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March 31

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. --Lambiam 09:19, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Having looked into that hex code, mathematically the only justifiable name for the color is cyan, a shade of cyan. Johanna-Hypatia (talk) 21:37, 5 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]

I've changed the colour in the article as it wasn't referenced. Someone at Imdb says it's a puce dress but that is clearly wrong.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 06:33, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Three notes

"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.

Hopefully these three points are helpful. There are many interviews with Kenneth Anger that discuss this clip and the overall project. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 13:10, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

By "sequence" do you mean sequins? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.219.35.136 (talk) 14:13, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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. --Lambiam 13:55, 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. --Lambiam 14:09, 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]} --Lambiam 01:02, 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]

According to Ken Jennings, pucs is reddish brown, but half of people think it is icky green. [9] 97.82.165.112 (talk) 11:22, 5 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.

Let me amend that. Looking into the hues between blue and green, cyan is mathematically midway between blue and green. Johanna-Hypatia (talk) 14:56, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, if any film buffs or color experts see this and feel inspired to edit the Puce Moment article, that'd be great. Johanna-Hypatia (talk) 21:27, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]