Color is such an important aspect of modern-day filmmaking. From the sunny pastels of Jacques Demy’s playful romances and unconventional musicals to the gloomy monochrome of Tim Burton’s Gothic fairy tales, like his masterpiece “Edward Scissorhands,” color plays a crucial role in setting the mood and tone of a film. We know that movies were not always in color, as this technology was developed later. But when, exactly? It’s difficult to pin this down because there are a lot of different definitions of the first color movie, depending on how you look at it — ranging from short films to documentaries to animated films.

Up until the emergence of techniques to create color, cameras were only capable of producing black-and-white images. Although filmmakers were able to play with shadows in visually thrilling ways — like the haunting presence of Count Orlok in “Nosferatu” or the towering futuristic society in “Metropolis” — finally being able to tell visual stories with color opened filmmakers up to whole different forms of creative expression.

Many moviegoers mistakenly assume the early Technicolor live-action films, such as “The Wizard of Oz” from 1939, as the first color movie ever, but the use of color in film has a more lengthy and complex history. Now considered a cinematic classic for the ages, “The Wizard of Oz” was one of the first movies to be filmed in Technicolor, specifically. Technicolor requires a special camera that separates three black-and-white negatives for each of the primary colors to make a single, full-color strip of film. The filmmaking technique has vibrant and detailed colors, making everything really leap off the screen.

“The Wizard of Oz” revolves around the power and beauty of that strong color. When Dorothy opens the door of her tornado-swept house, leaving behind the drab, sepia-toned world, we are just as awestruck by the vivid, rainbow-hued land of Oz, with its bright yellow brick road and glistening Emerald City. While the use of this new technique was stunning and would sweep Hollywood in the coming decades, animation had been utilizing Technicolor, and even other forms of color, for some time already.

Walt Disney Studios made a groundbreaking change by using Technicolor for their animated films, starting with their short “Flowers and Trees” about a forestry romance and rivalry, then the full-length “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was Disney’s biggest box office gamble because studio executives were skeptical of all the elements that would eventually make it so revolutionary. In the documentary “The One That Started It All” from the film’s Diamond Blu-ray and DVD edition, animator Ward Kimball shares what the Hollywood bigwigs were so worried about: 

“It was okay, six or seven minutes, like the shorts, but an hour and a half, no way! The big reason was that you run out of funny things to do, you had to have a laugh-a-minute. And the bright colors would hurt your eyes; everybody would get up and walk out.”

Not only was the story completely captivating, taking us from the horrors of the spooky forest to the sweet, loveable dwarfs bonding with the princess, but the colors were eye-popping and gorgeous to look at. We all remember the shot of the bright red apple dripping with green poison in the shape of a macabre skull. The rich colors were perfect for a main character whose beauty, with her porcelain skin, ruby-red lips, and jet-black hair, made her the fairest of them all. 

Disney would go on to use Technicolor for other animated classics such as “Pinocchio” and “Cinderella.” The oversaturated palettes became the standard for feature films through the mid-1950s, both live-action and animated. However, there were other color processes before Technicolor, allowing color to appear in films as early as the beginning of the 20th century.

Many early short films were originally filmed in black and white, but transformed into color movies by manipulating the film stock — either by hand-painting each frame or applying tints. An early color version of George Méliès’ 1902 short “A Trip to the Moon,” one of the best space movies ever, uses color to make the cosmic adventure feel even more fantastical, bathing the interstellar goddesses in vivid pinks and turquoises. Similarly, “La Vie et la Passion de Jésus Christ” from 1903 features the same hand-painting technique, where only certain elements are colored to emphasize their significance in the Biblical story, such as the bright yellow star above Jesus Christ’s manger.

Technically, “A Visit to the Seaside” from 1908 was the first movie made in color, but it is only an eight-minute short. The collage of young ladies frolicking in bathing suits or stately couples strolling on a boardwalk promenade was filmed in a new process called Kinemacolor. Kinemacolor was a special camera tool used to put red and green filters on black and white film. The striking colors made the scenes stand out and as close to resembling real life as possible. Of course, to our contemporary eyes, the first thing we notice is the limited range of hues, with only red and green being noticeable. Kinemacolor also required a special projector that had too many issues. In 1912, the documentary “With Our King and Queen Through India” also used Kinemacolor, depicting the coronation and triumphs of King George V and Queen Mary of Teck. It must have been exciting for viewers to see authentic images of their leaders captured on screen, with the use of color highlighting their royal importance. 

Considering the most popular definition of a movie as a full-length narrative, “The World, The Flesh and the Devil” made in 1914 can be regarded as the first color movie. At 50 minutes long and made in Kinemacolor, the drama follows a devious woman who conspires to swap the babies of rich and poor families. Unfortunately, all footage of this film is lost. While the technique of Kinemacolor paved the way for future color processes and was less painstaking than other approaches, it still had many kinks to work out before Technicolor would go on to revolutionize filmmaking.

It’s incredible how far we’ve come with color in film and how much it changes the way we see movies. Looking back, we can understand how early color techniques transformed films beyond the black-and-white ones that came before them. The history and role of color in cinema is as rich and varied as the color wheel itself, and it’s worth exploring more about in books such as “Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema” by Jessica Niebel and Sophia Serrano.