Opticolor
Opticolor (also: Siemens-Berthon or Berthon-Siemens process) was an additive color film process based on a lens grid that was developed and used in Germany between 1930 and 1938.
In 1930 the companies Siemens & Halske and Perutz-Photowerke had secured the licenses for the practice and further development of the French lenticular process via the Swiss consortium Opticolor AG Glarus . In 1935/1936 Carl Froelich shot the half-hour short film “Das Schönheitsfleckchen” (director: Rolf Hansen ) in Opticolor, which was shown in August 1936 during the Summer Olympics in Berlin. The National Socialists promoted the process as a "German color film" and as a competitor to the American Technicolor .
Opticolor did have some technical advantages over other processes, including making copies within 24 hours and, if necessary, showing them in black and white. Due to its costly nature, Opticolor was unable to assert itself and so instead of full-length feature films, only a few other short films were made, primarily in the service of Nazi propaganda, including the only color film from a Nazi party rally (1937).
The procedure was abandoned in the summer of 1938 after a color film project about Hitler's trip to Italy in May failed due to a technical breakdown, as cameraman Hans Ertl described in his memoir:
“All of the recordings from the large cameras operated by the two Siemens technicians were unusable because the three-zone filters had twisted as a result of the ongoing vibrations during the car trip. In practice it looked like that when the scenes were shown in the cinema, the scenes appeared in their complementary colors, i.e. reversed in color, and almost looked like a futuristic vision. Everyone - Hitler and Mussolini not excepted - had purple-blue faces and looked like ghosts in a horror spectacle. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dirk Alt: Color film start or color film phantom? The Siemens-Berthon lens grid process and its promotion by National Socialist propaganda 1936–1938. In: Filmblatt Nr. 40, 2009, pp. 7–8.
- ^ Gert Koshofer: Color. The colors of the film. Berlin: Volker Spiess 1988, p. 36.
- ↑ Hans Ertl: My wild thirties. Mountaineer, film pioneer, globetrotter. Munich: Herbig 1982, p. 252.