"The Manchurian Candidate,'' particularly the furious spectacle of the final scenes of the nominating convention. Many people to this day are surprised to be reminded that the movie was shot in black-and-white.
The striking power of black-and-white, as this book illustrates, is that it probes the inner life of things, always mysterious. Black-and-white produces ambiguity, produces gray. An unconscious thought process provokes the mystery: "What I am seeing in black and white is not really black and white, therefore it must be something else. What is it?'' Color in general is bad for mystery (see the "colorizations'' of "The Asphalt Jungle'' or "The Maltese Falcon).'' It is especially bad for human mystery, because it
