In praise of watching your favorite movies in black and white

A viewing practice that weirds things you've seen a thousand times

Hey y’all,

Back in 2014, director Steven Soderbergh posted a black-and-white version of Raiders of the Lost Ark with The Social Network soundtrack as an exercise in studying staging.

It’s since become my favorite way of watching the movie. I’ve seen Raiders probably a hundred times and I can recite the dialogue line-by-line, but when I watch it in black-and-white, it estranges me from it. It’s like seeing a new movie with fresh eyes.

“I’m not saying I’m like, ALLOWED to do this,” Soderbergh joked.

But some directors insist that black-and-white is actually their favorite way to watch their own movies.

“The best version of this movie is black-and-white,” said director George Miller on the “Black and Chrome” edition of Mad Max: Fury Road. “But people reserve that for art movies now.”

Director Bong Joon-ho says his mother wouldn’t let him go to the movies because of “bacteria” when he was growing up, so he watched movies on their old black-and-white TV. A “classic” movie, for him, is a black-and-white one, so it was important that he made a black-and-white version of Parasite, which had a limited theatrical release.

“The first time [I saw the black and white version], it felt like I was watching an old movie, a story from long ago. But the second time, the movie felt more intense; it felt [more] cruel.”