who works in the movie colourising industry should be shot.




"It tickles!"

Did you need a list of names and addresses?






Perhaps the OP just wants to reach out for some sense of community.