In the age of silent film a considerable number of the films were coloured, by tinting, toning, by painting and by the stencil colouring system. Tinting was certainly in use before 1900 and so was hand painting. In the years after 1910, (with a peak around 1925) the makers of raw stock offered such a range of colouring recipes and the main studios and their laboratories had perfected such a wide variety of systems, that practically any colour could be achieved. The technique of colouring seems to have reached its zenith just before the advent of sound. However, by the end of the second decade the stencil colouring systems had almost disappeared and tinting and toning was used less, disappearing altogether by 1930.
It has been estimated that up to 80% of all prints were coloured by the early 20's. Colour was not used necessarily as a representation of reality, but only a few references exist to the principles used in selecting colours [see the reference to Sonochrome films from Eastman Kodak]. Sometimes only a few scenes in a film were coloured; more often the entire film was coloured using several different colours and techniques, with the colour changes linked to scene, location or mood changes defined by the director, or perhaps sometimes at the whim of the laboratory manager. Eric von Stroheim used a golden yellow overall tint for his symbolic gold sequences in "Greed", and it is believed that some film plots were written based on the colouring to be used. Certain studios seemed to specialise in different colours perhaps to distinguish their products. In addition, due to the rather crude methods used for printing and developing, films (at least up until the end of the second decade) had marked differences in contrast and density from one scene to another, and the average cinemagoer was probably used to seeing many physical imperfections. Colouring, especially tinting, may also have served to cover up these defects.
Coloured films seem to disappear from the cinema as sound arrives around 1930 quite suddenly. There was no apparent technical reason why this should be so, even though the advent of sound and specialised [and expensive] duplicating materials made an appearance at this time. Once tinting and toning was no longer used it was certainly possible to make prints in one piece without positive joins, and it is possible that economy combined with improving sophistication on the part of audiences contributed. Once colouring techniques like this were no longer used, the cinema became almost entirely monochrome black and white for many years throughout much of the world. Only in the USA and occasionally in Europe were a few films released in "natural" colour before Technicolor prints became more frequent in the late 1930's. In effect, it seems that the world of the cinema became almost entirely black and white for more than 5 years and in some parts of the world for more that 25 years, until the 1950’s!