The Moving Image

Color has been an ephemeral and illusive element of the moving image since it was applied to the earliest films. It decays over time in processes where color resides in the emulsion of the film. Alternatively, in the case of additive color processes, it is locked in the image and is only retrievable though the use of specialized projection equipment or reconstruction using photochemical or digital processes. A color system is not, however, simply the material trace of its presence. I propose that the visual experience of color in film, like film more generally, is in part constructed by historical audiences’ expectations and prior knowledge. Their engagement with a color process would be influenced by the contemporary cultural milieu surrounding it, including, for example, the spaces where it was shown and its relevant contemporary discourses and ideologies. Such contextual information [End Page 1] is integral to any attempt to reconstruct a film produced in an obsolete color process. To advance this argument, I use the case of the UK exhibition of Kinemacolor, the first natural color system to enjoy commercial success between 1909 and 1919. This was a two-color additive process that photographed through a red and green filter wheel and then projected the film through a Kinemacolor projector outfitted with a complementary filter system.

A variety of approaches can be taken to reconstruct screenings of early film technologies, as Frank Kessler has summarized.¹ They may focus on establishing the context within the history of cinema, emphasizing the films’ aesthetic qualities and the original exhibition experience. Screenings can also be shown as records of the past with the emphasis on the films’ historical subjects. Alternatively, archival films can be screened to modern audiences as objects of art unencumbered by their historical context. All of these aims create opportunities for engagement with archival films for modern audiences. This article approaches film as a historical record. Many factors influence an individual’s or group’s engagement with film, thus making it impossible to reconstruct one single viewing experience. I nevertheless argue that attempting to examine the diversity of original exhibition contexts for a color system remains a useful, necessary, and meaningful historical project.²

Any reconstruction of Kinemacolor should not only study the material qualities of color film but also examine the wide variety of factors that influenced contemporary engagement with it. This can be used to direct attempts at the reconstruction of an original viewing experience or simply to provide guidance to modern audiences on how to respond to early color. To learn more about the contemporary audience experience of Kinemacolor, I examine the exhibition and marketing of the process, both of which significantly influenced how audiences encountered it as a film system. Such research allows for identifying the types of exhibition spaces that hosted the system, which in turn influenced the programs that featured the system, the film titles screened, and the length of the run in the venue. The organization set up to exploit the process commercially, the Natural Color Kinematograph Company Ltd. (NCKCL), considered the exhibition environment integral to its success or failure and provided a great deal of advice to exhibitors.³

In addition to the exhibition conditions of exploiting the process, the discourses surrounding the system as it was installed and operated were integral to audiences’ engagement with Kinemacolor. Such practices can be found in the marketing material surrounding Kinemacolor issued by the NCKCL and by exhibitors. Other sources, such as memoirs, diaries, and novels, can also shed light on contemporary audiences’ engagement.⁴ These discussions among commentators, promoters, and the public were part [End Page 2] of the exhibition context. It is of course impossible to record every possible discourse and meaning circulating around Kinemacolor during its commercial life. Indeed, an audience’s participation in such discourses would vary among individuals. Nevertheless, I hope to provide a sense of the rich milieu of the Kinemacolor system.