“Many moviegoers and video viewers say they do not "like" black and white films. In my opinion, they are cutting themselves off from much of the mystery and beauty of the movies.
Black and white is an artistic choice, a medium that has strengths and traditions, especially in its use of light and shadow.”

— Roger Ebert

First published in the "Movie Answer Man" column (25 July 2004) http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040725/ANSWERMAN/407250305
Context: Many moviegoers and video viewers say they do not "like" black and white films. In my opinion, they are cutting themselves off from much of the mystery and beauty of the movies.
Black and white is an artistic choice, a medium that has strengths and traditions, especially in its use of light and shadow. Moviegoers of course have the right to dislike b&w, but it is not something they should be proud of. It reveals them, frankly, as cinematically illiterate.
I have been described as a snob on this issue. But snobs exclude; they do not include. To exclude b&w from your choices is an admission that you have a closed mind, a limited imagination, or are lacking in taste.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Many moviegoers and video viewers say they do not "like" black and white films. In my opinion, they are cutting themsel…" by Roger Ebert?

Roger Ebert 264

American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter 1942–2013

Related quotes

“The audience's preferences for films are in black and white. They either like a film or they don't.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

Source: From interview with Subhash K. Jha

“It isn't a matter of black is beautiful as much as it is white is not all that's beautiful.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

“Like so much of cool hunting, Hilfiger's marketing journey feeds off the alienation at the heart of America's race relations: selling white youth on their fetishization of black style, and black youth on their fetishization of white wealth.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Five: "The Patriarchy Gets Funky"

“Her voice was like a line from an old black-and-white Jean-Luc Godard movie, filtering in just beyond the frame of my consciousness.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“Black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of black and white, male and female. It's not so much that women write differently from men, but that black women write differently from white women. Black men don't write very differently from white men.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Black Women Writers at Work (1983) by Claudia Tate

“I've been identified with pink throughout my career, but I'm not as crazy about it as I've led people to believe. My favorite colors are actually neutrals—black and white—but then who thinks of a movie queen in black and white? Everything has to be in living color.”

Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967) American actress, singer, model

Here They Are Jayne Mansfield (1992)

“My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black as if bereaved of light.”

William Blake The Little Black Boy

The Little Black Boy, st. 1
1780s, Songs of Innocence (1789–1790)

“There was such a dearth of films like that…And the high-school teen movie is a genre that I love. Everything at that age is so heightened and dramatic, and high-school movies capture that so perfectly. But those films are all white, too; there’s no black teen movie genre that exists in the same way.”

Issa Rae (1985) American actress and writer

On how she didn’t see herself represented in the teen film genre in “Issa Rae: ‘I’ve not started writing season four of Insecure yet. We needed a break’” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/apr/13/issa-rae-interview-insecure-little in The Guardian (2019 Apr 13)

“The world is not black and white. More like black and grey.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

London Observer (January 2, 1983)

“It is important to make a further distinction here among black hatred, black racism, and Black Power. Black hatred is the black man's strong aversion to white society. No black man living in white America can escape it…. But the charge of black racism cannot be reconciled with the facts. While it is true that blacks do hate whites, black hatred is not racism. Racism, according to Webster, is 'the assumption that psychocultural traits and capacities are determined by biological race and that races differ decisively from one another, which is usually coupled with a belief in the inherent superiority of a particular race and its rights to dominance over others.' Where are the examples among blacks in which they sought to assert their right to dominance over others because of a belief in black superiority?… Black Power is an affirmation of the humanity of blacks in spite of white racism. It says that only blacks really know the extent of white oppression, and thus only blacks are prepared to risk all to be free.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), p. 14-16

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Roger Ebert 264

Related quotes

Related topics