As firm traditionalists around here, we hold no truck with the painting-by-numbers brigade that wants to gild the lilies of classic black-and-white cinema with insipid painting-by-numbers computer colouring, but if they must tamper, at least get it right: in the tinted version of The Maltese Falcon, Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade character is affronted with the indignity of a blue pin-stripe suit, but jeers all round are in order, because according to the Daily Mail’s America column, the original suit recently surfaced in an auction of movie memorabilia and turned out to be a distinguished shade of brown.
