LOS ANGELES (AP) — Within the hit film “Wicked,” these well-known magical footwear are silver. However if you wish to see them in all their ruby-red glory from “The Wizard of Oz,” there’s no place like residence — their present residence, that’s, on the Academy Museum of Movement Footage in Los Angeles.
There, Dorothy’s footwear, worn by Judy Garland, are actually on show as a part of a sweeping exhibit on the historical past of coloration in cinema. It’s a historical past by which the sequined slippers play a key function.
Whereas the 1900 novel by Frank L. Baum described them as silver, filmmakers in 1939 wished to pack as a lot coloration as doable into the scene the place Dorothy steps from sepia-toned Kansas into the shimmering coloration of the Land of Oz, the place Glinda offers her the footwear off the toes of the Depraved Witch of the East. They had been displaying off a brand new know-how: Technicolor.
The exhibit, “Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema,” operating by means of July 13, is well timed not solely as a result of all the things Oz is new once more.
It additionally highlights the largely unsung function that girls performed within the improvement of coloration in Hollywood, not solely on display however off, the place labor-intensive jobs like hand-coloring and stenciling gave them a foothold in a male-dominated trade.
There’s additionally a whimsical interactive set up the place your individual physique creates cinematic explosions of coloration, on the spot.
Listed here are some highlights:
Folks all the time ask to see the footwear
These glistening slippers nestled in opposition to a wall — reasonably unobtrusively, given their iconic standing — started their life as white silk pumps. “The Wizard of Oz” costume designer Adrian (recognized by his first title) dyed them pink and embellished them with almost 5,000 sequins.
One among 4 recognized pairs used for the movie that also exist, they had been secured with nice fanfare and assist from luminaries like Leonardo DiCaprio, and had been displayed when the museum opened in September 2021.
“They’re certainly one of the biggest treasures we have in our collection,” says Jessica Niebel, curator of the colour present. “Ever since they came down, we’ve gotten regular visitor feedback asking to see the ruby red slippers back on display. This was the perfect opportunity.”
The footwear are silver in each Baum’s 1900 novel and in Gregory Maguire’s 1995 e book “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” on which the Broadway present and film are based mostly.
Truly, these aren’t the one necessary pink footwear
Some 9 years after “The Wizard of Oz,” one other film put a pair of pink footwear entrance and heart. They had been ballet pointe footwear, and the movie, fittingly, was “The Red Shoes.”
The unhappy story of a younger ballerina pressured to decide on between her profession and a romance, the film , by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, starred Moira Shearer, a real-life ballerina. Its tragic 17-minute dance sequence tells a narrative inside a narrative — a younger girl who dances within the pink footwear till she dies.
Curators positioned these prized pink pointe footwear entrance and heart as a result of, Niebel says, “The Red Shoes” highlights each the magical nature of pink and the function coloration performs within the expression of bodily motion by means of dance.
Poignantly, the pointe footwear should not excellent, however worn — simply because the character’s white gown turns grey and soiled as she is progressively consumed.
Colour the place you do not anticipate it
Silent movies had been in black and white, proper?
Properly, no, really. On this gallery, silent movie excerpts present that many had been in coloration. “In the 1920s, most films, 80-90%, we think, were in color,” Niebel says. “They only became black and white with the arrival of sound.”
Earlier than that, nearly all of movies the place had been tinted and toned, curators say, that means a whole filmstrip is submerged in a single coloration, typically a shiny one like yellow or pink or pink or blue.
Curators went to 4 movie archives in Europe and the U.S. and scanned their filmstrips. “In this gallery, for the first time, you can see how these colors authentically looked in the 1920s without any digital manipulation,” Niebel says.
The difficult story of Hollywood’s ‘leader ladies’
One other part describes a phenomenon many know nothing about: chief women. These had been ladies who appeared within the lead body of a movie reel to be processed in a coloration lab. They had been invisible to audiences, however used to calibrate and course of the colour in a movie.
The show raises the problem that this course of, which has disappeared with the digital age, largely excluded individuals of coloration.
“Predominantly they used to be white women,” Niebel says. “So film stock and film materials were calibrated towards white skin predominantly. We wanted to tell this story as well — the story of these women who are never named, who the public never saw, but also the story of how film stock was developed particularly to depict white skin.”
The function of ladies, on display and off
The present begins with pictures of Loïe Fuller and the Serpentine Dance she invented, the place coloured mild was mirrored onto a flowing costume, altering the colours. An American dancer, Fuller experimented within the early twentieth century with material, motion, and coloration strategies like gels and chemical salts.
However many different ladies toiled in obscurity. There have been, for instance, the ladies at Disney, because the studio made a transition to paint. We study that beneath the management of Walt Disney’s sister-in-law Hazel Sewell, the studio’s ink and paint division grew to become the animation trade’s first all-female unit.
And the French manufacturing firm Pathé employed younger ladies to hand-paint movies — body by body — early within the twentieth century. These younger ladies earned lower than their male counterparts. Nonetheless, it was greater than they had been capable of earn in different professions.
Virtually pretty much as good as finger portray
As youngsters know from finger portray, there’s nothing extra enjoyable than making coloration your self — particularly coloration that strikes. That’s the takeaway from a ultimate gallery by which your individual bodily motion creates cascades of coloration.
“Body Paint,” by artist Memo Akten, permits you to stand in entrance of a display, unfold your arms, leap up and down or transfer any which approach you need as a digicam interprets the strikes into coloration.
“Now it’s time for visitors to become animators of colors themselves through their own bodies,” Niebel says. She’s seen individuals cease and carry out full-on dances on the set up.
“It seems to bring people together,” she says.
