chromatic

Purposeful use of color is obvious, but not the purpose itself. So why the stunning use of color attacking the eye? What do the colors say? I do not know. So let us practice.

Red and Green seem the most abundant fellows, so I say, starting point.

Red. Love, blood, passion, hurt, life, sacrifice, atonement, anger?

Green? Life, growth, vivacity, envy, newness, naivety, earth?

Well, where is our first battle of color? Ernie's, carpeted red walls surround us like the walls of a heart.  He comes to a den of redness. And green is the snake twined through her arms. She saunters with the strand of green to set her apart. And she takes over the room of red. Envy? Does he envy the married man? Has she become the object of desire? Whatever the scene, it is decided, his track has changed by the convergence of red and green.

Next, green car pursued by the white. Yet in his white car he sits in brown suit. Your brown suit, Mr. Stewart, has a tinge, an almost reddish tinge. Stretching? Oh you betcha. But Green is followed by Red (if you'll allow it). Green the object; Red the objectifier.

And now, what's this? He gives her the red to wear in his warm green sweater. Have the roles reversed? Is she now taken in? The room is littered with red and green, and green her throne before the fire. The colors have mixed. Is she subject (victim) to the same effect? Is she now the desirer?

Death has place named Green, the Green. Intentional? Well I have stretched us this far. And now the place controls them. Control. The place is now the acter and the people the acted upon. Something that must be done. 

And the color goes out, or fades to blues and grays and we sleep for a time. Life's passion has died. Yet what is this? A green dress trotting on down the street. And Mr. Red-striped Tie is dragged in its wake. Desire reborn. Green controls and moves the Red. Red is tunneled to the Green as it saunters past the eye.

Except now the green is a light, a halo about her. She can't remove it like clothing and it is trapping her, smothering her, and now she is the one controlled. Betrayed by the desire she stirred up, it has become her undoing which she cannot escape. All crowned, with a ruby Red necklace, as the leash drawing her to her end.

The Green has the power, the persuasion, stirring desire and passion in the Red. Green is pursued, but in control. The Red is unstoppable in pursuit, ultimately destroying the controller. And roles interchange, controls interchange. And a dark fate takes over.

And as for Blue, Purple, Yellow, Gray, White... they can figure themselves out.

Vertigo(1958) by Alfred Hitchcock (rating +3 out of -5/+5 scale)