Cinema and Colour: The Saturated Image is a major new critical study of the use of colour in cinema. Using the dialectic of colour and monochrome as a starting point, Paul Coates explores the symbolic meanings that colour bears in different cultures, and engages with a range of critical approaches to filmic colour, building on the work of such theorists as Sergei Eisenstein, Rudolf Arnheim and Stanley Cavell.

Coates also provides close analyses of films by directors such as Antonioni, Bergman, Godard, Hitchcock, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Sirk, Kieslowski, Tarkovsky, Von Trier and Zhang Yimou. Coates' focus is on films that deliberately exploit the rich multiplicity of cultural meanings and associations ascribed to colour, including All That Heaven Allows, Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle, The Double Life of Véronique, The Flight of the Red Balloon, Red Desert, Schindler's List, Silent Light, Solaris, The Three Colours Trilogy and The Wizard of Oz.