Alfred Hitchcock's Technicolour: The Master Of Suspense

In today 's day and age, cinema has almost become synonymous with exfoliating shades of vibrant colours, satiating the lust of the mass populace. It has but sadly become a common belief, wherein a majority chunk of the movie aficionados consider the Monochromatic reel, or so to speak in layman 's language, black and white cinema as an outdated and ancient hindrance which has thankfully been replaced by colour. This notion is as jocularly hilarious as it is flawed.

It is true, that with the birth of the colour motion picture process, Technicolour the slow and steady decline of monochromatic films started, but in no way did they become obsolete. Infact, filmmakers and cinema enthusiasts around the world, willfully agree of it as being an artform

His stylistic trademarks include the use of camera movement that mimics a person 's gaze, indulging viewers to engage in a form of forceful voyeurism. In addition to these dark complexities, the monochrome reel added to the crisp functionality rendering a slew of black and white films that refined the suspense and thriller genres in its entirety. In addition, he framed shots to accentuate antipathy, anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used intuitive forms of film editing. Many of his best films incorporate the elegant simplicity of black & white. From the early joys of The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, through the taut mid-period suspense thrillers such as Spellbound, Shadow of a Doubt and Strangers on a Train, to the phenomenal success of the slasher classic-Psycho, the Hitch proves that monochrome is a magnificent thing. The dramatically shadowed photography and the often eerily synchronised music are to this day, timelessly atypical of this

Little did we know, that this would be a pivotal moment in the history of the Monochrome reel. It would take another 33 years for another black and white film; Schindler’s List ( even though it did have a few colour elements) to break the foray of colour dominance in the Oscars. With the advent of the 1970’s, colour film became more realistic and less expensive, leading to majority of the features churning out in colour. Black and white movies, though seldom, were still being made but there was almost always, an artistic inclination to it. Directors were often seen, opting for black and white, while intending to portray a political or an aesthetic point. Street Scene (1989) is one such example of a film by an African American director, that attempts to restage Charlie Chaplin 's The Kid (1921) in an contemporary inner city, suggestive of the cruelly absurd humanity and the nostalgizing poverty, that the inner city denizens grant to the little