Usually that mood is nostalgia, and black and white is used to illicit a feeling of the past. It's inherently more cinematic, hearkening back to the origins of filmmaking and the silver screen.
The movie use of color is twofold: the first one indicates a change of temporality or storytelling device and the second one is a very subtle and elegant way to punctuate emotion. When asked about it, Robert Yeoman said: “I think Wes used color to emphasize or to dramatize certain things“.
Each story in The French Dispatch depicts characters who are artists and revolutionaries, yet through their self-mocking, blank style of delivery, the characters make fun of the things they stand for. Under the explicit content of the film, depicting artists and manifesto writers, is an implicit subtext of cynicism.
Color added a sense of spectacle to films — that's why so many of the musicals and Biblical epics from the 1930s to the 1950s are brightly colored. Black and white, which remained less expensive, was often used for more serious films or those that weren't thought to benefit from the spectacle.
Frank Baum novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the first being shot entirely in black and white. The much more famous 1939 adaptation directed by Victor Fleming and featuring Judy Garland as Dorothy was shot mostly in Technicolor but with certain sequences in sepia-toned (brownish) black and white.
Despite originally intending to shoot most of The French Dispatch in colour, after viewing the black-and-white test shots in the edit room, Anderson and Yeoman were drawn to the “striking look, grain, and contrast” of the Kodak Double-X 5222 stock, inspiring them to shoot more of the film in monochrome.
Unfortunately, some parts of the movie are hard to understand, meaning re-watching certain scenes is necessary to fully understand the movie. While the intricacy of Anderson's movies can be irritating, it means that his films require more higher-order thinking.
The film has been described as "a love letter to journalists set at an outpost of an American newspaper in a fictional 20th-century French city", centering on four stories. It brings to life a collection of tales published in the eponymous The French Dispatch, based in the fictional French city of Ennui-sur-Blasé.
During the holidays in France, the candied chestnut enjoys its moment in the spotlight – it even made a cameo appearance between Adrien Brody's fingers in the Wes Anderson film The French Dispatch!
I was inspired by the tray of cocktails that a waiter assembles and carries up the room of journalists at the very beginning of the movie. Jake and I watched that repeatedly as I took notes: oyster shooter, affogato, white wine, cola, Campari, and more.
What role was Kate Winslet in The French Dispatch?
Kate Winslet Was Initially Cast, But Dropped Out
Francis Lee's Ammonite stars Winslet as British paleontologist Mary Anning alongside Saoirse Ronan (who, interestingly, does appear in The French Dispatch) as her lover, Charlotte Murchison.
The contrast of white and black (light and darkness, day and night) has a long tradition of metaphorical usage, traceable to the Ancient Near East, and explicitly in the Pythagorean Table of Opposites. In Western culture as well as in Confucianism, the contrast symbolizes the moral dichotomy of good and evil.
We can use monochrome to emphasize shapes, lines, and textures that might otherwise be lost in a color image. It is important to be mindful of the lighting and shadows when capturing these scenes, as it greatly impacts the overall mood and emotion of the photograph.
Wes Anderson's latest movie isn't strictly nonfiction, as The French Dispatch finds inspiration in true stories and real people. Wes Anderson films are known for their sense of whimsy more than their sense of verisimilitude.
The French Dispatch is a fictional publication, inspired by writer-director Wes Anderson's love of The New Yorker; unlike the latter, The French Dispatch is set in a made-up place in France with the made-up name of Ennui-sur-Blasé — here's what it means.
The French Dispatch is nostalgic, a little weird, visually sumptuous — all characteristics that are far too uncommon in mainstream American film today. In a plot- and spoiler-obsessed film culture, he's the rare filmmaker who reminds people that movies are a primordially visual medium.
We are in France, in the time of de Gaulle (or someone like him). At the police station in the town of Ennui-sur-Blasé, Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) has been in a holding cell called the Chicken Coop for some days.
What was the protest about in The French Dispatch?
The events of May '68 were precipitated by protests in late 1967 and early 1968 against restrictions at Paris Nanterre University that prevented male students from entering female dormitories. Dissent quickly spread to other colleges.
Why does Wes Anderson use different aspect ratios?
Wes Anderson uses a different aspect ratio for each timeline throughout the movie, making it easier for viewers to keep track of reality between timelines. Additionally, the aspect ratios were not chosen randomly for each timeline. Anderson wanted to match the most popular aspect ratio to the respective timeline.
The Wizard of Oz was not the first movie in color, but it revolutionized the use of color in film and set a precedent for future movies. The first color movie in film history was "The World, The Flesh, and the Devil," a feature-length work of fiction filmed using the Kinemacolor process.
All the Oz sequences were filmed in three-strip Technicolor while the opening and closing credits, and the Kansas sequences, were filmed in black and white and colored in a sepia-tone process. Sepia-tone film was also used in the scene where Aunt Em appears in the Wicked Witch's crystal ball.
