Movies about The color red
Red is probably the most charged of all primary colours. Reminiscent of roses, blood and fire and emblematic of love, passion and lust, colour red accompanies all of these things and situations in life that are intense, beautiful or mysterious.
It is as known, as it is intelligible, that all colours function in a way that provokes human psychological responses. Each and every one of them is followed by impressions that have to do with the way that it interacts with the mind of the viewer. Furthermore, different cultures and societies provide colours with even more semantic dimensions.
Red has undoubtedly a unique ability to awaken great feelings and thoughts to spectators. This is a reason why it is usually preferred by filmmakers and cinematographers that want to transfer powerful images to their audiences. If colours in general are essential constituents of a film’s mise-en-scène, capable of bearing meanings, symbolisms and emotional undertones red is in particular the one to accelerate this empathising process.
In this list one can find movie titles that manifest different cinematic uses of colour red. From horror films to romantic comedies and art-house films to blockbusters, red seems to be utilised to express multifarious feelings that interact with the audiences both in a conscious and a sub-conscious level.
The examples below showcase the wide capacity of a colour to incorporate nuances that appeal simultaneously to human emotions, psychology and mind as it was realised and actualised by various directors in the history of cinema.
1. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)
In the Mood for Love is probably Wong Kar-wai’s most highly praised film and it owes a huge part of its visual and intellectual appeal to colour red.
The magnificent cheongsam dresses of Maggie Cheung, the retro tapestry covering the walls of the tiny Hong Kong rooms and apartments, the dancing curtains and warm bed covers are all painted in hues of red. This is partly a by-product of Christopher Doyle’s canny and stirring cinematography that complements Wong Kar-wai’s obsession with warm, saturated colours.
Red expresses first of all what is so eloquently phrased in the title of the film: love, the need to love and be loved. The two protagonists of the movie have a rough time as they are both cheated by their unfaithful spouses.
Throughout a reconstruction and a re-enactment of this traumatic event, they verge into a trip into their own feelings that are based on the contradiction of being betrayed but still experiencing a natural call to feel passion and desire.
Red becomes, therefore, an incarnation of this exact contradiction: grief against the will to live and condemnation against exsanguination. In the Mood of Love is chiefly a film that negotiates traumas, hopes and fears. And all of these abstract but coherent notions could be substantiated in no other colour than red.
2. Americká krása (Sam Mendes, 1999)
Red is indisputably a central motif in American Beauty. It can be detected in most of the scenes of the film, brushing furniture, household appliances, accessories and clothes. Its most compelling manifestation, however, is expressed through red roses that can be traced almost everywhere.
In Lester’s garden, inside the vases located in different buildings, in the form of bouquets or petals. Probably the most recognisable image of the film, that where Lester’s object of desire is laying naked inside a bathtub, is saturated in red petals that construct the man’s very dream-scape.
The middle aged man is representative of a suburban kind of life. Red, in the shapes that it takes inside the film’s mise-en-scène, is indicative of his repressed lust, agony and anger. Lester wants to break free from the routine that he chose for himself. The young and lascivious Angela is an embodiment of everything that he has been hiding under the veil of a supposedly perfect and peaceful life.
In the face of the temptation that she imposes on him, all of the hidden emotions spring out of his unconscious. Interestingly enough their encounter that starts with scarlet red roses will end up in a red of a different substance: that of the dying Lester’s blood. Passion, birth of desire and the death of it: it all gets initiated and finished in different shades of vermilion.
3. Belle de Jour (Luis Bunuel, 1967)
Belle de Jour is Bunuel’s very first colour film. The godfather of surrealism establishes a unique detached but alluring cinematic atmosphere around Catherine Deneuve’s character: a young married woman who decides to become a prostitute in order to satisfy her sexual desires.
Being inside a marriage that provides her with no physical intimate pleasures, she decides to act upon her fantasies that include a promiscuous type of behaviour. Her lust and animalistic, but natural, instincts have to find a response that has nothing to do though with the discovery of true love or any other high praised ideal.
In the opening sequence of the film, Belle de Jour (the nickname that the woman gets when she starts working as a prostitute) is placed inside a dreamy environment. She is inside a carriage, sitting next to her husband, heading towards an unknown direction. When, after the man’s order, the horses stop moving, the woman gets dragged outside it, she is tied on a tree and is molested by the two drivers of the cab who whip her with the blessings of her own husband.
The sequence is marked by the red coloured red dress that the heroine is wearing and paves the way for the continuation of the salacious overarching plot that is going to follow. Deneuve keeps on getting dressed on red outfits in various instances of the film and the colour arises as a clear articulation of carnal pleasure’s and lust’s natural magnetism.
4. Sin City (Frank Miller & Robert Rodriguez, 2005)
One of the reasons why colour red so easily stands out inside cinematic environments is its inherent ability to perfectly contrast other colours. This is a fact that Sin City exploits to the very core. Black and white on its basis, the rare but sharp-witted uses of red seem like an oasis in the desert of the highly stylised absence of colour.
Red in this film assumes more of a decorative value than a symbolic or metaphorical operation. It embellishes the already dashing appearance of the film and designates it as a delicious eye candy.
The ruby lipstick of Eva Green, the converse all-stars shoes of Elijah Wood, the car that Bruce Willis drives, the bed covers of Jessica Alba are emerging as pop culture items through their colourful appeal. Red, once again, is used as an epitome of female sexuality, lust, power and death.
All of these elements together blend perfectly with each other in order to produce a film viewing experience that is cool and deeply enjoyable. Furthermore, red fits perfectly with the personas of Sin City’s creators. Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez, cornerstones of modern extreme fiction could create nothing that resists the colour of blood.
5. Three Colours: Red (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993)
The last instalment of Kieślowski’s colour trilogy is the perfect homage to all shades of red. The colour operates in various levels inside the film: it affects and defines the dramaturgy, the narrative and the aesthetics.
The main heroine is encircled by red objects throughout the whole film: most of her clothes, the walls of her house and its decoration are all red. Furthermore, the places that she visits and the surroundings of the people she meets are also saturated in warm shades. Even her own name, Valentine, echoes the same colour through its meaning that is synonymous to love, passion and affection.
A great example of the colour’s capacity to embody feelings, memories, actions and reactions can be traced in a red jacket that Valentine has inside her room. At first the clothe looks like just another item that contributes in the chromatic harmony of the film. Later, though, the viewers are informed that it is connected to her lover. The jacket, therefore, becomes an object that represents the nature of a love relationship through its chromatic eloquence.
Three Colours: Red is undeniably a dithyrambic approach to the colour’s ability to express a wide range of emotions: from passion to danger and from hope to disappointment, indicating all of the idiosyncrasies that a love affair so naturally entails.
6. The Red Balloon (Albert Lamorisse, 1956)
The Oscar award-winning The Red Balloon narrates the short, minimalistic story of a young boy that one day crosses roads with a big, vivid coloured red balloon. The boy soon realises that the balloon has its own intelligence and is able to take decisions on its own, following him everywhere he goes and being his constant companion throughout his daily activities. The colour is representative of most of the values of childhood, as they contrast themselves to the monotony of the world of the grown-ups.
The red balloon, therefore, emerges, once again, as a symbol of dreams and the inherent oblivion and innocence of youth. It is no coincidence that the toy follows the boy no matter why. When his mother doesn’t allow it to come inside their house it keeps being close to the boy gazing towards him outside his window.
When it enters the classroom, it provokes the angry responses of the boy’s classmates and other children on the street face it with jealousy and suspicion. The red balloon, therefore, becomes an embodiment of the unstoppable power of children’s energy. No matter the obstacles and the obstructions it is omnipresent both in joy and sorrow, for better or worse.
7. I’m a Cyborg but that’s OK (Park Chan-wook, 2006)
I’m a cyborg but that’s OK is Park Chan-wook’s one and only contribution in the romantic-comedy genre. It features a young girl, Young-goon, who is hospitalised into a psychiatric institution, after a supposed suicide attempt. Young-goon’s pathology stems from her belief that she is a robot and therefore refuses to operate in a human way.
Inside the institution she is going to meet Il-soon, a schizophrenic, kleptomaniac man that will quickly fall for her. The film is mainly characterised by cold or neutral colours: blue, green and white decorate the dominant visual elements.
Interestingly enough, though, in one particular key scene of the film, the main heroine is dressed in a vivid scarlet red outfit that contrasts the overall chromatic coherence of the movie. In that scene Young-goon is working in a factory, before being hospitalised, and suddenly cuts her veins in an effort to connect them wires that befit her cyborg nature. This act is the one that fuels the very start and the evolution of the film’s narrative.
Red, therefore, can be seen as the girl’s determination to show her true nature and fight for it, even if that demands sacrificing a huge part of herself: her humanity. That is the only point of the film where the viewers have the chance to witness such a radiant colour manifestation, probably because it is a marker of Young-goon’s emancipation and strive for individuality.
8. Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
Steven Spielberg’s epochal film is shot almost exclusively in black and white. There are , however, two exceptions that break the chromatic consistency of the movie. The first of them can be traced in the opening scene, which is shot in colour and features a pair of hands that light two candles for the Sabbath.
The candles are the objects that rule the whole sequence and as the latter is heading towards its end the red flame of an almost completely burned candle transforms to dense smoke that slowly evaporates and gives its place to the next, black and white sequence.
The absence of colour inside the film is employed for various reasons: it lends a documentary style to the overall appearance of the film, fits perfectly with the tragic nature of its narrative and elevates the shades that render the faces of the heroes.
The gloomy black and white uniformity of the film will get disrupted, for the second time, through the figure of a little girl that is dressed in a red coat. This girl was meant to become one of the most characteristic symbols that can be found in contemporary films. The colour red that marks her appearance bears plenty of meanings inside the context of the movie. It represents the innocence and joy of childhood that collide with the death and monstrosity of the Holocaust.
Furthermore, the moment that Schindler’s eyes catch the figure of the girl indicates a change deep inside him, a realisation of the animosity that is inflicted on Jews and humanity. This very collision becomes evident the second time that the girl with the red coat appears, this time within a pile of dead bodies. Red, therefore, becomes a reminder for both Schindler and the viewer of all the purity and love that was lost in the fires of the Holocaust.
9. Pleasantville (Gary Ross, 1998)
Pleasantville is another case of a -partly- black and white film that uses colour as a storytelling devise. David and Jennifer are two typical teenage siblings that live their lives in the glorious 1990s. Having two exact opposite personalities, they fight with each other and they care for different things in life. One day a mysterious man will give them a non-conventional remote control that will transfer them into the reality of a 1950’s black and white sitcom that takes place in the town of Pleasantville.
The absence of any colourful shade in the small and picturesque town signifies the routine and monotony of its residents’ lives. Every single gesture and movement that they make seems to be choreographed in the style of a soap-opera. David and Jennifer, coming from the colourful future, will bring changes to the fictional landscape, inserting colours to objects and people.
Red is important inside the framework of this film not because of its over-abundance but due to its introduction in key moments of the plot. It is the very first colour to be introduced in Pleasantville, through the form of a rose. A scarlet rose: symbol of life, passion, sexuality and youth represents the role that the two protagonists play in the boring town. They are there to awaken forgotten feelings and emotions and break the routine of a tedious and literally scripted lifestyle.
10 great films that make striking use of the colour red
Blood and passion, lipstick and tomatoes. As Cries and Whispers returns to cinemas for its 50th anniversary, we round up some of cinema’s most memorable uses of the colour red.
Cries and Whispers (1972)
A splash of red is rarely just a splash of red. Often it symbolises death. Two girls in red coats – one in Don’t Look Now (1973) and one in Schindler’s List (1993) – are tragic figures haunting film history. A woman lies dying in a house full of red walls in Cries and Whispers (1972). The moment of death is bloodless, as the colour of her spent lifeforce is outsourced to the walls.
Plenty of films are less coy about bloodshed and whole genres are built on gore. It would be easy to fill every spot on this list with slashers and gialli, creating a similar impression to the elevator doors opening in The Shining (1980).
Although there does seem to be a theme of sadness, loss, violence and death to movies that make the most unabashed use of red, it is also the colour of passion. Sometimes primal feelings are too much for gentle or defeated people to confront. Pedro Almodóvar and Wong Kar Wai use red in their production designs to express what their characters cannot.
To lighten the mood: enter the scarlet seductress. “She is always alluring,” says Catherine Bray in her Inside Cinema video essay, Women in Red. One such siren adds sparkle to this list: it’s Marilyn Monroe, the greatest bombshell who ever lived in her star-making role.
The Red Balloon is a seemingly simple children’s film that won an Academy Award in 1956. Its use of red in both visual and emotional terms is the gold standard.
Červené boty (1948)
Režie: Michael Powell a Emeric Pressburger
As Brian De Palma would do later in Carrie (1976), Powell and Pressburger (the filmmaking duo known as The Archers) complement their use of visceral vermillion with the natural locks of a red-headed woman. Moira Shearer plays the ill-fated Vicky, an ingenue ballet-dancer beckoned under the oppressive wing of dance impresario Boris Lermontov (a brilliantly villainous Anton Walbrook, who is awarded the most memorable lines). Vicky is cast in the ballet of The Red Shoes, about a bewitched pair of ballet shoes that cause their wearer to dance themselves to death. The score is written by a young composer, also a redhead, and they fall in love, to the disapproval of Lermontov.
When Vicky is invited into a room to be offered the lead part, each figure of authority is surrounded by a splash of red, a portent of things to come. The Archers make a motif of red, white and blue, dressing Shearer, with her porcelain skin and auburn hair, in a colour wheel of blues.
Pánové mají radši blondýnky (1953)
Režie: Howard Hawks
For the opening number of Howard Hawks’ Technicolor musical, Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell sing about being two little girls from Little Rock, while shimmying in red sequin gowns split in all the right places. These are dazzling show-stopping outfits that cause a Roger Rabbit eyes-popping-out-of-head effect in the viewer. This was the film that made Monroe an above-the-title star, and her presence as Lorelei Lee, a pragmatic gold-digger opposite Russell’s fool-for-love Dorothy is just as thrilling today as it was nearly 70 years ago.
Costume designer William Travilla received plaudits for the fuschia pink gown and gloves Monroe wore to sing ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’, a number that takes place against a rose background while Monroe, more fluid than solid and dripping in diamonds, is pursued by goggle-eyed male dancers in candy-striped sashes. Something she wears, whatever the outfit, is a slick of come-hither red lipstick.
The Red Balloon (1956)
Director: Albert Lamorisse
The Red Balloon holds the accolade of being the only short film to have won best original screenplay at the Academy Awards. This shows sophistication on behalf of the Academy, because barely a word is spoken in this 35-minute family film about a young boy, Pascal, son of director Albert Lamorisse, who finds a juicy red balloon with a mind of its own.
Muted greys dominate the Parisian neighbourhood of Ménilmontant where Pascal roams, so the balloon pops out of the frame like a glacé cherry in smog. It is a playful creature that enjoys leaping out of the way of adults that reach for its string, retaining patient loyalty to Pascal by following him. Of course, such a gorgeous vibrant balloon draws envy. The sense of peril when neighbourhood boys give chase is a testament to the spare, clean dramatic lines generated by Lamorisse (who also invented the board game Risk). The red balloon represents anything you want it to. That is its beauty.
Cries and Whispers (1972)
Režie: Ingmar Bergman
Cries and Whispers was inspired by a recurring dream that Ingmar Bergman had of four women in white clothing whispering to each other in a red room. Like many of the films on this list, a statement of intent is present from the first title card, as orange-red fills an otherwise blank screen. Bergman repeats this colourful blank screen as a pause after climaxes in his domestic drama about three sisters – one of whom, Agnes (Harriet Andersson), is dying in bed – and their live-in maid.
The women almost look like angels floating about a hellscape, as every room has red walls. Once Agnes dies, the remaining two sisters recast themselves as hamstrung by petty concerns, with the maid emerging as having had the purest love for the deceased. The most visceral moment involves shards of glass and a vagina, as if to prove that life is messier than death.
Carrie (1976)
Režisér: Brian De Palma
Pig’s blood, a red convertible, Sissy Spacek’s hair, wine-coloured candles and a pale pink dress seen as red through a fundamentalist mother’s eyes. These are some of the key ingredients of Carrie. Brian De Palma adapted Stephen King’s novel, which is one of the saddest horror tales in existence. Humiliation and rejection push Carrie White (white is an invitation to red), the shy loner with telekinetic powers, towards a finale of destruction. This bursts out of her as the culmination of feelings so powerful that they cause literal combustions.
Lured into a sweet and short-lived feeling of belonging at high-school prom, only to have pig’s blood poured on her during a moment in the limelight, Carrie snaps, pushed to the edge by her violent mother. Hers is not a maniacal-laughter mode of vengeance; it is grief-fuelled. The red that has dripped steadily since the opening scene, where she gets her period, erupts in a torrent that makes a mockery of the fire trucks that arrive on the scene too late.
Sigh (1977)
Režie: Dario Argento
The prime colour of Dario Argento’s body of work is characterised by the title of his 1975 film, Deep Red, itself inspiration for a modern giallo film by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani called The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears (2013) – surely the most poetic description of blood.
Argento’s most famous film, Suspiria, follows American ballet student Suzy as she arrives at a creepy dance academy in Germany. Red light, torrential rain, an ominous Goblin score and a student fleeing through the woods mark her first night in town. The next day she returns to the academy housed in a sensational gothic building with an ornate red and gold facade. Inside, it is all pink walls, witchy symbols, creaky corridors and stained glass, ideal for bodies to crash through. Argento was inspired to reproduce the saturated colours of Technicolor Disney films, meaning that deaths are marked by blood pooling in a shocking neon red.
Three Colours: Red (1994)
Režie: Krzysztof Kieslowski
The final film in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours trilogy proved a swansong, as he died two years after its release. Each film represented a different colour on the French flag and a different ideal of the French Republic. Blue was liberty, white equality and red fraternity. Irène Jacob plays a young model, Valentine, who forms a friendship with a misanthropic retired judge who is spying on his neighbours. She turns up at his house by reading the address on the collar of a dog she hits with her car, thick dog-blood glooping out. Valentine does a shoot for a chewing gum advert with her Ferrari-red jumper matching the backdrop. The resulting image hangs by a traffic light, and the most iconic composition features a red car stopped by a red light under the advert.
Kieslowski does a complicated thing here in illustrating a corny idea, like the connectedness of all things, in a mysterious and sophisticated way. The use of red, like his overall artistry, is pointed but never heavy-handed.
V náladě pro lásku (2000)
Režie: Wong Kar Wai
Wong Kar Wai’s study of unconsummated desire revolves around two neighbours in 1960s British Hong Kong, Mr Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs Chan (Maggie Cheung), who realise that their spouses are having an affair with each other. Both lonely, they strike up a friendship but vow “not to be as bad as them”. This isn’t to say they aren’t tempted.
As they spend more time in Mr Chan’s rented apartment, red begins to show up with increasing vehemence in a production design previously dominated by shadows. A corridor is lined by candy-apple curtains, Mrs Chan perches on a carmine bedspread. Urges they dare not articulate are expressed through colour in the spaces they occupy. It’s a gorgeous and thorough use of location as an extension of character, leaving Cheung and Leung free to channel an exquisite restraint, as their more carnal sides are taken care of visually.
Musíme si promluvit o Kevinovi (2011)
Režie: Lynne Ramsay
Lynne Ramsay does not show the blood that 15-year-old Kevin spills after he turns a bow and arrow on his classmates. Instead, a red river roils from the opening dream sequence as Kevin’s mother, Eva (Tilda Swinton), visualises herself splattered with tomatoes at the Spanish festival, La Tomatina.
Children’s toys in eye-popping strawberry decorate a timeline set in her past family home as she searches her memory for clues about her sociopathic son. In the present timeline, she lives alone as a pariah, remembering the flashing siren of an ambulance and living off a diet of Merlot and ketchup-splashed eggs. On seeing the mother of one of Kevin’s victims in the supermarket, she hides behind a row of Campbell’s soup cans. Vandals cover her house and car in red paint. The paint sticks to her hair and hands, and, like a maternal Lady Macbeth, she can’t seem to wash it off.
julieta (2016)
Režie: Pedro Almodovar
A red dress is the backdrop to the opening title credits in Almodóvar’s drama about maternal suffering, adapted from three short stories (‘Chance’, ‘Soon’ and ‘Silence’) by Canadian novelist Alice Munro. Known for his vivid production designs, Almodóvar has form with studies in scarlet – see also supernatural film noir Volver (2006) and Tilda Swinton heartbreak vehicle The Human Voice (2020). In Julieta, bright red pops up with metronomic regularity through wardrobe, accessories and furnishing choices. The colour underlines the pain in Julieta’s heart after her teenage daughter, Antía, leaves for a mountain retreat and never returns home. Decades pass and Julieta is shown living in a subdued fashion, moving to a new house in a new neighbourhood, away from the house she shared with her daughter.
A pale colour scheme represents her attempt to keep life contained in the present. But after she runs into a friend of Antía in the street, red returns, reminding us of what pumps beneath her controlled surface.
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How Great Films use the Color Red
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The three primary colors are red, green and blue. Our eyes are designed this way, except at night when the rods in our eyes are active, and they don’t see red. It could be the reason why we feel night is blue or green or anything in between. We accept it in cinema, because it’s intuitively a part of us.
During the day the sky is blue. That blue reflected onto seas, lakes and rivers makes a lot of blue all around us. Our planet is called the blue planet, so it’s not hard to understand why our eyes would have adapted to understand blue.
Green is everywhere too, on trees and plants. It’s directly tied to life, and crucial for our survival. It’s no surprise our eyes have evolved to understand green.
We understand brown, the color of earth, mud, sand, our own skin. We understand the yellow orange of fire, of the sun at dawn and dusk. We also understand red, though red is hard to come by in nature. Sure there are plants, flowers and animals with red in them, but those are not prevalent everywhere, and not crucial to our survival.
The sky turns red sometimes, but only sometimes, and not everywhere geographically. Red is important to us, because red is the color of blood. Red is also the color of the muscle tissue within us, again because of the color of blood. Red is personal.
Early cave painters used ochre to paint caves. For special occasions, they preferred red ochre, which is rarer.
Why do we have this fascination for red? Studies have shown red is probably the color that has the strongest emotional reaction in most humans. What kind of emotion? Red has been associated with many things.
Red signifies danger. Traffic signs are in red, danger signs are in red.
Red signifies anger, and we even have a phrase for it, “seeing red”.
Red signifies sex. You might have heard of red-light districts. They’re quite common around the world. What’s more common are menstrual cycles, childbirth and the signs of losing virginity. It’s life written in blood.
Red also signifies wealth and good fortune in many parts of the world.
The significance of a color is never etched in stone, you can make any color signify anything. However, most of us can agree that if there’s red in the frame, your eye is drawn to it.
Maybe this is one of the reasons why a large majority of countries have red in their flags.
Red just has that power. Many filmmakers use red selectively to drive impact. It could be something plain and in your face, like the girl in the red dress in The Matrix, or the girl in the red dress in Schindlerův seznam. The first signifies lust, the second death and innocence.
Red can also be used boldly, as in Pedro Almodovar’s Všechno o mé matce. The color red accompanies tragedy after tragedy, and I got the distinct feeling that red signified weeping, or mourning. It pervades every scene to underlie that emotion.
Red is also used for love. Who can forget the rose petal scene from Americká krása, or Wong Kar Wai’s use of red throughout V náladě na lásku? Same color, different emotions.
Sometimes Red is picked for reasons best understood by the filmmaker. A good example is Tři barvy: červená. This film is part of a trilogy of films. The other two being Tři barvy: Modrá a Bílý. The colors are taken from the French flag.
Countless words have been written about the significance of the color red in Tři barvy: červená, but director Kiezlowski throws cold water on it:
“… the money [to fund the films] is French. If the money had been of a different nationality we would have titled the films differently, or they might have had a different cultural connotation. But the films would probably have been the same”.
You can see similar color choices being made by the Marvel Universe. Most heroes have costumes made of colors that are taken from the American flag. A different flag would have meant a different costume. That’s as much symbolism as they were willing to dive into.
Sometimes red is picked in all seriousness. In Barva granátových jablek red is used explicitly for dramatic impact. It has ties to the colors of old Armenia. However, the title was not the first choice of filmmaker Sergei Parajanov. The subject of the film is the life of poet Sayat-Nova. Yet, today, the film is tied inextricably to the color red. It has become the subject of the film itself, though that was not the original intention.
Red can be used for awe, as in the case of Hrdina. It looks spectacular, and goes with the film’s theme of delineating characters and their situations.
And lastly, Red can also be used as an idea. A message. Let’s look at how Red is used in Raising the Red Lantern. This is a film to which red has an inextricable link.
The story is about a young concubine who must join three others in a bleak house they can’t escape from. The house has old customs that everyone is expected to strictly follow. The most relevant custom is the lighting of red lanterns outside the home of the concubine the master decides to spend the night with.
It’s an elaborate choreographed ritual. Someone announces which house will have its lanterns lit that night, and nobody else is allowed to light red lanterns during that period. Everyone fights for the privilege of having red lanterns lit outside their homes, even the servants.
The master’s orders are embodied via red lanterns. We don’t really get to see the master clearly, or understand who he is, but the red lantern signifies his ever prevalent wishes. Even when he’s not present, the red lanterns are always lit inside the concubine’s rooms, to remind them of his grip over their fates. They are prisoners there, and they can’t ever forget it.
The color red is also a message. Other objects in the film can also take on the color red, to carry this message. For example, a messenger brings a message from the master, carrying a red umbrella.
In another scene, the wives are wearing clothes with different degrees of red in them. The fourth wife, with whom the master finds the most favor right now, is bathed in red. The third wife has less red on her clothes, the second even less, and the first wife has hardly any red, if at all.
In the final shot of the film, our protagonist surrounds herself with red lanterns, resigned to her fate. Very few films use color directly in this way. Though the key takeaway is you as a filmmaker gets to decide what a color signifies. There are no absolute rules when it comes to color. As strong as our reaction is to the color red, its significance is open to interpretation, and highly subjective, which is why few filmmakers can resist using it.
What are some great films you know with red as the dominant color?
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