Black-and-white movies present the deliberate absence of color.This makes them less realistic than color films ( for the real world is in color). They are more dreamlike, more pure, composed of shapes and forms and movements and light and shadow. Color films can simply be illuminated. Black and white films have to be lighted. With color, you can throw light in everywhere, and the colors will help the viewer determine one shape from another, and the foreground from the background. With black and white, everything would tend towards shapeless blur if it were not for meticulous attention of light and shadow, which can actually create a world in which the lighting indicates a hierarchy of moral values.
In 1989, film critic Roger Ebert wrote an essay entitled "Why I love Black and White"
(Awake in the Dark, University Chicago Press)
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