Prince of Foxes question (1 Viewer)

[Bob Engleman]

IMO, if ever a movie needed to be shot in Technicolor, this is such a title; according to the DVD, it wasn't due to a shortage of money. I checked the IMDb, but the box office figures weren't available. I'm curious, how much would color have added to the picture cost in the late 40s?

Bob Engleman

 

[David_B_K]

I cannot answer your question, but based on how good Prince of Foxes looks on DVD in B/W, and how poor the color films in the Tyrone Power Collection look, we are fortunate as viewers today that they chose to shoot it in B/W.

 

[Joe Caps]

Would someone be kind enough to tell me - for years prince of foxes has been on fox movies and AMC in really terrible sound. How is the sound on the new dvd?


When the director, Henry King went to take location pictures in Italy, he took them in color. Color showed how old and worn the buildings were, but black and white did not so he decided to make the film in black and white. About a weekinto shooting, he and his camerman realized they should have done color, but it was too late to make color tests, etc.

 

[David_B_K]

Joe, I looked around for my VHS I'd taped off the Fox Movie Channel a few years ago, but I could not find it, so I could not compare the telecast with the DVD, though I do seem to remember poor sound from the TV version with lots of dropouts. Over-all, the sound on the DVd is at least adequate, but the recorded level is rather low, so I had to turn the volume up quite a bit. Sometimes there is a noticable lisp when chartacters pronounce the letter 'S'. But, it was a serviceable soundtrack IMHO.

 

[Ernest]

You are absolutely correct I was so disappointed to see this wonderful period piece filmed in B&W I stopped watching it half way through. This will be a nice item for my next garage sale.

I like the old WW II movies, Story of GI Joe, Wake Island and others, in B&W, but not a gorgeous period piece like Prince of Foxes. They have a new and improved colorization process that would be nice to apply to this title to see if they could restore the beauty of technicolor.

 

[David_B_K]

I do hope you are joking about colorizing Prince of Foxes? Colorizing movies is one of the worst ideas in movie history, no matter how it is done. In any case it would be impossible to "restore the beauty of technicolor" to a movie that was never filmed in technicolor.

Besides, just because Prince of Foxes was not filmed in color does not mean it is filmed poorly, or that it suffers for being in B/W. Some great scenes are probably more atmospheric because the film was made in B/W. Look at the scene in which Everett Sloane attempts to ambush Power. The chiaroscuro effect around Sloane's face in the shadows is awesome, and would have been next to impossible to do in color. And, as I said earlier in the thread, the lack of color means the film has held up better visually than, say, The Black Rose.

 

[John Hodson]

Dear God, after all these years, people are still advocating 'colorization'; I quite agree with David, Prince of Foxes looks astonishingly beautiful in glorious monochrome. A garage sale item this ain't...