Above, Natalie Kalmus of Technicolor vetted the color scheme of The Little Princess, as she vetted almost every Technicolor production in the 1930s and 40s. Kalmus selected colors the way a rummy player builds a hand: she built around a theme. (Directors often reviled her choices.)
Above, the actual streetscape before the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square, London in 1897. This Lumière realité depicting the street outside would have played on the screen inside the Empire Theatre at the first Lumière British exhibition.
The scene above, shot on the Twentieth-Century Fox back lot in Century City, Los Angeles, invokes a London street in 1899 as Kalmus imagined it. Blue, red, and white—British flag colors—endow the soldiers, the crowd, the principals, and the street itself with the coherence of a toy set in a gift box.
The Kalmus touch: restricted palette, vibrant primary colors
