Rhapsody in Green

Abstract

This chapter examines the presence of the color green in several films, notably Call Me by Your Name (2017) and The Boy with Green Hair (1948), to suggest how, of all colors, green has a special—transparent and provoking—capacity to come alive in the temple of thought. It is argued here that cinematic green, with its immediate and uncultured presence, often states its force without direction or signification, existing before, or even in place, of any symbolic meaning. A central example of green grass in a sequence from Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) is conceptually linked to the color’s presence in the paintings of Jan van Eyck, suggesting color in cinema, as elsewhere, affects us, palpably and directly, in and of itself—not because of what it signifies, but because of what it is.