Movie Tone

Edward G. Robinson in The Red House, 1947. Although an outdoor scene, note the rimlight even though the main light is high right. (Another lucky thing about film was that you often had to light it.)

I watched another old potboiler the other night, The Red House from 1947—I'm kind of on an Edward G. Robinson kick. That guy was an amazing actor. One reviewer called The Red House "country farmhouse noir" which about pegs it. Robinson plays a character that has to be simultaneously sympathetic and monstrous, a tough line for an actor to walk. What a pleasure to watch him pull it off. The ingenue is played by Allene Roberts, who died only last year at 90.

As I was searching for cast pictures—I do a lot of image searches because they encompass a nice mix of directedness and serendipity—I ran across this:

The Wikipedia caption is "Photo of Marcia Strassman from the television program Welcome Back, Kotter. Strassman played Julie Kotter, the wife of teacher Gabe Kotter," and the picture is in the public domain. Here's a link to the picture on Wikipedia, which may look better for you than it does here.

The best bet is that this was taken with a Hasselblad on Kodak Tri-X Professional (code letters TXP), using a strobe with an umbrella, high center. It's possible that's wrong, but it is, as I say, a good bet. I just looked, and TXP appears to be available only in sheet film now.

So how can we guess this is TXP? Two ways: 1.) it looks like it; and 2.) that was what most professionals shot back then when they shot B&W. And why a Hasselblad? Because in 1975 when this publicity still was taken it was the camera brand used by a majority of the higher-level professionals in America. Could have been a Mamiya, though. Pros who specialized in portraits also used those a lot. Why an umbrella center high? Because that's what the light looks like, and you can see it reflected in her eyes. Well, sort of—the resolution of the JPEG isn't good enough to be definitive.

Anyway, none of that is what I want to talk about.

Skilled pros
The point I want to make is, when you're learning about B&W tonality, it makes a lot of sense to look at old movies and old professional studio pictures. The reason is that both of those were usually consciously lit, by seasoned professionals who really knew what they were doing, and then exposed properly for the lighting and the balance of tones desired. So you're seeing a report of conscious, skilled work that was the result of deliberate intent.

A significant caveat with old movies is that you need to be looking at a good print. With so many old noirs having been kicking around in the public domain for a long time, that's far from a given. It can be worthwhile, if you enjoy that sort of thing, to dig for the best versions of old movies—many review sites provide information about that. For example, I watched Scarlet Street the other night—a very early slasher film with Edward G. Robinson inhabiting a very different kind of character than the one he plays in The Red House—and Amazon's print is lousy, whereas one I found on YouTube is much better from a B&W tonality standpoint. Even if you do have to put up with interruptions.

Of course, many old movies will never exist in a great print again, just as many old musical masterpieces can never be remastered from the originals...Google "Universal Fire" and you'll see what I mean. Actually, don't Google "Universal Fire"—it's far too depressing to read about.

Naturally, you can find beautiful B&W tonality almost anywhere if you look hard enough. I've seen it in snapshots, documentary photographs taken as records, in old magazines, in museums and historical societies and antique shops. And of course in expressive artwork. Even (gasp!) online. But I wouldn't say it's common under any circumstances—excellence is always a small percentage of all the examples that exist, in anything I guess. And of course different pictures look best with different kinds of tonality...it's hardly a one-size-fits-all-kind of thing.

As you develop a taste in tonality, you'll probably notice that although you have your own preferences, you can also appreciate good examples of other kinds. That's the case with this portrait. There isn't a lot of shadow separation in the hair, and the contrast is bold and clear, and it's not the kind of spectral response I like best. TXP has a sort of dirty, gritty look in the mid-tones, which you can see best here in the area of her blouse and necklace at the bottom of the picture. But overall this works. It's vivid and pretty, and balanced, and the highlight modulation in the skin tones is lovely...something that survives even in the JPEG. (Do click the link to study it more carefully.)

Think of a musical analogy—even though your basic preference might be for a particular genre, classic rock or '70s Brit-pop or '90s grunge or contemporary drums 'n' bass or whatever—you can still appreciate well-done songs or pieces in wildly different genres, even ones you generally dislike.

Of course—back to today's example—tonality doesn't make the picture. It's the personality the actress projects with her lively eyes and nice smile that does that. Marcia Strassman, who played "Nurse Margie Cutler" on some early episodes the TV series M*A*S*H among other roles, died in 2014, of breast cancer. She wrote a memoir before she left us.

A lovely old picture of a person in her prime. Too bad we all don't need to get headshots made at a few points along the paths of our lives.

I'll try to put up other examples of excellent B&W tonality from time to time, for those who are trying to calibrate an eye for it.

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Maynard Switzer: "Actually TXP was not used that much in the studio with powerful studio strobe lighting. Richard Avedon used nothing but Panatomic-X in his Rolleiflex in the studio. ISO 32. How do I know? I was his assistant for a year."

Stephen Cowdery: "Looking at old movies for lighting inspirations is a great idea. I recently watched the Criterion set of Marlene Dietrich/Josef von Sternberg films from the early 1930s and the lighting, especially on Dietrich, was spectacular. It was obvious that von Sternberg (who did most of his lighting) was working on some other level."

Huw Morgan: "We were once stranded for a day in New York after our flight was canceled. Rather than go back into Manhattan, we stayed in an airport hotel near LaGuardia. The next morning, we had time to kill and visited the Museum of the Moving Image, a remarkable collection of movie-related materials. They have an excellent collection of publicity portraits of famous movie stars, taken by the studio photographers of the day. The collection is a lesson in lighting techniques and beautiful black-and-white printing. The tones in these photos are to die for and just can't be reproduced with inkjet printers. If you have a few hours to kill, I'd heartily recommend this museum."

Comments

[Jim & Cyndy Metzger]

For stunning tonality in what must have been a remarkably difficult movie to shoot I love "The Hill", 1965, with Sean Connery and directed by Sidney Lumet. Shot in extremes of contrast and very high key, the story ostensibly takes place in a Lyberian prison during WWII, each frame of the film would make a gorgeous B&W print.

Highly recommended.

[Weekes James]

Lovely post. I would add a well printed photo book to your list of things to look at for tonality. Some of Irving Penn’s work has sublime tonality. My brother-in-law was an assistant in Penn’s studio back in the 70s. His medium format film was usually TXP.

I had a portrait studio in Vermont back then and used a Rollei SL66 which I loved and still have. Unlike the Hasselblads of the day, it’s backs did not jam or slice film. My studio partner had a Hassy 500 and we ended up calling it the Jammelblad. Same lens set as the Hasselblad too.

[Fred Tuman]

When I was in photo school during the 70's, Plus-X (Iso125), was drummed into us as the all round B&W emulsion. In reality no one used it. Tri-X was King from 35mm to 8"x10". If you needed better quality you used a bigger camera.
By the way. On Sunday TMC showed a fully restored director's cut of Orson Welle's classic noir's Touch of Evil. Every scene was a rich black and white experience.
It has taken me many years of trial and error to get something close to that look with my Leica M8. Still its not the same.

[Peter Wright]

"I'll try to put up other examples of excellent B&W tonality from time to time, for those who are trying to calibrate an eye for it."
Please do!

OT comment: My copy of 'The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957' arrived a few days back. Excellent! Your photo book recommendations are never off.

[John Camp]

Sort of riffing on your recent movie posts here -- since I broke my arm in July, I've been spending more time than usual on the couch, and got hooked into a couple of Netflix series. One, called Lucifer, is silly, but has amazing aerial shots of Los Angeles. I've been thinking about those not as videos, but as (color) stills, and even have thought about getting out a camera to catch slices of these things as landscapes. They are shot at all times of day and night, and some are strikingly beautiful. Just a riff...

[Mike Plews]

When Kodak announced the demise of TXP 120 I should have filled the freezer with it. I did not and it still makes me sad. Just retired and want to start shooting medium format film again and not sure what way to go. Not much impressed with TMax.
On the movie side I may drop ten bucks a month for The Criterion Channel. Their discs are outstanding and the streaming service should be excellent too. Might be a nice time for a James Wong Howe marathon.

[Albert Smith]

The one big difference and maybe detriment to mastering B&W skills today is the lack of being constrained by only having that end item. I often go out with the intent of shooting monochrome, only to be distracted by some bright color that just has to be shot in color. This causes my B&W visualization to atrophy, no longer seeing tones and contrast as opposed to color.

Seems like a million years ago shooting Tri-X while view finding in color. How did we ever pull that off?

[Chip McDaniel]

Looking at interior shots in old black and white films often shows up some wondrous lighting. I wish that I had an opportunity as a younger man to work in a pro studio and really learn to light stills beyond the crude basics that I know. Those old movie folks were maestros. The sets must have been infernos though, given the slow films of the day and the necessity to use lots of light.

[k4kafka]

In those days the three major TV networks all had their own publicity departments with staff photographers who cranked-out headshots such as Marcia’s in their, “photo gallery”.Your assessment is accurate,the guys I knew at CBS and NBC all used Hasselblads with strobes.

[hugh crawford]

But Tri X Professional is for portraits of men! It says so on the packaging even!

[Gijs Langelaan]

Ahhhh! But what was the watt-seconds used on the light in the umbrella? Surely you can see that, Mike?

;)

with humorous intent,

Gijs

[Jim Arthur]

I recently came across a photographer named Christopher Soukup (C A Soukup) on Flickr and was really impressed with the tones of his night shots. I especially like the scenes depicting vintage cars parked on the street. I get lost in his pictures and find myself roaming around the image viewing details at different zoom levels. Christopher’s pictures are so clean and detailed I went looking for an interview to learn more about his gear and found he was using a Hasselblad 500 C/M. I guess this explains the clean, low light pictures. I love the challenge of working in low light with my 6D and EF 135mm f/2L but I don’t get results like this.

[Nick Van Zanten]

Thanks Mike, that was a lot to think about, tonality is step beyond my photo acumen; but I think I've always "known" good tones from bad. This post motivates me to pay more attention. Please put up more examples.

[Eolake Stobblehouse]

Wow, Marcia Strassman is beautiful here.

[JimH]

If you like the Hollywood photographs, here is a website for you:

http://www.glamamor.com/p/the-style-essentials.html

It's a website run by Kimberly Truhler who is the go-to person on style and costume design for the movies. She has run a series of lectures on styles in the movies at the historic Egyptian Theater in Hollywood that we've attended. She does an intro lecture on the styles in a particular movie and then shows the movie.

The link above is to her 50 top movies for style, listed by era. The links to each movie's page takes you to a discussion on the costume style and includes lots of studio photos of the costumes.

Here's the site home page - lots of see: http://www.glamamor.com

Mike, I bet you could have fun getting lost here!!!

[Philip Ramsden]

Last year I was doing some research on Sydney Cotton, an Australian airman who made photographs from his aircraft over Germany in 1939.
He used a Leica 250 and Perutz (Leica film) and developed it in one of the new, then, fine grain developers.
Some of the original prints are in the library of the War Memorial in Canberra and the fine grain and tonal range he achieved is amazing.
He was responsible for setting up a Spitfire flight fitted with Leicas when the Royal Airforce was using huge cameras at low level in lumbering old bombers. They were often shot down before returning to England.
His Spitfires flew at 30,000 feet and could out climb and outrun every German plane of the time.
Cheers
Philip

[John Shriver]

I think Marcia's teeth have been retouched. Bright bottom edge (some pencil), then black.

Lots of detail in her black hair, well managed "toe" of the H-D curve.

[Pelle Cass]

Weird. The Robinson photo looks digital to me. I think it's because the makeup, perfect lighting, and matte painting are all artificial looking and give the photo the sort of smooth, creamy tonalities that digital b & w tends to produce with almost no effort.