"Pleasantville is a magical experience, engulfing us in a satirical world of a
heightened reality. Enjoyable on two levels, superficially it is a warm and involving tale
about characters being trapped in a fictional universe. A little like Alice in Wonderland;
here there's no Mad Hatter's Tea Party but the revelation of colour in a black and white
world. Colour is in itself a character, and a seductive one. The performances are
wonderful (Tobey Maguire, Reece Witherspoon perfect as the teens; Joan Allen, William
Macey and Jeff Daniels poignant), while the technical achievements are startling. A
genuinely feel-good movie, Pleasantville charms by its innovation, imagination and sheer
entertainment.
The Art of Pleasantville offers an insight into how the special effects are achieved.
Producer Bob Degus and Colour Effects Designer Michael Southard introduce scenes that
allow us to see what the actors saw as they made the film. This is followed by the
completed scene that shows the integration of colour and black and white. They call the
process 'make up on' and 'make up off', and we learn that for some of the sequences, a
special green make up was created to match Joan Allen's skin tone. In the scene when Tobey
Maguire puts make up onto Allen's face, he is, in fact applying the green-tone make up,
which on screen appears as a flesh tone. In a later scene, when Jeff Daniels wipes it off,
the flesh tone is revealed. This means that for some vital scenes, Allen actually has a
totally green face. It's fascinating. Who would think that the effects were created this
way?
DOP John Lindley describes the difference in how the film was lit, making allowances
for the black and white scenes as opposed to the colour scenes. In some of the black and
white scenes, every light was hooked up to dimmers, so the hard and soft light could be
controlled. He describes scenes such as the soda shop, when 'colour characters' and 'black
and white characters' are seen simultaneously in a small space, and how the lighting had
to deal with the differences. We see the book containing all the storyboards –
memories of good times on a good movie, Linley says. We also hear from Frank Romero, the
artist who created the mural.
Raised in a screenwriter household, it was part of every day life for director, writer
Gary Ross to be dragged to arthouse films with subtitles and to be immersed in a filmic
environment as he was growing up. We learn this and hear his influences and thoughts in a
fluent and intelligent director's commentary, which gives a comprehensive insight into the
creation of Pleasantville. Ross takes pleasure in finding a high concept premise and using
it as a catalyst for human behaviour.
Pleasantville is more than just a pleasant experience – it's a moving, enjoyable
and memorable outing."
Louise Keller
Published February 15, 2001
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