If you’ve never seen a restored Technicolor three-strip movie a real cinematic treat awaits you. The color is by no means realistic–it shimmers, glistens and looks like an especially scrumptious box of colored candies that probably costs a fortune (I’m thinking of a specific designer sweets shop on Madison Avenue). Unfortunately, many old Technicolor prints don’t wear well and instead of candy look like melted ice cream sundaes.

The introduction of Technicolor’s three-color camera in 1932 represented a major advancement in motion picture technology. As you’ll learn in the nifty little doc about the process that I’ve posted above, the camera required an entirely new design, although it utilized many of the same principles already developed for two-color photography, such as a beam-splitting prism. The camera captured crisp, vibrant colors that were then recombined in printing. (Dailies were viewed in black and white). The Technicolor three-strip camera captured separate color records onto three strips of film. Light entered the camera through the lens and was divided by the beam-splitting prism into two paths. One strip of film recorded the green record onto black-and-white film, while the other two records were exposed onto two black-and-white film strips in “bipack” (sandwiched together); the front film was blue-sensitive only, while the back film was sensitive to red.

Watch and look for restored prints of films made with this process on blue-ray. Here’s a link to a very good Home Theater Forum thread about the subject.