Originally Posted by christoph404

Probably a combination of all of those things, though Im not sure whether audience preference would be taken into account. In theory you would imagine the colour values to be basically the same in the US and Britain, but the lighting styles of the cinematographer would possibly have the biggest influence especially when you consider the vision and techniques of an artist such as Jack Cardiff who broke the "rules" and who insisted on pushing the boundaries of the process to its full creative potential , while other cinematographers were perhaps less subtle and more practical in their approach. And there is also the factor of grey skies versus blue skies as you suggest though Jack Cardiff filmed Black Narcissus almost entirely indoors so overcame that problem! I suppose it was such an involved process using dye transfer and so on that mixing up solutions with European water must have had some kind of effect but I guess a chemist or photo processor could confirm that though the dye transfer technique is fairly unique, I think it was still in use in Europe to some extent for making prints, up until the 80's and Im sure some directors have requested the dye transfer process to achieve that period vibrant look of "old hollywood"