In our first part of this essay, orange distinguished Amelie’s perspective and gradually seeped into the mise-en-scene. By colouring emotions of comfort and belonging with orange, we could relate to Amelie’s fantastical world. A children’s classic attesting to the power of imagination, the film version of A Little Princess employs orange in a, conversely, more palpable sense. Films aside, orange immediately brings to mind Eastern countries, religious temples and the robes of Buddhist monks. It is also the colour of many fruits- tangerines, apricots, mango flesh; the list continues. What is clear is that orange is both place and taste, and like childhood experience, evokes optimism. Sara Crewe faces many hardships in her move from a wonderful idyllic Indian childhood to an oppressive boarding school in 1900s New York. Losing her father overseas, in a reverse of Amelie’s green-becoming-orange effect this colour is almost eradicated by the dark greens of Miss Minchin’s school. Her kindness towards the loneliest girls and evocative make-believe help Sara cope, requiring that same child-like perspective of Amelie. This part of the article will look at how orange connects Sara to her Indian heritage, and spectators to that version of childhood.
Orange is an unselfconscious celebration of India, even when Sara has to recreate it through material possessions and storytelling. Instead of maintaining a peaceful solitude like Amelie, an orange interior relates Sara to her previous life. A wide shot of her Indian bedroom reveals lamps modelled on globes and a palm tree, ornate shutters and a glorious orange quilt. Her new bedroom, although just as big and containing all her toys, lacks the former’s sensuous appeal. Cameron’s differentiation between literal and symbolic explains why. Sara and Captain Crewe are bathed in natural orange sunlight that picks up on the luxurious texture of chiffon, silk and velvet. Even though orange and green appear together, the optical light harmonises with both surface and symbolic colours. By contrast, a harsh daylight streaks through the New York windows, meaning we don’t receive the orange of the suitcases and sheets as before. Only when Sara recounts her stories from India to her new friends, cocooned in an orange blanket, can the colour regain its original qualities. Either bedroom doubles as a sanctuary; more so here than Amelie. When associating orange with night, it is of flames penetrating the darkness. When Sara is moved to the attic, the camera pulls away to a wide shot of the lights in the surrounding turrets. Desiring more stories, her friends visit the two girls, finding their way by candlelight. Even the harsh winter streets of New York are fleetingly touched by the colour, Sara meeting the Indian neighbour Ram Dass in a cascade of ochre leaves. Also, Sara watches her father leave in a late afternoon sun at the beginning, yet come their departure together in the conclusion the leaves at the school’s entrance are bright yellow. An orange-hued autumn is nostalgic. Regardless of our culture, we nearly all have pleasurable memories of nature, festivity and nourishing dishes from that season.
However, orange does not stand alone in recreating a period of childhood. In the emergence of colour film, Sergei Eisenstein theorised that sound-image synchrony was only fully realised by colouring the animation. As such, he disagreed with the ‘absolute correspondence’ of elements like colour, dependent as they were on overall concept system of the film. Locked in the attic with no food, Sara has Becky imagine a feast to keep up their morale. Ram Dass, as if knowing their desires, transforms the room overnight. The abundance of orange is experienced through synaesthesia. Sara wraps herself in an orange gown and inhales the sausage steam- as she tells Becky, “Just what we ordered”. Both stare in astonishment at the sunflowers, drapes and feast upon the once bare table, sitting down happily to eat. A sitar plays in the non-diegetic space between us and the girls. Each sense perception forms an abstract ‘Indianness’, yet its physical manifestation is conceivable as magic. Orange transcends abstraction, becoming real when imagined by children.
Whilst naming colours is precarious, Patti Bellantoni still gives this film’s oranges cultural differentiation. The doll Emily wears the “curried colours of India” (2005, p.16), held by Sara as she recalls the aroma of ‘saffron’ to Becky. Their bleak reality gives way to a dream-like sequence that even rivals Amelie. Natural images of the Taj-Mahal at sunset and a mountainous valley are followed by a shot of Sara and Becky in matching white dresses, atop the same Buddha head that Sara climbs in the beginning of the film. Although Bellantoni sees the doll as Sara’s connection to her father, the toy has its own potential to evoke both memory and fantasies of India. Bellantoni also relates the bedroom transformation to a more Western palate, describing the room’s “golden marmalade coloured light” and as “honeyed” (p.179). We may only share in the feast visually, but orange still evokes taste. Both Amelie and Sara have a penchant for sweet foods that withstand maturation or poverty. Smiling to the camera in anticipation, Amelie takes pleasure in cracking the top of crème brulee. Sara almost enjoys an unexpected cinnamon bun, but gives it away to a child more desperate than herself. A ‘sweet-tooth’ is associable with desert or the golden sheen of patisseries. We are returned to childhood through food, giving these film’s orange-coloured foods nostalgic value.
We found a pattern, not just in the restrained palettes of Amelie and The Little Princess but across the whole module, of the juxtaposition of orange and green. Even in more explicit ‘colour’ films, principally The Grand Budapest Hotel, orange and green together tended to symbolise decay or ideological clashes. Departing from its former pink/purple glory, the 1968 version of the hotel is fitted with unfashionable wooden panelling and dull green and orange upholstery. By contrast, Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited maintains the exotic orange with the many complimentary blues in the train carriage. Natalie Kalmus stipulated that yellow represented “wisdom, fruition, reward”, suggesting renewal and youthfulness, but also “deceit, jealousy…particularly when it is tinged with green” (1935, p.143). In Sara’s story, the princess Sita and prince Rami wear orange saris, embroidered in gold and jewels. A dragon locks Sita in a thorny tower, both which are green. Again, like the Indian bedroom the colour isn’t inherently evil; it becomes so when paired with orange. Likewise, Miss Minchin is adamant that Sara does not influence the girls with colourful fantasies of India, blockading them with green uniforms and the oppressive green interior. Amelie’s contrast was less antagonistic- she is even brought into close contact with Nino on the orange and green painted ghost train- but green is still associated with negative emotions, like fear.
Read more in the 3rd part of the essay here.
References
Eisenstein, S., 1991. On Colour. In: A. Dalle, B. Price, 2006. Colour: The Film Reader. Oxford: Routledge. Ch.3.
Bellantoni, P., 2005. If It’s Purple, Someone’s Gonna Die: The Power of Colour in Visual Storytelling. Oxford: Routledge.
Kalmus, N., 1935. Colour Consciousness. In: A.Dalle, B. Price, 2006. Colour: The Film Reader. Oxford: Routledge. Ch.1.
