The Color of the Uniforms

I hadn't seen this movie since it was first broadcast on TV. I remember it being a big deal, because of Richard Thomas' huge Waltons fame. In recent years I've become fascinated by WWI and have been reading as much as I could. I've just begun watching the movies, the last one being Paths of Glory (excellent cinematography during the battle scene I thought).

I was so interested in seeing a WWI movie that was in color, so I rented this. I was excited and disappointed when saw how the uniforms looked. The Germans were in brown uniforms with green helmets, and the French seemed to be iridescently glowing blue in theirs. In general, some of the colors were over saturated. This is even commented on in Goofs section of this movie.

Having some experience in TV and advertising, I remembered that not all colors translate well when broadcast and have to compensated by being “color corrected for television”. I’ve seen this too while watching broadcasts being taped. An actors green shirt may appear dark gray or even black on the tape. I think this may have been the case with this movie, as it was shot for TV. You may even notice that German soldiers in the background look like they have gray uniforms on, but the soldiers in the foreground have the brown ones on. The transferred movie to DVD may not have accounted for this, and this may explain the inaccurate color of the uniforms. This is just a theory I have and I don’t know if this can be applied to any other made for TV movies, because we’re not sure what the colors of the actors clothing should be, whereas here we have historical information to reference.


Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?