1922 Kodachrome Film Test
As I got caught up in the search for early color films (pre-1939 era) I chanced upon this video. I was somehow moved by it. When I scrolled through the comments I saw that I wasn’t alone…and that I did not expect.
There is something so transient, so beautifully, mortally human about these film tests. The images of the models (some were actresses and performers; Hope Hampton, Mary Eaton and Mae Murray) are arresting and inviting simultaneously. The color and clarity of the film, though not totally “true to life”, manage to be enough to provoke an air of reality. Powerful reality that transcends the “stuck-in-the-film” perception we all seem to have of images filmed long ago. These models do not look stuck in the film at all. They look like real women that had feelings and that breathed, not like grainy black and white paper dolls. It’s almost as if your best friend or sister dressed up in circa 1922 styling and stood in front of you, posing and smiling.
One particular reason this film touched me so much is that my grandmother, Rita, was born the same year this was shot. She is 89-years-old and remembers the Great Depression. My grandmother could have appeared in this very film as an infant. She is still alive today. This reminds me that for people in 1922 time passed just the same then as it does for us now. Life went on exactly the same way before we were born…and sometimes it is easy to imagine that everything must have been so different. But it really wasn’t.
Related articles
- Kodachrom Film Test 1922 (retrorambling.wordpress.com)
- What is Kodak Kodachrome (wiki.answers.com)
- Kodak – 1922 Kodachrome Film Test (retrorambling.wordpress.com)
