Last Friday, I saw for the first time Le fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain. I generally don't like French films, but Le destin is a juwel. I'm apparently not the only one with this opinion, because the movie, which is regarded as the master of feel-good movies, was for 52 weeks (!) on the programmation list of the famous Studio movie theathers in Leuven. If you watch the movie, pay attention to the photography. Nearly every frame is a watercolor painting come to life, even the most mundane scenes.
Take, for instance, the snippet where Amelie encounters the man playing the record player in the subway. Look at the colors, and how even the buttons on the man's coat echoes the peas in the painting behind him. Look, too, at the colors in the concierge's apartment and in the park -- everywhere! It is a feast for the eyes!
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Colors explanation
See this : http://deuslovult.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/heres-a-post-ive-fantasised-about-doing-for-a-lo/
Where to now? Well, I’ve touched upon it before now – colours. Starting with Amélie, it’s best done by just showing you one picture – this. It’s the poster of the film. Look at the four base colours there – black, white, red and green. Those are what the film really comes down to. Red is the most popular colour in this film, quickly followed by the green. Red denotes passion, it denotes love and those emotions. And you find it all through the film. The reddest place in the film Amélie’s room. Every wall is red, everything in the room is red, even Amélie is red. Red red red. What does this say? If Amélie has surrounded herself in red, even dresses in it, then she has the love she is searching for in her already. And, because she’s not seeking it out in the form of people, she’s surrounded herself in the environment. The green we see in Amélie is sometimes pretty dirty and grungy. Mr. Collignon, the mean and cruel grocer, his apartment is this grungy green, and really looks like it could do with a clean. Where he works, and how he makes his assistant dress (who he runs down all day) is green as well. And going back to that arcing shot of Amélie on the canal, skipping stones, there’s only one non-green thing in the shot: Amélie.
Black and white is used in the traditional sense of shading – how can any film avoid shadows and light? But colours are pretty simple to understand in Amélie – and even simpler when you’re using two. They are self-explanatory, and really create the warm or cold feel of the film. When emotion should be evoked within the audience, the red is flooding the screen, it’s warmer and it’s related to what’s going on with the characters. The green that’s used makes it cold, emotionally dead and gives an insight into the characters that are associated with green.