Series Site
Presented in conjunction with the gallery exhibition Before Technicolor: Early Color on Film, this series documents the history of efforts to bring color to motion pictures. Highlighting the use of tinting, hand- and stencil-coloring, and the early experimental systems that predate Technicolor, the series offers restored versions of shorts, features, and avant-garde animation from the United States, France, and Britain, in 16 programs of works produced between 1894 and 1937.
Representing international efforts in the restoration of early color film, the series includes The Lights of Old Broadway (1925), from the Library of Congress; Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925) (with Lon Chaney), from the George Eastman Museum; Casanova (1927), from the Cinémathèque Francaise; The Glorious Adventure (1921), in Prizmacolor, from the British Film Institute; Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon (1902) and Cyrano de Bergerac (1923), from Lobster Films; the landmark Technicolor musical King of Jazz (1930), from Universal Pictures; and, from MoMA’s collection, The Great Train Robbery (1903), The Lonedale Operator (1911), Broken Blossoms (1919), and a selection of works by Oskar Fischinger and Len Lye that use color as a form of non-narrative expression.
Organized by Ron Magliozzi, Curator, Department of Film, with Steve Macfarlane, Film Department Assistant.