A LCD device (200) is disclosed that has a cholesteric compound layer (205), a backplane light (201), and one or more polarizers (203, 209) and liquid crystal smectic C* layers. The cholesteric compound layer (205) transmits elliptically polarized light having an amount of absorbance which is related to the angular rotation of the polarization. One or more of the liquid crystal smectic C* layers may be controlled as a polarization filter to select the apparent color of the transmitted light.
