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Pathécolor, later renamedPathéchrome, was an early mechanicalstencil-basedfilm tinting process for movies developed bySegundo de Chomón forPathé in the early 20th century. Among the last feature films to use this process wereElstree Calling (1930), a Britishrevue film, theMexican filmRobinson Crusoe (1954) by SpanishSurrealistLuis Buñuel, andDr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965), a parody of the then-popularspycomedy film trend.
However, the stencil process was not acolor photography process and did not use colorfilm stock. Like computer-basedfilm colorization processes, it was a way of arbitrarily adding selected colors to films originallyphotographed andprinted inblack-and-white.
Eachframe of an extraprint of the black-and-white film to be colored was rear-projected onto a sheet offrosted glass, as inrotoscoping. An operator used a bluntstylus to trace the outlines of areas of the projected image that were to be tinted one particular color. The stylus was connected to a reducingpantograph that caused a sharp blade to cut corresponding outlines through the actual film frame, creating thestencil for that color in that frame. This had to be done for each individual frame, and as many different stencil films had to be made as there were different colors to be added. Each of the final projection prints was matched up with one of the stencil films and run through a machine that applied the correspondingdye through the stencil. This operation was repeated using each of the different stencils and dyes in turn.
The Pathécolor stencil process should not be confused with the later Pathécolor, Pathé Color and Color by Pathé (sometimes without theacute accent) trade names seen in screen credits and advertising materials. Like Metrocolor, WarnerColor and Color by DeLuxe, these were simply rebrandings ofEastman Kodak'sEastmancolor color negative film.
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