My longtime buddy (since high school) Bruce Reznick sent me a link to an article by Stefan Kanfer about how younger audiences have too often rejected motion pictures for being in black-and-white. Like anyone with a smidgen of taste or brains, I think it's bonehead foolish to not want to see a film because it lacks color…but I also think we sometimes make too much of that as a reason. To some extent, the folks who avoid black-and-white do so because they associate it with movies that are so old as to seem irrelevant to them. It's the remoteness of the material that's scaring them off, not the black-and-white. If we're going to fault people for not appreciating great movies, let's get their mindset straight. They wouldn't be any more eager to see that hoary Bette Davis film if she were in Technicolor.
Frankly, in this piece, I think Kanfer overstates his case. I don't see the nine Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals in black-and-white as inferior to color pictures like Singin' in the Rain and An American in Paris. I just think he likes Fred better than Gene Kelly…a preference I do not share but can understand. I also think the glories of Mr. Astaire would have been just as bountiful if those movies had been made in color.
The point is that many younger folks do have a prejudice but it's mainly to the fact that a movie is unknown and features people they haven't heard of functioning in a world they don't know. Black-and-white is usually just the indicator of that. Once the recalcitrant filmgoer is forced over that hurdle — once someone makes them experience something new — there's a good chance they'll like it. In Kanfer's article, a bunch of high school kids reacted negatively at first to the notion of watching Twelve Angry Men because it was in black-and-white. But they watched it and they liked it and I don't see what the problem is here.