ColorTherapy in Film: Grisaille from Interiors and Rear Window

Possible Matches: Intense White, Benjamin Moore OC-51, Halo OC-46, Balboa Mist OC-27 (my last bedroom); Ralph Lauren Atlantic Winter TH 01

This week I’d like to compare two films that utilize the same color scheme in their production design: monochrome grey (or grisaille). The first is Woody Allen’s lugubrious Interiors, a personal favorite; and Hitchcock’s Rear Window, everybody’s favorite.

Interiors made a strong impression on me at an early age, and its production design is indelibly etched in my memory. Geraldine Page plays Eve, a sophisticated matriarch who can only give to others through her work, the decoration of interiors. The rooms she designs are elegant, spare, precise and refined. They are also emotionally withholding and full of refusal.

In my first film still you see Eve’s own dining room in the Park Avenue apartment she moves into after her husband has left her. The room is painted grey, including the follies on the back wall, and there’s no space for other colors, clutter, passion or unwanted emotions.

In my second shot, she attempts suicide and lays down to die in her cold and elegant tomb. (Note well those fabulous slipper chairs.) In the third shot, her interiors are yet another perfectly coordinated set of grey tones, but the characters are hung there, suspended by formality. However, emotions erupt unexpectedly—moments later Eve uncontrollably bursts into tears at the thought of never reconciling with her husband, a scene that is rendered all the more vividly in this antiseptic atmosphere.

By contrast, the earth-palette neutrals in Rear Window are used for the exact opposite effect. Here, neutral is random, unkempt, human and grubby. Grey is the cardboard color of a West Village studio--lived-in and worked-in and completely unselfconscious. This grey is not elite: no fuss or prissiness will do if Thelma Ritter has anything to say about it. Just look at how Grace Kelly stands out in this environment like a sore thumb, an erstwhile ambassador of Uptown taste. It’s interesting to note that the lead characters in both films are artists of a sort—Geraldine Page is a high-end decorator, Jimmy Stewart a photojournalist. Grey can go either way.

Possible matches from a few greys I’ve enjoyed using in the past: Intense White, Benjamin Moore OC-51, Halo OC-46, Balboa Mist OC-27 (my last bedroom); Ralph Lauren Atlantic Winter TH 01.

- Mark Chamberlain, interior and decorative painter

(Re-Edited from 12.05.06)-JR

Comments (10)

Interiors is seriously the only Woody Allen film i can stand. It's a gorgeous film.
Thank you for this post. I've been doing similar studies on my own. Nice for discussion.

OH, i should add, i have gray rooms in my apartment, and I've used Lowes' American Tradition in SMOKE. Pretty economical, really great color. Its the best neutral.

great post, i'm wrestling with grey for my bedroom.

The loft in Interiors, also designed by Eve, for her daughter and her husband (Sam Waterston) is one my my favorite rooms anywhere. She made their home much warmer, and it suits them.
My wife and I saw Interiors when we were in college, and it made me want that place or something like it, for us, someday...
Amazing but true. We saw Annie Hall on our first date, and we're still together!

Have not seen Interiors but have seen Rear Window lots of time since first seeing it in 1994, or was it 1995 while in a video program. it was shown during class one day and I was floored, not just by Jimmie Stewart's apartment, but the entire storyline and entire set. Wow. Some of the best sets made that I know of for that time period.

I'm a sucker for interior shots too and I also tend to notice not only the colors used, but the furniture, lamps and all that too. I love the general look of LB Jefferies apartment and can in my mind visualize it's layout and love what is in there, the audio cabinet near the front door, the bathroom off to one side of the fireplace, the bed by the windows, the low radiators, the hanging pleated lamp and the rest. I like how the lamps are used to good effect here and yes, the neutral pallet used in the apartment is great. I like that the entire courtyard is from a working class neighborhood where the people, with the exception of grace kelly and "miss Lonely hearts" tend to wear clothing that isn't necessarily stylish but presentable and conservative.

I would love to see Jefferie's kitchen and have often tried to figure out the flats across the way, especially the newer constructed building where lonley hearts and the thorwalds live.

Another film that I enjoyed is the "Marriage go 'round" (1960 or so) and it's strictly for the house that the movie mostly is set in. An early 60's modern home, possibly in the LA hills and saw it on cable about 15 years ago and spent literally the entire film figuring out the floor plan of the house.

My thoughts on neutrals in general, they do have their place but when they are the primary (or the only) color of choice, they can be considered safe choices when someone can't decide or is afraid of using color for whatever reason but it can connote a colorless existance, meaning that any personality appears to have been drained from the room but add some color, even as an accent, the room takes on a personality of its own.

Hitchcock was a master at creating the look he wanted for his movies and Rear Window is a shining example of that with real sets, no flats so the way the scenes were shot, it looks as if he was shooting at a real location when it was all in the studio. Very well done film and I love is use of lighting, the sun at all times of the day and what have you to simulate life day by day as the film unfolds and how it all plays with the light inside the apartment, the night scenes where the interior lamkps are providing the light. The story itself is fabulous and all the major rolls were well cast. Long live Thelma Ritter. She was a class act.

I thought grisaille referred specifically to the painting of a mural in gray-on-gray tones, not just a monochromatic interior.

And dear god, ANY room with Grace Kelly in THAT DRESS is memorable! Gor. Geous. She'd STILL get "Best Dressed" in that on any recent Oscar red carpet throwdown.

(to clarify, that *is* grisaille in that pic of her dining room)

Great post! And what a coincidence! I am doing a series of posts for great interiors in films, inspired by the 48th Thessaloniki International Film Festival http://www.filmfestival.gr/ now taking place in my home city. I already had Rear Window shortlisted for one post and now you made me want to do Interiors too! Great inspiration, thanks!

The walls of my office are Ralph Lauren's Atlantic Winter. While I like the color, I wouldn't really describe it as grey. On the wall, it comes off as a very pale taupe, really more beige-y than grey.