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You see dimensions in two, —The Fixx, "One Thing Leads to Another"
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Sometimes, the less we say, the more gets said. Despite and because of its simplicity, complexity, stark contrast and cultural cachet, Black and White movies and stand-alone TV episodes have remained popular in a few genres and story niches that can pull it off without seeming pretentious. Its uses vary, but these works are deliberately desaturated to help the general mood and theme of the Film.
While no genre has a lock on B&W, the likeliest to use it are Film Noir, detective stories and historical films or paying homage to historical films. The themes that can be expressed or heightened with B&W are generally moral ambiguity, Zeerust, mystery, drama and tragedy.
There are a few common variants: Desaturation, Limited Palette, and Splash of Color.
Desaturating the color of a film can also be used to mimic the look of older films, particularly colorized black-and-white films or faded prints of color films. This has led to use of Sepia tones (browns and tans that mimic faded photographs) to indicate the scene in question is a flashback. It's worth noting that combining a Desaturated picture with Splash of Color can result in a Limited Palette.
A Limited Palette is a work completely in Black and White except for one or two recurring colors, shown in full vibrancy and linked to an important character or object. It's as if someone was making a "Paint by Numbers" movie with only two colors available. The net effect of these strategic and recurring uses of color in a B&W film may help to draw the viewers attention; whether it’s to the MacGuffin, the Femme Fatale or Chekhov's Gun. The colors themselves also inform roughly what emotions or themes are present in the work. Whereas Splash of Color is usually just a visual grab, a Limited Palette with colors like red or blue means the world is violent or sad, and that the character or object is somehow more alive or real than the world they're in. This is why a common Flashback Effect is to use a limited palette of warm colors to signify happy and old memories. Until the tragedy kicks in, anyway.
A Splash of Color is much like the above, but appears only once or twice throughout the entire film as opposed to throughout.
In infomercials, Deliberately Monochrome signifies the "old-fashioned" (and usually inferior) way of doing things. The woman tangled in a mess of cling wrap or cutting her fingers off while paring potatoes with a knife will usually be in black-and-white, while the woman easily covering leftovers with a Covermate or "peeling" a potato with the Handy-Peel will be in full color.
See also Retraux, Real Is Brown. A Monochrome Past is this trope limited to a Flash Back.
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Anime[]
- Played with in the Axis Powers Hetalia movie, where places directly struck by the Pict are literally drained of their color, leaving behind a monochrome shell of their former selves.
Live-Action TV[]
- The HBO TV movie The Cat's Meow takes place during The Roaring Twenties and is about the Triang Relations between William Randolph Hurst, his actress mistress Marion Davies, and Charlie Chaplin who Hurst tries to kill but winds up mortally wounding another guy instead. Because all the characters are involved in the silent movie buisness their fancy clothes are black, white, and grey (which makes it look like a live-action Edward Gorey story) and the victim's funeral is in black and white.
- Monk has an episode, "Mr. Monk and the Leper", which was shown separately in both color and B&W (and heavily publicized as such).
- The first color daytime episode of Concentration, in November 1966, had the first couple of minutes in black and white, similar to The Wizard of Oz.
Video Games[]
- Super Meat Boy likes to play with colors. Some of the levels and one chapter is entirely black and white where only your character and their stains leave color. Other levels, which are more common in Dark World levels, have limited monochrome or dischromatic color palette and sometimes only silhouette can be seen.
- Wardwell House: The environment surrounding the Father is portrayed as black and white. The purpose of this seems to be to make hotspots (indicated as yellow squares) easier to see and to show the general mood of the game. However, it gets subverted, by showing the scene with the Father's grave as well as the stinger with the Son in full colour.
Web Comics[]
- The Web Comic Archipelago is black-and-white on the whole, but uses multiple colors to accentuate magical effects. The character will be monochrome, but when they cast a spell, or when their soul is torn from their body, their colors are revealed. Also, dramatic events like flashbacks are portrayed in full color.
- Derelict uses desaturation, except for the pinwheel, which is in full and brilliant color.
- Next Town Over sometimes uses desaturation with a splash of color.
- Question Duck: black shading to white, or red, or yellow—not invariably.
- All Roses Have Thorns starts off being completely in gray tones, save for blood and eye colors. But as time goes on and it gets closer to modern day, it slowly grows more saturated with colors. To the point that by the 19th century the comic is now nearly full-color.