Technicolor
28 Episodes
Feast your eyes on some of the lushest spectacles in movie history with these candy-colored classics, portals into a teeming realm of dreams and fantasies.
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01:01Episode 1
Technicolor Teaser
Episode 1
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1:41:05Episode 2
Black Narcissus
Episode 2
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger • 1947 • United Kingdom
Starring Deborah Kerr, Sabu, David FarrarThis explosive work about the conflict between the spirit and the flesh is the epitome of the sensuous style of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. A group of nuns—played by som...
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2:14:40Episode 3
The Red Shoes
Episode 3
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger • 1948 • United Kingdom
Starring Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius GoringTHE RED SHOES, the singular fantasia from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is cinema’s quintessential backstage drama, as well as one of the most glorious Tech...
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1:50:19Episode 4
Leave Her to Heaven
Episode 4
Directed by John M. Stahl • 1945 • United States
Starring Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne CrainNovelist Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) seems to have found the perfect woman in Ellen (Gene Tierney), a beautiful socialite who initiates a whirlwind romance and steers him into marriage before he...
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2:44:20Episode 5
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Episode 5
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger • 1943 • United Kingdom
Starring Roger Livesey, Anton Walbrook, Deborah KerrConsidered by many to be the finest British film ever made, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP, by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is a stirring masterpiece like...
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2:25:29Episode 6
Juliet of the Spirits
Episode 6
Directed by Federico Fellini • 1965 • Italy
Cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo's masterful use of Technicolor transforms Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini's first color feature, into a kaleidoscope of dreams, spirits, and memories. Giulietta Masina plays a betrayed wife whose inability to come to te...
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2:38:47Episode 7
Richard III
Episode 7
Directed by Laurence Olivier • 1955 • United Kingdom
Starring Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Claire BloomIn RICHARD III, director, producer, and star Laurence Olivier brings Shakespeare’s masterpiece of Machiavellian villainy to ravishing cinematic life. Olivier is diabolically captivat...
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1:36:00Episode 8
Desert Fury
Episode 8
Directed by Lewis Allen • 1947 • United States
Starring John Hodiak, Lizabeth Scott, Burt LancasterLurid Technicolor, deep-dish melodrama, and gay subtext abound in this pulpy noir firecracker. In the desert town of Chuckawalla, Nevada, tempers flare, passions spark, and violence erupts when Pa...
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1:46:34Episode 9
The Thief of Bagdad
Episode 9
Directed by Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, and Tim Whelan • 1940 • United Kingdom
Starring John Justin, Sabu, June DuprezLegendary producer Alexander Korda’s marvel THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, inspired by “The Arabian Nights,” is one of the most spectacular fantasy films ever made, an eye-popping effe...
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Senso
Episode 10
Directed by Luchino Visconti • 1954 • Italy
Starring Alida Valli, Farley GrangerThis lush, Technicolor tragic romance from Luchino Visconti stars Alida Valli as a nineteenth-century Italian countess who, during the Austrian occupation of her country, puts her marriage and political principle...
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1:40:41Episode 11
Summertime
Episode 11
Directed by David Lean • 1955 • United States, United Kingdom
Starring Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi, Darren McGavinWith this sublimely bittersweet tale of romantic longing, director David Lean left behind the British soundstage to capture in radiant Technicolor the sun-splashed glory of Ve...
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The River
Episode 12
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1951 • France, United Kingdom, India, United States
Starring Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight, Arthur ShieldsDirector Jean Renoir’s entrancing first color feature, shot entirely on location in India, is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the fi...
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34:27Episode 13
The Red Balloon
Episode 13
Directed by Albert Lamorisse • 1956 • France
Starring Pascal LamorisseRarely has the spirit of childhood been evoked as exquisitely as in this Academy Award–winning cinematic fable, a fantasy with the texture of reality. On the streets of 1950s Paris, a young boy (played by director Albert Lamo...
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1:36:14Episode 14
Blithe Spirit
Episode 14
Directed by David Lean • 1945 • United Kingdom
Starring Rex Harrison, Margaret Rutherford, Kay HammondBLITHE SPIRIT, David Lean’s delightful film version of Noël Coward’s theater sensation (onstage, it broke London box-office records before hitting Broadway), stars Rex Harrison as a novelist wh...
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Inferno
Episode 15
Directed by Roy Ward Baker • 1953 • United States
Starring Robert Ryan, Rhonda Fleming, William LundiganMegawealthy industrialist Donald Carson III (Robert Ryan) breaks his leg while on a trip through the Mojave desert, and rather than find help, his scheming wife (Rhonda Fleming) and her lover...
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Henry V
Episode 16
Directed by Laurence Olivier • 1944 • United Kingdom
Starring Laurence Olivier, Leslie Banks, Robert NewtonOlivier mustered out of the navy to film this adaptation of Shakespeare’s history. Embroiled in World War II, Britons took courage from this tale of a king who surmounts overwhelming odds ...
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1:35:28Episode 17
The Horse’s Mouth
Episode 17
Directed by Ronald Neame • 1958 • United Kingdom
Starring Alec Guinness, Kay Walsh, Renee HoustonIn Ronald Neame’s film of Joyce Cary’s classic novel, Alec Guinness transforms himself into one of cinema’s most indelible comic figures: the lovably scruffy painter Gulley Jimson. As the ill-behave...
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1:31:06Episode 18
The Mikado
Episode 18
Directed by Victor Schertzinger • 1939 • United States
Starring Kenny Baker, Martyn Green, Sydney GranvilleThe legendary Gilbert and Sullivan troupe the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company joined forces with Hollywood for this 1939 Technicolor version of the beloved comic opera “The Mikado,” the first w...
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1:51:09Episode 19
This Happy Breed
Episode 19
Directed by David Lean • 1944 • United Kingdom
Starring Robert Newton, Celia JohnsonDavid Lean brings to vivid emotional life Noël Coward’s epic chronicle of a working-class family in the London suburbs over the course of two decades. Robert Newton and Celia Johnson are surpassingly affecting a...
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1:35:50Episode 20
The Importance of Being Earnest
Episode 20
Directed by Anthony Asquith • 1952 • United Kingdom
Starring Michael Redgrave, Joan Greenwood, Dame Edith EvansOscar Wilde’s comic jewel sparkles in Anthony Asquith’s film adaptation of THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. Featuring brilliantly polished performances by Michael Redgrave, Joan Greenw...
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1:47:39Episode 21
Tunes of Glory
Episode 21
Directed by Ronald Neame • 1960 • United Kingdom
Starring Alec Guinness, John MillsIn Ronald Neame’s TUNES OF GLORY, the incomparable Alec Guinness plays Jock Sinclair—a whiskey-drinking, up-by-the-bootstraps commanding officer of a peacetime Scottish battalion. A lifetime military man, Sinclai...
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1:45:56Episode 22
Jungle Book
Episode 22
Directed by Zoltán Korda • 1942 • United Kingdom
This Korda brothers film is the definitive version of Rudyard Kipling's classic collection of fables. Sabu stars as Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves, who can communicate with all the beasts of the jungle, friend or foe, and who gradually reacclima...
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The Drum
Episode 23
Directed by Zoltán Korda • 1938 • United Kingdom
Zoltán Korda's charged adaptation of a novel by The Four Feathers author A. E. W. Mason features Sabu in his second film role, as the teenage Prince Azim, forced into hiding when his father, the ruler of a peaceful kingdom in northwest India, is...
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2:08:04Episode 24
Caesar and Cleopatra
Episode 24
Directed by Gabriel Pascal • 1945 • United Kingdom
Vivien Leigh and Claude Rains pop off the screen in vivid Technicolor in Gabriel Pascal's version of Shaw's 1901 play about love and politics in ancient Rome and Egypt. At the time the most expensive British film ever produced (complete with r...