I came across If It's Purple, Someone's Gonna Die by Patti Bellantoni recently and have become fascinated by her ideas.
Basically, Bellantoni is implying and exploring the idea that colours influence our behaviours. And that when used correctly in film, can unlock several layers of visual character and plot clues. For example, the colour purple foreshadowing the death of something (not necessarily a person as the title suggests - it could be the death of innocence or of a dream). She goes into depth about several 'main' colours and the traits that are often associated with it.
Her theory is based on colour themed seminars she used to teach her students. Each day would be a different colour and students were encouraged to create the atmosphere of that colour, discuss words and feelings associated with a particular colour and even hold blind sessions to prove that a fruits colour isn't always the colour that it tastes like. Bellantoni describes the influence a colour has on behaviour when you're surrounded by it completed and how she's often experience fights and arguments on 'Red Day'.
An example used in nearly every chapter of the book is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon because colour is used heavily to story and character arcs.
How do you feel about colour on film? Have you ever seen a movie that clearly made use of colour and had a noticeable effect on you? Have you read any work by other theorists, film lovers or critics who also find an interest in colour and it's symbolistic value in film?
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Tarkovskij uses colour very consciously (and rarely).
For example seeing the colourful images of Andrej Rublev's frescos in, well, in Andrej Rublev after enduring hours of b/w-medieval Russia leads to what is in my opinion the most powerful synthesis of painting and film in all of film.
This is an absolutely awesome question. Albeit I think this is a question that is extremely difficult to answer, and the scope of which is outside that which is possible in subreddit. You can literally write books on the subject. But I will attempt to give an adequate response, but you would probably want to ask Scorsesee or someone to get a real good answer.
I think color is extremely important in Cinema. Lets take for example Blade Runner, which Ridley Scott uses color very well in the film.In the film the color is for the most part blue in the scenes. This helps give the film the oppressed gritty feel of a dystopian cyberpunk city. You get out of this in the film when they go to the rich guy's office/house/palace. Scott bathes the area in a yellow light when they get above the city that helps make it seem majestic, out of reach, and almost heaven like. The use of color here clearly helps the viewer feel different things. Blues and Grays are often also used in war films to help get that depressed feel, I can't really think of a war film that doesn't use this off the top of my head, but I would love to get a counter example. Das Boot, Saving Private Ryan, Enemy at the Gates, all use it. But the subversion of color is also used. Blue is the Warmest Color uses Blue to show warmth and passion instead of red, which is normally used. This I think is because she is lesbian so it is the intention to go against the grain to begin with as blue is passion and love instead of red, but she is in love with a woman as well, which is also against expectation.
Color is always a choice in film (once it became a thing), and it is always important as the color used evokes certain feelings. The colors of objects, the color of the scene, all matter.
I do not think I could into much more depth off the top of my head though, without re watching some films looking for more examples, and past that I think it would take someone more knowledgeable than I.
A wonderful example of color is In The Mood for Love by Wong Kar Wai. In addition to the claustrophobic scenes, the color red is used to direct our attention to what is happening between the two characters in the film. The color really jumps out at you and connects not just as a visual queue but at a thematic and even cultural level. Classic mis en scéne.
Really great.
Although may not completely agree with the view, I do think Andrei Tarkovsky's opinion on color is a rather interesting on:
At the moment, I don't think colour film is anything more than a commercial gimmick. I don't know a single film that uses colour well. In any colour film the graphics impinge on one's perception of the events. In everyday life we seldom pay any special attention to colour. When we watch something going on we don't notice colour. A black-and-white film immediately creates the impression that your attention is concentrated on what is most important. On the screen colour imposes itself on you, whereas in real life that only happens at odd moments, so it's not right for the audience to be constantly aware of colour. Isolated details can be in colour if that is what corresponds to the state of the character on the screen. In real life the line that separates unawareness of colour from the moment when you start to notice it is quite imperceptible. Our unbroken, evenly paced flow of attention will suddenly be concentrated on some specific detail. A similar effect is achieved in a film when coloured shots are inserted into black-and-white.”
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1966 interview with Tarkovsky for To the Screen
Agnes Varda's use of color in Le Bonheur is some of my favorite. In many of the scenes of the film, color can play a subdued yet strong role in identifying and embolding many emotional undercurrents of the actions of the characters as well as changing the viewers perception of certain events (or atleast I was able to relate colors to themes, though I may have been overreaching for my own analysis).
iirc, she recalled in an interview the switch to color changed even the geography of the film, where some locations did not work for the preceding aesthetic, to which she would paint walls to make it fit.
In delicately crafted works every detail is important, and really add depth that deserves to be scrutinized. I like to believe such study is not in vain.
Let's not forget Krzysztof Kieślowski's masterpiece Red, White, and Blue trilogy, which is one of the essential keystones for discussion of color in film. The films not only use color individual to build themes within themselves, but cross-pollinate in connection with the values embedded in the French flag: liberté (freedom: blue), égalité (equality: white), fraternité (brotherhood: red). [Read more here.] (http://www.filmref.com/directors/dirpages/kieslowski.html#blue)
I think the visual effect of a movie is entirely dependent on its color palate. It can be used in all kinds of interesting ways, but I don't think that it it can always be tied to something absolute and concrete (like purple and death).
I loved the way that Spike Jonze used dull yellows and oranges in Her, leaving out the blues and greens that imply life. I find it interesting how, in the trailer for Tim Burton's Big Eyes (as dumb as the movie looks), the colors used in the real world match those used in the paintings. A directors choice of colors should, figuratively as well as literally, determine how we see a movie.
That said, when you're trying to tie the colors to something absolute, sometimes the curtains are just blue.