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This question occurred to me when watching Dune: Part Two, where Giedi Prime is depicted as an almost completely grayscale environment. While the movie doesn't explain how this effect occurs, it's an actual effect noticed by the characters.

This trope doesn't seem to be particularly common so I wonder which production came up with it first.

TVTropes has a Deliberately Monochrome trope page, but most of their examples use monochrome as a stylistic choice only. (To be honest, though, I didn't go through every single one of their long list of examples.)

What I'm looking for:

  • The monochrome environment is an actual part of the plot or story, not just a stylistic choice or an artistic element. For example, Sepia Kansas from The Wizard of Oz doesn't count.
  • The monochrome environment must be pervasive, affecting people and things introduced into it more than just a trick of the light. For example, simple night or darkroom scenes do not count. It should be some magical or technological effect actively affecting everything, except maybe special characters or objects resistant to it.

What I have found so far:

  • Live-Action TV: Star Trek: Voyager has Captain Proton, first shown in the 1998 episode Night. While Captain Proton is a (fictional) 1930ish show originally shot in black-and-white, the Voyager holodeck recreation is programmed to remove all colors (including The Doctor's, who is rudely monochromized by Ensign Kim).
  • Live-Action Film: The 2004 movie The Trixxer features a location called BlackWhite Castle, one of the last castles in England still black-and-white. This example is somewhat borderline since the movie's intention is to lampoon 1960s Edgar-Wallace-style crime films rather than be a fantasy movie, but within the movie it's an actual magical effect noticed by the characters.
  • Animation: Not sure. The 1968 animation Yellow Submarine comes pretty close, but the result of the Blue Meanies invasion is not fully monochrome and it's not a pervasive effect after the fact.

Surely there must be earlier examples.

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5
  • Not particularly old and maybe not fully qualifying according to your definition, but Samurai Jack S04E01 ("Jack vs. the Ninja", year 2003) has a mostly-black-and-white scene where the protagonist and a ninja robot fight, the former using his skills and the environment to effectively disappear in the light, the latter hiding in the shadows.
    – lfurini
    Commented Aug 11 at 13:39
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    Woody Allen's Zelig exists only in newsreels so in a way he lives in a grayscale, 2D world. By quite a stretch of your criteria, I'll grant you.
    – François Jurain
    Commented Aug 11 at 16:40
  • I find it curious that you excluded Sepia Kansas from the Wizard of Oz, but you don't mention the Emerald City. The mandatory tinted glasses make this a literal trick of the light, but then again all color perception is a trick of the light, and the fact that it is a trick is only revealed later. Does the Emerald City count?
    – Tashus
    Commented Aug 14 at 16:15
  • @Tashus the Emerald City tint is an in-universe trick: the people of Oz see the city green / greener because of the green glasses they wear. The monochrome sepia Texas tint is an out-of-universe trick: movie viewers are surprised by it, but fictional-Texas inhabitants do not live in a sepia world, just like real-Texas in not sepia toned.
    – lfurini
    Commented Aug 17 at 13:17
  • @ifurini It's Kansas, not Texas. My point is that the Emerald City is initially presented as a magical effect. It is later revealed to be a trick, but it is a depiction of a monochromatic area, at first.
    – Tashus
    Commented Aug 17 at 15:25

4 Answers 4

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10

Tex Avery's Lucky Ducky (1948)...?

It's hunting season, and all the ducks are wisely staying undercover - apart from this freshly-hatched little duckling, who turns out to be more than a match for two inept would-be hunters...

It's a short cartoon about two anthropomorphic dogs attempting to hunt and shoot a duckling who keeps finding ways to evade them, to comic effect.

While pursuing the duckling near the middle of the cartoon, they pass a signpost that reads "TECHNICOLOR ENDS HERE" and cross a boundary, on the other side of which they and everything else (except the signpost) are rendered in black & white.

Image of the boundary between the technicolor landscape and the black & white landscape, from "Lucky Ducky" (1948).

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3

For a live-action movie, Pleasantville is from 1998 so predates your 2004 example. The black-and-white environment is a plot point.

From Wikipedia:

A mysterious TV repairman suddenly arrives and, impressed by David's knowledge and love of Pleasantville, a black-and-white 1950s sitcom about the idyllic Parker family, gives him an unusual remote control before departing. When they use it, David and Jennifer are transported into the Parkers' house, in Pleasantville's black-and-white world [...]

[Jennifer] has sex with Skip, who is shocked by the experience, which leads to the first bursts of color appearing in town.

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0

There are many early movies where most of the action is in black and white but some of the scenes are in color. And usually the color sequences are the special ones which might be set in a special environment.

An early example of a live action movie where color is the default but monochrome is used to make scenes different is Quatermass and the Pit or Five Million Years to Earth (1967) where only the recorded scenes of life on Mars millions of years ago are in monochrome.

An earlier example in a live action movie is The Angry Red Planet (1959) which is mostly in color, but the exterior scenes on Mars are monochrome red.

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-1

The Wizard of Oz (1939) makes use of monochrome in the beginning and the end (while most of the film is in color) to show the large contrast between reality for Dorothy Gale and her dream/fantasy.

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3
  • Note that, for whatever reason, the question claims "Sepia Kansas from The Wizard of Oz doesn't count."
    – DavidW
    Commented Aug 12 at 16:49
  • 1
    The monochrome in Wizard of Oz is a stylistic choice or a metaphor, not an actual objective reality experienced by the characters. Is there a way the question could express this more clearly?
    – Alexander Klauer
    Commented Aug 12 at 21:56
  • 1
    @AlexanderKlauer: Terms like "in-universe" (or "Watsonian") and "diegetic" might help, though FWIW, I actually thought the question was clear enough.
    – ruakh
    Commented Aug 12 at 23:39

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