Color Design in Wong Kar-wai's Cinema

Wong Kar-wai is undoubtedly one of cinema's great colorists. His films are renowned for their distinctive “smudge-motion” style, in which colors segue and blur into each other. As color in cinema is a product of collaboration between the director, production designer, and cinematographer, this chapter emphasizes Wong's creative partnership with his collaborators, most of all William Chang, Wong's long-term art director, costume designer, and editor, who has worked with him on all of his films. Treating color as a form of montage, it explores Wong's color strategies in the context of Western and Chinese color aesthetics, showing how his films both conform to and depart from classical conventions whilst engaging in color experimentation similar to modernist artists. In its close analysis, the chapter considers the distinctive ways in which color is used in Wong's cinema: color lends his work an authorial signature, it synergizes with music, it captures the vitality of his landscapes, it reveals the play of memory, and implants narrative enigmas. In this way, it shows how color carries much of his films’ affective charge and is intrinsic to the expression of his social and philosophical themes.