Colors of Film is a remarkable coffee table book. As a lover of photograph and movies, I found Colors of Film to be a wonderful book filled with historical information on the use of color in cinema. While filled with interesting history, color, and information for the casual reader, this book may be better suited for the professional photographer, cinematographer, and/or movie buff.

I was enraptured by the film stills and color pallets presented throughout Colors of Film. Each film includes an infographic color pallet, including RGB color numbers, and some historical data. As I read through the pages, I could feel how passionate Charles Bramesco is on this subject. His passion made these movie stills leap off the pages.

This was a very interesting read. The layout and how the book showcases the colours it highlights was very satisfying to look at. I think this book would be perfect for anyone who has studied or are currently studying film, and in general would make a great coffee-table book for film fans.

~~5 Stars~~ 5th January 2023

The perfect gift for any film buff or colour theory fans.

This book took us through a beautiful journey of colour within cinematic history, featuring 50 movies which use colour as a subtle story telling device.
The book is split into 4 parts, with each part having its own introduction or explanation of the history of that time. This gave us much more insight to take forward while reading about the films, we learn about the different cameras, their qualities, and the technology that made a huge difference to what we see.
Each film is given a basic analysis of their use of colour and is paired with a beautiful screenshot/// of the film. We can learn about the Director’s decision to use colour, why it might have been important to the story, what impact it had, what impact other films had, the general culture around that time, and much more.

My personal favourite film mentioned, Spirited Away (Miyazaki), has a scene where we learn that the main character is “wreathed in an arresting shot by a bushel of cherry blossom in a blush of pink, their soothing petals a sign that she’d turning over a new leaf.” This gives the whole scene an entirely different meaning for me, it made me rewatch the entire film just to see it!
I believe that the best part of this book is that it gives the films a new reason to watch, to see the way in which colour impacts our viewing.

Thank you NetGalley UK, Quarto Publishing Group and Charles Bramesco for this arc in exchange for an honest review

I somehow expected it to be a little bit different, maybe more focused on the general use of colour and specific palettes rather than on the developing of film and selected movies, but as someone who's recently trying to get more into cinema and who has a fascination for the psychology behind the use of colours I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Easily readable since even the paragraphs that are meant to be more "technical" end up being written in a simple and understandable way, and (predictably) with gorgeous pictures.

A fascinating and niche book! This would make a great gift for a film-lover or a coffee-table book to casually leaf through whenever fascination strikes.

I will say, one thing that I did not enjoy was the use of Impact(? maybe I am no graphic designer, admittedly) in the chapter titles. For a book that is tuned in to aesthetics, I was put off by that particular design choice. A small thing, really, and extremely subjective - but I thought it worth mentioning for transparency.

This book looked really great! I couldn’t download the arc because the format was incompatible with my devices which was unfortunate.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this eloquent, beautifully researched, nonfiction book about color in film. In addition to straight history, Bramesco thought deeply about the politics and associations we have to color. Thanks for the opportunity to read.

Superb! A history of film focusing on colour, the science and development of color innovation and how directors have used color to convey mood and messages. The explanation for each of the 50 films is succinct but eminently interesting. The choice of films is wide ranging and references further examples. I read this in two days and took notes of films to rewatch with my new found knowledge and will most likely buy this when it is published in Feb 2023.

I am a huge lover of film and this book is another one to add to my collection. By emphasizing the use of various color patterns it gives me a new way to look at the films I am watching. The author shares numerous examples of films (mostly films I have heard of or seen before) and hones in on how the use of color evokes a mood, elicits emotions and feelings in the viewer and signals a deeper underlying meaning. There are some of my favorite films here such as "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and "Amelie" as well as films like "But I'm a Cheerleader" and "Small Axe - Lover's Rock." The author also features "Blue" by Derek Jarman - made while he was dying of AIDS and was going blind. This book gives a great and concise journey through the history of film technology through the digital age and the trade-offs inherent in this (from light saturation through a lens opening to color made up of pixels). This book has beautiful writing and photos as well as the colors and exact numbers of the colors throughout the book. I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Quarto Publishing Group/White Lion for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Step one - flick through the contents page, is Speed Racer in there?

OK, it passed that test.

Colors Of Film is a book which is specifically about how colour (I will use the UK spelling) works in cinema. It can be oversaturated, or undersaturated, and colours can be omitted or over-used. One of the most famous (which is in here) is Spielberg's girl in the red coat in the otherwise black and white Schindler's List - which Bramesco allows Spielberg space to explain quite how simplistic it was as symbolism. Otherwise there is a mixture of great films which we might not consider the colour in (Jeanne Dilman being a prescient pick here being celebrated for its drabness) and those which make a virtue of it (The Three Colours Trilogy - The Wizard Of Oz). Each film gets a page of text and then a page, or three, of photos with the key colours blocked out and given their RGB numbers and hexadecimal number. He does early on cop to issues with colour fading, being changed by restoration: the first film in the book is a Spanish handpainted version of A Trip To The Moon.

All this said it is something of a coffee table book with a diploma. There are brief essays on colour theory, and a few bits on Fujifilm, Technicolor and digital colouring, but you can dive deeper into all of those topics elsewhere (possibly not as well illustrated),. The fifty films on offer also do skew very Hollywood, and English language (though interestingly eclectic in places, But I'm A Cheerleader and Lover's Rock turn up so its not just the canon). Its an interesting take on an often overlooked topic, and whilst I think I personally might have liked a deeper dive, it's a terrific introduction and stimulator of conversation.

Colors of Film offers a fresh take on film. It goes into fascinating detail about how important colour is within film and is filled to the brim with interesting facts about the history of film. The perfect gift for film lovers.

This is not for a casual reader or movie goer. The book gives describes movie shots and discusses the use of color. The history of color techniques and use in cinematography is included. As is the debate of colorizing older films. If you’re a budding cinematography this book is for you. But for me, while I understood the ideas presented many of the examples were lost on me. Of the roughly 50 films discussed I’ve seen seventeen and heard of another eight. Half of the book are films I’ve never seen or heard about. It is an informative book but for a niche reader. Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group -White Lion for the temporary ARC in exchange for a review.

This book takes readers through the history of color in cinema. It overviews different types of film and the colors that you get from them. It then focus on 49 films from around the world and dating back through cinematic history focusing on the color choices of the directors. Of the 49 films with sections I have seen 10 and have heard of another 10, the remaining 29 were movies I did not know existed. This book is one that I would only recommend for a true cinefile.

A gorgeous coffee table book exploring the palettes filmmakers used for their films. Bramesco does deep dives into what makes colors pop in a film. Be it the explanation of shooting The Wizard of Oz's Kansas scenes in black and white (although tinted in sepia) and then having the screen explode in three-strip Technicolor to how The Umbrellas of Chenoberg influenced the film La La Land, this is a perfect holiday/birthday gift to the film nerd in your life.

“Colors of Film: The Story of Cinema in 50 Palettes” by Charles Bramesco is a gorgeous exploration of the use of colour in film, both from the perspective of technique and for its dramatic and emotional qualities. Spanning more than a hundred years, from Méliès’ 1902 film, “A Trip to the Moon” to Steve McQueen’s 2020 film, “Lovers Rock”, Bramesco presents fifty iconic films and their colour palettes. Each film is presented in a one-page analysis of the colours used, the particular evocation of emotion or theme intended by the director, and includes a commentary on the techniques employed to achieve the desired colours. As much a book about the films themselves as a history of colour technique in film spanning the days of laborious hand-tinting, the use of layered films and Technicolor, Kodachrome and Fuji film, down to the modern advent of digital technologies. A discussion about the possibilities and limitations of each medium was well-integrated into the synopses and descriptions. Featuring films from across genres and from different countries, the author presents a balanced curation of films organised into four periods. Vibrant pages depicting iconic scenes accompanied by their colour palettes makes this an intriguing coffee table book for film enthusiasts and lay people alike.

This book is filled to the brim with gorgeous and passionate descriptions of colour and style used in a wide selection of films. The language and imagery used is so visual and rich, perfectly complimenting the stills from films and accompanying hexadecimal codes. Never have I been more excited by the writing style of a textbook, purely because it is so well written and the author is very clearly extremely knowledgeable about film in general, not just colour in film.

The collection of films displayed was great and relatively multicultural, and the prefaces at the beginning of each section were interesting as well. I think that some of the language or concepts would require a not insignificant level of prior film theory knowledge (as a third year film student I know I wouldn’t have been familiar with a lot of the terminology or films without having studied them for the past few years), but the text not being very broadly accessible isn’t to its detriment.

Also, personally I appreciated the acknowledgement of television, using Star Trek as an example, and the differences in technology used affecting the use of colour. There was also a great selection of further reading listed at the end.

This book was a great exploration of some of the greatest visual pallets in cinema. With a brief introduction to each film for context and a bit about the reasonings behind the artistic choices, this was a fun coffee table book that anyone could dip in and out of. While it ended abruptly, I would have liked to see a conclusion with some ponderings on what the future of cinema might look like, over all it was a great primer.

A fabulous look at how color impacts the movies we watch in a myriad of different ways, Fascinating, enjoyable and a feast for the eyes.

Charles Bramesco's cinematic encyclopedic brain is in full throttle mode in Colors of Film: The Story of Cinema in 50 Palettes, this sizable collection of film essays -- accompanied by screenshots broken down by color. He delves into the history of color cinematography in all its Technicolor and Eastmancolor glory.

In 50 chronological profiles, he recounts the painstaking hand-tinting process used to make Méliès A Trip to the Moon soar in 1902. He zooms into the costume color-coding in Kurosawa's Ran. He explains the bleach bypass that gives Fincher's Se7en its drab, lifeless vibe. And he looks at the stark day/night contrast that George Miller presents in Max Max: Fury Road.


The casual moviegoer will come for the stunning visual breakdown of hues, but the true cineaste will stay for the smart, behind-the-scenes details about the ebbs and flows of cinema technology. It's hard to talk about cinematography in print form, but Bramesco gives it a distinct vividness as only he can.

First nonfiction book I’ve read in a while, and I loved it! I loved the use of colors next to the pictures from the movies, and the descriptions were great. I was happy to see a few of my favorites, and a few new movies to add to my watchlist. I do think that because each movie got the exact same amount of description, some descriptions suffered. Some felt like they were trying to say a lot in too small of a space, and others felt like they were trying to meet a word count when there wasn’t much to say.