From the VHS recording I made of Prince of Foxes on Cinemax 8 years ago (as I recall, part of their Summer series of movies not yet out on video), this movie looks as if it was shot in color. Those castle interior scenes are too dark and DP Leon Shamroy too accomplished a technician to film the movie in such subdued lighting. Somewhere in the Fox archives, there may be records to show if Prince of Foxes was originally intended to be a Technicolor release. The most likely reason 20th Century Fox released the movie in black and white is cost, after Zanuck decided that the potential box office of the movie did not justify the greater expense of making the release prints in Technicolor. Or, the reason could be that some of the filmed material turned out for technical shortcomings not to be able to be processed correctly for Technicolor by the film lab. The cost for retakes would have been prohibitive, since the movie was filmed on location in Italy. So, my opinion is that the studio took the cheap way out, processing a black and white negative from the Technicolor film negative, figuring the audience would not notice how the timing was way off.
If there is still a surviving Technicolor negative of this movie in the Fox film archives stored in some cave somewhere, shot in the three strip Technicolor process, there is now computer technology available to correct any defects in the original negative.
On another note, the director Henry King liked low angle shots as much, if not more, than director Michael Bay. This movie is loaded with low angle shots, sometimes to take advantage of the castle backgrounds, sometimes to show a person's bad situation, as when the bound Orsini looks up at Borgia at the dinner table. In 1949, Henry King had been a director for 30 years, and he picked up some good tricks along the way. Too bad 20th Century Fox didn't spring for a Technicolor release of Prince of Foxes.
If there is still a surviving Technicolor negative of this movie in the Fox film archives stored in some cave somewhere, shot in the three strip Technicolor process, there is now computer technology available to correct any defects in the original negative.
On another note, the director Henry King liked low angle shots as much, if not more, than director Michael Bay. This movie is loaded with low angle shots, sometimes to take advantage of the castle backgrounds, sometimes to show a person's bad situation, as when the bound Orsini looks up at Borgia at the dinner table. In 1949, Henry King had been a director for 30 years, and he picked up some good tricks along the way. Too bad 20th Century Fox didn't spring for a Technicolor release of Prince of Foxes.