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March 31 Information
Puce Moment
Kenneth Anger's 1949 film Puce Moment is said to be about a woman who looks at dresses of many colors and finally selects a puce-colored dress to wear.
Well, I watched this film and saw that the dress alleged to be puce was actually blue. Not bluish puce—just a blackish hue of a really blue blue chroma.
See for yourself.Puce is defined as a reddish purplish brown. The dress was nowhere near that color (although the back of her hand mirror actually was puce). Why did they take a blue dress and call it puce?
Johanna-Hypatia (
talk)
17:35, 31 March 2021 (UTC)reply
For that matter, Tretchikoff's so-called
Green Lady is not green. Not bluish-green either. All I see is bluish-gray and really blue blue. The only green is in tiny details on the embroidery of her qipao.
Johanna-Hypatia (
talk)
17:35, 31 March 2021 (UTC)reply
The colour you perceive may depend on the surrounding colours and the ambient light, but also on the colour characteristics of the camera that captured the digital image and of the monitor displaying it. In
this reproduction the Lady's highlighted face colour, based on its RGB value (around
hex value #4EC2BB), might be described as
medium turquoise or
verdigris, which is generally thought of as a shade of green. See also
The dress § Scientific explanations. --
Lambiam09:19, 1 April 2021 (UTC)reply
To me (and my pc monitor; others' may differ) the film's dress seems a very dark green, but I agree with you that it doesn't correspond to anything resembling puce.
A few thoughts. One: who says that the film's title refers to the colour of the dress? Did
Anger himself state this, or is it just an assumption by other commentators? It may be significant that this is only a fragment from an intended longer work entitled Puce Women.
Two: if it doesn't necessarily refer to the dress's colour, might it be an allusion to the dresses in the film having been bought in a flea-market (puce being french for 'flea').
Three: might the mis-match be a surrealist joke by Anger?
Four: might there be an age-related problem with the film's colour stock? (I don't see any sign of this in other colours in the movie, but I'm not really an expert in this field.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195}
2.219.35.136 (
talk)
00:13, 1 April 2021 (UTC)reply
"Puce Moment" is a moment from the larger project "Puce Women." So, "Puce" does not refer to a specific dress in the overall project. There is no reason to claim that it refers to a dress in the shorter clip.
Coloring of film in 1949 was not up to modern standards. Yes, color films existed as far back as 1903. No, color correction was not standard in 1949. It was done by eye. The person who handled the process likely did it by looking at the woman's skin tone and tried to keep that constant. Because the camera obviously had the shutter depressed periodically in filming, there is overexposure mixed in with regular exposure, making the color balance process difficult.
Kenneth Anger stated that it was a "puce sequenced dress", not a "puce dress". Is that a blue dress with tiny grayish-purple sequins? It is hard to tell. But, back to point 1, it doesn't matter because the project wasn't about a puce dress. It was about puce women.
According to the book Kenneth Anger by Alice L. Hutchison, page 41, "Puce is the color of her sequined gown. It was the name of a purple-green iridescent color that was very popular in the 1920s – puce and tango were jazz colors."[1] The snippet view does not allow me to make out if these are the author's words, but the layout suggests this is a quote. There appears to be a footnote superscript, but it is too tiny to make out. --
Lambiam13:55, 2 April 2021 (UTC)reply
And according to Fabio Cassano's 2014 Laurea thesis Immagini sotterranee. Il cinema di Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage e Kenneth Anger (Università degli Studi di Bari "Aldo Moro"), whose author I presume had access to the full text of the book, Hutchison is citing Kenneth Anger here. --
Lambiam14:09, 2 April 2021 (UTC)reply
I suspect, then, that Anger might have been mistaken about the colour's name. Can anybody find either a contemporary (i.e. 1920's) reference confirming his assertion, or one mentioning a plausibly similar name that he might have misheard?
List of colors: N–Z, for example, doesn't seem to contain anything obvious. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195}
2.219.35.136 (
talk)
20:28, 2 April 2021 (UTC)reply
The confusion is more general:
[2],
[3]. The latter refers to
an older revision of our
Puce article that once had a section "Puce green", with a reference to
a journal article from 1810 stating that, in general, "green tea is puce green". One might suppose this to be a typo for "pure green", but there are more uses of "puce green" as a colour name.[4][5][6][7][8] --
Lambiam01:02, 3 April 2021 (UTC)reply
Good finds, Lambiam! Perhaps we should think about modifying the
Puce article and adding a Wikilink in the film's, to prevent understandable confusion over this matter. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195}
2.219.35.136 (
talk)
19:33, 3 April 2021 (UTC)reply
Hey, guys. OP here. Big thank you to all who chimed in to answer this question. You guys rock. I have to agree, the dress in the film is a slightly greenish-blue after all, for all that it's mostly black with only scintillas of color detectable when held up to the light. I still see it, and the Tretchikoff painting, as mainly blue with a little tinge of green... and it puzzles me why anyone would call that "green," when it's predominantly blue.
Welcome to the Wikipedia Entertainment Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a
transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the
current reference desk pages.
March 31 Information
Puce Moment
Kenneth Anger's 1949 film Puce Moment is said to be about a woman who looks at dresses of many colors and finally selects a puce-colored dress to wear.
Well, I watched this film and saw that the dress alleged to be puce was actually blue. Not bluish puce—just a blackish hue of a really blue blue chroma.
See for yourself.Puce is defined as a reddish purplish brown. The dress was nowhere near that color (although the back of her hand mirror actually was puce). Why did they take a blue dress and call it puce?
Johanna-Hypatia (
talk)
17:35, 31 March 2021 (UTC)reply
For that matter, Tretchikoff's so-called
Green Lady is not green. Not bluish-green either. All I see is bluish-gray and really blue blue. The only green is in tiny details on the embroidery of her qipao.
Johanna-Hypatia (
talk)
17:35, 31 March 2021 (UTC)reply
The colour you perceive may depend on the surrounding colours and the ambient light, but also on the colour characteristics of the camera that captured the digital image and of the monitor displaying it. In
this reproduction the Lady's highlighted face colour, based on its RGB value (around
hex value #4EC2BB), might be described as
medium turquoise or
verdigris, which is generally thought of as a shade of green. See also
The dress § Scientific explanations. --
Lambiam09:19, 1 April 2021 (UTC)reply
To me (and my pc monitor; others' may differ) the film's dress seems a very dark green, but I agree with you that it doesn't correspond to anything resembling puce.
A few thoughts. One: who says that the film's title refers to the colour of the dress? Did
Anger himself state this, or is it just an assumption by other commentators? It may be significant that this is only a fragment from an intended longer work entitled Puce Women.
Two: if it doesn't necessarily refer to the dress's colour, might it be an allusion to the dresses in the film having been bought in a flea-market (puce being french for 'flea').
Three: might the mis-match be a surrealist joke by Anger?
Four: might there be an age-related problem with the film's colour stock? (I don't see any sign of this in other colours in the movie, but I'm not really an expert in this field.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195}
2.219.35.136 (
talk)
00:13, 1 April 2021 (UTC)reply
"Puce Moment" is a moment from the larger project "Puce Women." So, "Puce" does not refer to a specific dress in the overall project. There is no reason to claim that it refers to a dress in the shorter clip.
Coloring of film in 1949 was not up to modern standards. Yes, color films existed as far back as 1903. No, color correction was not standard in 1949. It was done by eye. The person who handled the process likely did it by looking at the woman's skin tone and tried to keep that constant. Because the camera obviously had the shutter depressed periodically in filming, there is overexposure mixed in with regular exposure, making the color balance process difficult.
Kenneth Anger stated that it was a "puce sequenced dress", not a "puce dress". Is that a blue dress with tiny grayish-purple sequins? It is hard to tell. But, back to point 1, it doesn't matter because the project wasn't about a puce dress. It was about puce women.
According to the book Kenneth Anger by Alice L. Hutchison, page 41, "Puce is the color of her sequined gown. It was the name of a purple-green iridescent color that was very popular in the 1920s – puce and tango were jazz colors."[1] The snippet view does not allow me to make out if these are the author's words, but the layout suggests this is a quote. There appears to be a footnote superscript, but it is too tiny to make out. --
Lambiam13:55, 2 April 2021 (UTC)reply
And according to Fabio Cassano's 2014 Laurea thesis Immagini sotterranee. Il cinema di Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage e Kenneth Anger (Università degli Studi di Bari "Aldo Moro"), whose author I presume had access to the full text of the book, Hutchison is citing Kenneth Anger here. --
Lambiam14:09, 2 April 2021 (UTC)reply
I suspect, then, that Anger might have been mistaken about the colour's name. Can anybody find either a contemporary (i.e. 1920's) reference confirming his assertion, or one mentioning a plausibly similar name that he might have misheard?
List of colors: N–Z, for example, doesn't seem to contain anything obvious. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195}
2.219.35.136 (
talk)
20:28, 2 April 2021 (UTC)reply
The confusion is more general:
[2],
[3]. The latter refers to
an older revision of our
Puce article that once had a section "Puce green", with a reference to
a journal article from 1810 stating that, in general, "green tea is puce green". One might suppose this to be a typo for "pure green", but there are more uses of "puce green" as a colour name.[4][5][6][7][8] --
Lambiam01:02, 3 April 2021 (UTC)reply
Good finds, Lambiam! Perhaps we should think about modifying the
Puce article and adding a Wikilink in the film's, to prevent understandable confusion over this matter. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195}
2.219.35.136 (
talk)
19:33, 3 April 2021 (UTC)reply
Hey, guys. OP here. Big thank you to all who chimed in to answer this question. You guys rock. I have to agree, the dress in the film is a slightly greenish-blue after all, for all that it's mostly black with only scintillas of color detectable when held up to the light. I still see it, and the Tretchikoff painting, as mainly blue with a little tinge of green... and it puzzles me why anyone would call that "green," when it's predominantly blue.