Captain Hook's Red Coat (Part 3/3)

In this third and final installment I will sum up and discuss the overall color and lighting concepts found in Part 1 and 2 by way of analyzing the remaining three sequences of Disney's PETER PAN (1953) all of which feature Captain Hook's red coat in one way or another. I will finally look at the combination of red against blue.

Capturing The Kids

When the pirates approach the hangman's tree during Wendy's song about mothers in Seq. 13, the blue of Technicolor nights dominates the scene. In the establishing shot the characters appear dark against the pool of moonlight. The concepts of silhouettes against lighter backgrounds was a standard indication of nighttime scenes of the period. Audiences were used to infer day or night from conventionalized lighting cues because color films had to be shot "day for night" as the following screenshots from LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (Stahl, 1945) illustrate:

In studio shots, lighting conditions could be more closely adjusted to simulate night (left). However, dark characters against artificially darkened daytime landscapes was common practice to indicate night scenes when shot on location during the golden age of Hollywood. It is unclear, however, whether these scenes were supposed to be color corrected to look more blue in the original Technicolor prints as this DVD was probably made from a later non-dye-transfer release print.

Although in the PETER PAN scene the greenery looks pretty blue because of the night, the costume colors are merely darkened and not really affected by the blue cast. In closer shots, the lighting assumes the theatrical studio quality that is always possible in animation but was nevertheless carefully arranged to look "natural" enough:

The warm light emanating from Peter's hideout seems to come from the right rather than from below in order to illuminate both Smee and Hook so that they again stand out against the dark background. Hook's coat and (newly recovered?) hat look as rich and warm as in the sequence before when he wooed Tinker Bell. The faces are in full light and Hook looks stronger than ever (regarding colors, not animation that is certainly weaker than in the Frank Thomas or Woolie Reitherman scenes).

The package however is wrapped in the girly pink of Hook's shirt underneath.

Excursion into gender codes:
In this context it is probably noteworthy that Wendy is not dressed in pink but in light blue, for centuries the color for girls because blue is more receding than red.

The pink/male vs blue/female attribution was completely correct for a story set in a pre-war period. At night Wendy's blue dress stands out against the surroundings only by its lighter value.

In my first storybook which I loved exactly because it featured production stills rather than book illustrations, the publisher seemed to be worried about "dated" colors and "adjusted" (aka painted over) Wendy's dress in pink - probably to make it more accessible to a 1980s audience...

Whatever the reasons, the tinkering resulted in some absurd combinations like Wendy and Michael as one entity or a rather unattractive and narratively contradicting Peter - Wendy contrast:

How Wendy looked in the 1982 Unipart storybook.

Hook's Happy Hour
As we have seen in Hook's introductory scene, color-wise he is very much at home on his ship with all the reddish wood around him. Except for his skin, feathers and white frill he practically blends in with his surroundings and only stands out because the background is less saturated (whereas Smee clearly reads against the ship.

Hook tells us what happens to Peter when the clock strikes six.

While the children have been kidnapped late at night, the next scene on the pirate ship seems to take place during the following day. It is hardly plausible, however, that Peter did not attempt to open his gift for a whole day - unless we are talking about dream time. Time and clocks are a strong motif in this film about never ending childhood (think of Big Ben or the alarm clock within the crocodile) and at that moment we still do not know that - in the Disney version - we are inside Wendy's (rather the children's collective?) dream.

Hook may be shaved now (right), but the overall colors are the same as in the beginning (left)

The lilac sky around the ship indicates that we are either in the same spot as in the beginning or it is the same time (see above). At that moment the children are again in a similar situation tied to a pole. And again they see it as a lighthearted game and readily agree to become pirates.

The Sky Darkens
It is only at the moment when Peter's home explodes and Wendy is marching the planks that the clear sky is increasingly overcast as if the lighthearted atmosphere was overshadowed by the children's realization that Hook is probably a real threat.

When Wendy's walking the plank (Seq. 14.0 "the fight with the pirates" according to the production drafts) does not produce a splash or even a ripple, the pirates themselves become scared and the sky darkens considerably. And as if to reinforce the "pink undergarment" concept, the scared pirate is wearing exactly the same colors as Hook when he is shown weak and whiny.

The dark and rather desaturated clouds now almost obscure the purple sky so that Hook stands out not only because of the saturation of his red clothes but also because they everything around him is either very dark or very light when Peter finally reveals himself being alive.

Although the sky around the ship is dark, the ship itself is harshly lit in the same theatrical lighting style that produced the ongoing light and shadow contrast. But since this would be a subject for a whole article I will not discuss it any further here.

In a resuming of their earlier fight, Peter's evasiveness once again seems to be no match for Hook. Nevertheless, he still keeps his red coat firmly on. He is still angry and powerful, even when he almost falls off the ship in another cartoon moment that should feel out of place in a "realistic" Disney feature but still works (like the earlier concerning Hook walking on air above the crocodile).

Again Peter first destroys Hook's status symbol, his hat, and then lands a blow that leaves Hook with an open coat. But we still do not see anything pink underneath. Not yet. Hook is still angry and determined to kill the boy.

But then Peter agrees on a fair duel which means he must not fly. Instead he ties Hook up with his own Jolly Roger...

...so that Hook is covered by a blanket for the third and last time. Consequently, we do NOT see his red coat when he is embarrassed and ridiculed in front of the lost boys.

As we have seen in the beginning, all the adult men in this film behave like naughty children. So the moment Peter is releasing Hook as if he was ending a mutually agreed upon game the pirate breaks his word and strikes one last time which enables Peter to fly without being the traitor.

After all, the childish captain was still wearing his "strong" coat under the flag, but as soon as he falls into the water it is again devoured by the crocodile and for the remainder of the scene Hook is being chased helplessly screaming like a girl wearing only his pink and purple undergarments.

The Coat Makes The Captain
With Hook definitely out of the way, Peter is taking over the pirate ship and Hook's insignia (there really seems to be an endless supply of both hat and coat somewhere around the ship).

The flamboyant red and purple look so unexpectedly sensational on Peter because they are in maximum contrast to the green costume he has worn throughout the whole film.

Whenever Hook did not have his coat on and therefore was in a weak situation, he did not have his hat either. While his first substitute coat was a light blue (receding, girlish) blanket and the second was a blanket in the color of the crocodile, the third was not that soft and "weak" but rather dark with a strong picture in harsh black and white. After all, he was still able to strike one more time. Since a captain should be wearing some headdress, Hook's predicaments led to three compensatory "hats":

I feel the need to stress the following caveats one more time:
1) I am not saying that these color decisions have all been conscious or entirely based on rational rules. I am pretty sure that a lot of it simply felt right and was intuitively done because it looked right to the color stylists. But there is little doubt that once the basic concept was laid out they sought for coherence throughout a film.
2) The colors as seen on the BD/DVD are naturally different from those seen on a Technicolor 35mm print because they are based on different media and different color spaces. I am also aware that the digitally restored colors were altered in the process and I presume that the restoration heightened and clarified the color concept but I do not know to what degree. Sometimes it looks as if the point of reference was the original artwork and not the photographed artwork transformed by the Technicolor process, but this is speculation.
3) Although I have some reservations about all the de-grained 1950s Disney restorations (from CINDERELLA to LADY AND TRAMP), I certainly believe that they increase our awareness of the artists' original color concepts by eliminating the slightly shimmering quality of the original prints in favor of clinically clean images that match the digitally composited direct-to-DVD sequels. In short: they are great to study, but do not convey the experience of seeing the real film.

Captain Hook's Red Coat (Part 2/3)

In this second installment I am looking at the next three Captain Hook sequences in Disney's PETER PAN (1953). As we have already seen in Part 1, Captain Hook's flamboyant red coat is covering his pink and purple undergarments representing two layers of his personality. In the establishing scene, he was seen with and without his coat depending on whether he was strong and evil or vulnerable and whiny. Here, I will demonstrate that this notion is fortified by Hook's later scenes. Additionally, I will look at Hook's costume in the context of its surrounding colors.

Hook surrounded by red planks and purple sky.

In Hook's introductory sequence (No. 04.0 according to the studio drafts) we have seen that the planks of his pirate ship are reddish and the sky surrounding his presence is purple which makes him feel at home. The visual hierarchy of character over background, however, is still maintained by Hook's far more saturated costume colors.

Hook's next appearance (08.0 "Skull Rock") is preceded by sequence 07.0 "Mermaid Lagoon". I am including it here because of the temporal color contrast between the two:
The sky over the mermaid lagoon is slightly greenish-yellow which at first suggests that Peter is very much "at home" (as I like to call it when background colors reflect character colors).

It also sustains the basic magenta-green concept (actually a triad with blue) of the mermaid lagoon. And is a perfect backdrop for the mermaids' vitriolic jealousy attacks against Wendy. In the 1950s, unnaturally stinging magenta and purple almost always indicated strange or unsettling situations (unlike later when those same colors were used for love scenes in THE LION KING, 1994, and POCAHONTAS, 1995). As can be seen further below, the unusual color of the rocks also serve as orientation guides since only those around the mermaids are eerily magenta while the rocks in other locations are neutrally gray.

One of PETER PAN's basic concepts in both Barrie's play and Disney's visualization is the ambiguity of light and shadow. The theatricality of Barrie's play is often emphasized by recreating wholly artificial lighting situations that are grounded in theatrical traditions rather than location filming.

In this analysis, I will only touch upon it when it comes up in combination with a color change in connection with Captain Hook - as is the case in the following shot:

Suddenly a shadow falls over the lagoon for no apparent reason. But Peter immediately knows that Hook is coming. Technically the shadow cannot emanate from Hook who is passing in the distance in a small boat. It could probably come from a looming change in weather, i. e. a dark cloud that accompanies his appearance.

As we see in the reconstructed pan below, there is indeed a bank of clouds approaching from the left:

Pan reconstructed from three separate frames, which is quite easy since we are basically looking at the quasi-CAPS version of the film.

This is one of the frames that matches Mary Blair's sense of color quite good with the red sun against the greenish yellow sky: completely unnatural but easy on the eye.

And hardly surprising, these clouds color the sky violet/purple as you can see in the frame above. Soon the whole sky is covered in violet clouds, showing Peter and the crocodile out of their depth - only color-wise that is.

"Looks like they're heading for Skull Rock!"

Skull Rock
For the remaining shots outside Skull Rock the initial background color triad of magenta, green and blue is basically down to violet and blue balanced by neutral grays.

Pan reconstructed from three different setups (with deliberately visible overlapping rims).

Note that Skull Rock is completely devoid of color and therefore association with one of the characters in both Mary Blair's concept sketch and the final frame of film.

Mary Blair concept art lifted from Jim Hill Media.

To me, the resulting long shot is one of the most iconic images of my childhood since the "Skull Rock" sequence has always been one of my all time favorite scenes ever put on film.*

Contrast inside - outside: violet vs green.

By way of two dissolves the camera enters Skull Rock through one of the eye-sockets and establishes another beautiful temporal contrast: outside the overall mood was violet and strange, inside it is equally eerie but dominated by the emerald colored water. The neutral rocks and more or less constant skintones in both lighting setups strengthen our awareness of those dominating background colors.

It is in fact the first time, that Hook seems to be completely out of his element. Magenta and emerald green make for a strangely artificial contrast we often associate with the supernatural. What I particularly like about the lighting setup of this first part of the sequence is the expressionist lighting on the two characters:

Hook is coldly illuminated from up above resulting a highly saturated upper surface of his pirate's hat. Everything else is in the shadow showing him as a rather dark figure with slightly boosted skintones. Tiger Lily, however, is depicted as an almost radiating light character with clothes that are darker then her skintones.

When Hook is momentarily scared by Peter's imitation of a supernatural voice his face is completely in the shadow so that the frightened eyes stand out even more. As soon as the shock has worn off and he guesses who was behind the eerie voice, Hook's face is bright again so that we can see his facial expression much better.* Note also the glint on his hook that not only reflects the cold spotlight from above but also helps distinguish the hook from the blending in with the background:

Left: emphasis on the eyes; right: emphasis on the whole facial expression.

While Hook's clothes appear to be darker and more violet inside the harshly lit cave, he looks completely natural outside when surrounded by gray rocks and rather diffuse light:

The basic red - green complementary contrast of Peter and Hook is strongly visible against the colorless rocks outside.

The heart of the sequence is one of those beautifully designed set pieces that intersperse dramatic action and soaring flight scenes with cartoon swashbuckling. After the transition back inside, Hook is no longer seen in frightening magenta light as before. Now he is fighting a fearless boy who does not recognize him as a real threat. But still Hook is wearing both his hat and his strong red coat. The characters stand out against very dark and quite desaturated backgrounds.

Although the light and shadow pattern is still maintained for strong dramatic effects (the source of the pale light still seems to be high above), the green water is only visible in cutaways to Smee and Tiger Lily.

Again a perfectly matched Mary Blair color concept (by way of Jim Hill Media).

But then Hook is forced onto the defensive by Peter who first destroys his magnificent hat and then lures him (in the most controversial cartoony move) away from the rock so that he is only falling when he realizes it (like in a WB cartoon).

There goes the first part of the "strong and evil" Hook: his hat.

When he hangs from the cliff and hears the crocodile approaching, once again his left eye is covered up while he whines. Only this time it is not a blanket but his own flowing hair.

And the first thing the crocodile eliminates is - of course - Hook's red coat...

...so that he looks mainly magenta/purple when he is screaming like a little girl. Needless to say that this outfit works perfectly within the green-magenta color scheme of the crocodile that more than ever is at home in this emerald green water.

Captain Hook's Lair
After Hook has been chased into sunset, the next sequence fades in on an establishing shot of the silhouetted pirate ship against the moon:

The only other source of light is a small yellow bull's-eye in the captain's cabin. Inside the lighting is seemingly white insofar that all the objects and costumes look natural without a basic color tint: we see an almost bluish white chair and green garments against a ginger wooden interior (below left).

As is often the case in Disney features, the first time we see a room, all the props are painted in clearly distinguishable colors so that we get a sense of the stuff that surrounds a character. When the emphasis is on the characters in subsequent shots (above right), however, either everything outside the pool of light is less conspicuous or the background details are painted in hues closer to each other than in the establishing shot (as can be seen in the kitchen backgrounds in 101 DALMATIANS, 1961).

As is expected from a broad cartoon character, Hook's clothes have magically been mended. But he is still without his red coat and purple hat. Instead he is covered with a green blanket and wearing a red hot-water bottle on his head. Both colors are slightly pastel. At this moment he is probably at his weakest - and wearing green.

Unfortunately, Blogger somehow changed the color of this JPG. The blanket does not look as different from the shots above as it seems here.

After Smee's hammer and hot water accidents (resulting in a tea kettle on the captain's head), Hook's vitality is rapidly returning and within seconds he decides to kidnap Tink whereupon he calls for his best coat (there seems to be an endless supply; in the German version, by the way, he asks for his best English coat) and Smee is happily assisting his master who has found his old strength.

"Get me best coat!"

While there is no sign of a new hat, the coat is closed and Hook dons a golden Hook, making his appearance even stronger and more wealthy.

In The Red Hot Lion's Den
After Smee has captured Tink, the next Hook sequence (No. 11 "Hook tricks Tinker Bell") is again taking place within the captain's cabin. But unlike the previous scene that only showed a weak light and a room that was evenly lit color-wise...

Introduction to sequence 09.0 "Hook has a cold".

Introduction to sequence 11 "Hook trick Tinker Bell". What looks like a candle is none other than the jealous fairy.

...the wooing scene is established by having all of the ship's windows glow reddish. And the interior now is illuminated by a warm golden light that blends the golden props (no contrasting colors whatsoever) with Hook's very strong red. There is hardly a sign of purple. And since skin tones and Smee's clothes are not affected by the mood lighting, our perception does not balance the red hot overall tone. Most important of all, there is no green (except Tink's green dress that is in fact glowing yellow).

Then Hook offers Tink his soft lilac handkerchief.

The hot intimate mood is slightly broken when Hook pretends to leave the cabin which is reflected in the background painting that balances the reddish wood with the blue outside the door and the blue globe in the back. About to leave, he also wears his hat again.

But compared to sequence 09.0 the lighting is still not evenly white. This is most easily visible by the color of the floor boards:

Left: seq. 09.0 light wooden floor; right: seq. 11 ginger wooden floor.

It makes no difference whether the two scenes are supposed to take place within the same cabin or not (after all, the film unlike the play suggests that we are inside Wendy's dream). It is a fact, that the color schemes of these two scenes have deliberately been designed to transport different moods.

Even within the red cabin Hook's coat stands out mainly because of its saturation and not its brightness.

When Hook finally succeeds in tricking Tinker Bell, the whole scene is back to neighboring colors in the range between gold and dark red.

In the third and last installment of this series I will examine Hook's final confrontation with Peter Pan and the crocodile.

* If only I was able to see it one more time in Technicolor on a 35mm print... If only to see to what degree the meticulous digital restoration heightened the color concept. Although I have some reservations with all the de-grained 1950s Disney restorations (from CINDERELLA to LADY AND TRAMP), I certainly believe that they increase our awareness of the artists' original color concepts by eliminating the slightly shimmering quality of the original prints in favor of clinically clean images that match the digitally composited direct-to-DVD sequels.