The temporalities of intermediality: Colour in cinema and the arts of the 1920s

Abstract

This article presents a case study in intermediality concerning the intersection of cinema, colour, and a range of related media in the 1920s. In film history, colour is a rich yet understudied field in the 1920s, particularly in light of the recent attention paid to both early cinema colour and 1930s Technicolor. Following the constraints of the First World War, there was a surge in colour production in the early 1920s across media and national cinemas. To understand this increase in colour during the ‘Jazz Age’, it is vital to appreciate the significance of colour before the First World War; specifically for cinema, one must also examine the intermedial role of colour during cinema’s early years. For developing theoretical insights into this material, we turn first to André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion’s analysis (2005) of the institutionalization and accompanying stylistic transformation of the cinema around 1910, as it emerged as an autonomous and self-sustaining narrative medium. With this change, according to Gaudreault and Marion, the fundamental intermedial relations that characterized the earlier years of cinema were no longer so apparent; rather, the structure of cinema’s intermediality transformed with institutionalization. We argue that the 1920s presents a vital perspective on this history, when cinema and other media were profoundly influenced by a colour wave that surged across the arts. Far from intermediality disappearing, in the 1920s cinema’s engagement with the other arts was going through a particularly exciting and innovative phase.

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