There can’t be a director anywhere in the world who doesn’t love black and white film for the moodiness it conveys and the visual impact it promises, though cost (possibly) and audience expectation (probably) mitigate against its widespread use. But just as the genre known as film noir was in some ways a response to the 1940s, a deeply troubled decade, so can today’s black and white films be seen as a reflection of the doubts and uncertainties of the present era. So as cinemas continue to re-open across Scotland – Aberdeen’s Belmont Cinema welcomes cinemagoers from Monday – it’s perhaps appropriate that three of the most gripping films on offer are all in black and white, even if each was made before the current pandemic struck, and one is being re-released to mark its own 25th anniversary.
That third film is La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz’s searing portrait of disadvantaged youths in 1990s Paris. Screening at the Glasgow Film Theatre until Tuesday it’s as powerful today as it was on its release in 1995. Next up is The Painted Bird, a war film directed by Czech film-maker Václav Marhoul (at the Edinburgh Filmhouse until Thursday). And finally to Parasite, which became the first foreign language film to win the Best Picture Oscar at the Academy Awards in February. Boon Joon-ho’s film was released first in colour, of course, though the South Korean director had cut this black and white version before then. “When I think of the classics, they’re all in black and white,” he has said. “So I had this idea that if I turned my films into black and white then they’d become classics”. Parasite: Black & White Version screens at Aberdeen’s Belmont until September 21.
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