WilliamPaul_AestheticsofEmergence

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The Aesthetics of EmergenceAuthor(s): William PaulReviewed work(s):Source: Film History, Vol. 5, No. 3, Film Technology and the Public (Sep., 1993), pp. 321-355Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3815145 .Accessed: 02/10/2012 12:09

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FilmHistory, olume , pp. 321-355, 1993. Copyright John Libbey&CompanyISSN: 892-2160. Printed n Great Britain

h e est hetics

emrgenceWilliam PaulIn 1982 Variety announced a boom in 3-D

production: More than 60 film projects con-templating -D lensing have been publicly n-nounced since the current rend-setter Comin'

At Ya', a low budget paghetti Western whose extradepth helped make it one of the surprise itsof theyear1. A 3-Dcraze seemed to be in the making ncemore, with promises f far greater uccess than 3-Dhad ever enjoyed. Friday he 13th Part 3 (1982),which opened in 813 theatres, demonstrate[d] orthe first ime he feasibilty f 3-Dfor major istributionin a saturation layoff2. This was an unheard ofdomestic booking or previous -Dfilms,which hadbeen limited o 200-300 theatres. This expandedplayoffyielded grosses that surpassed he precedinginstallments, real phenomenon or a sequel. Con-vinced 3-D was responsible or the film's success,releasing tudioParamount nnounced t 'want[ed] oultimately ave a 3-D projection ens available inevery movie theatre o make exhibition n the depthprocess as simple as possible3. Shortly fter Fridaythe 13th, Jaws 3-D (1983) was released and, at acost of about $15 million, cored another irst byproving twas possible o launch big-budget ilm n

3-D. 3-D was even brought o television, gain withrousing uccess, as Universalmade available o inde-pendent TV stations a number f sci-fi and horrorfilms,originally made in the polarized 3-D processand fortunately n black-and- hite, n an anaglyphicformat equiring ed-and-blue lasses4.

For all the euphoric expectations, he 3-D fadproved o be precisely hat. Only a small portion fthe announced ilms actually went into production n3-D,and even a smaller umber ere released. As it

had managed to do almost once a decade since itsdebut in the early fifties, 3-D in feature ilms ailedonce more after a meteoric uccess5.Why does 3-Dpop up withsuch regularity s the seeming aviour f

the film ndustry nly o die an inglorious eath? Whydoes it always prove o be a take-the-money-and-runproposition ith no long-range mpact on moviemak-ing? Forme, the fascination f 3-D lies in itsstatus san aberration or mainstream moviemaking, et it isan aberration hat the mainstream urns o in almostperiodic fashion. 3-D is a kind of sport, an unex-pected and always doomed mutation hat by itsveryperversions efines the norms f the normative olly-wood style.

In this essay, I want to look at the first greatperiod of 3-D's riseand fall, 1952-54, because thisremains he one time an aberrational tyle was ineffect nstitutionalized hrough he embrace, howevertentative, f the entire ndustry6. yits institutionaliza-tion 3-D offered a challenge o the dominance f the'classical' tyle,an adjective David Bordwell ustifiesusing for Hollywood inema because the word sug-gests '... notions f decorum, proportion, ormalhar-mony, respect for tradition, mimesis, self-effacingcraftsmanship, nd cool control of the perceiver'sresponse ...'7. In act, 3-D might represent somethingof an atavism, a return o what Tom Gunning andAndre Gaudreault ave designated the 'cinema of

attractions' or films of the primitive eriod, films nwhich the fascination f the image as image super-sedes the demands of the narrative. Gunning hasdescribed the 'cinema of attractions' s promoting'exhibitionist onfrontation ather han diegetic ab-

William Paul, Associate Professor t the Universityof Michigan, s the author of Ernst Lubitsch's meri-can Comedy and Laughing creaming: Modern Hol-lywood Horror nd Comedy. Thisarticle s excerptedfrom It Came From Within he Frame

SmithsonianPress, orthcoming). lease address correspondencec/o Film Video Studies, University f Michigan,251 2 Frieze Building,AnnArbor, Michigan 8109-1285, USA.



322William Paul

Fig. 1. 3-D and the cinema of attractions: ublicitymate

(1982).

sorption', an opposition, my argument will makeclear, that s equally relevant o the contrast etween3-D and the classical style8. In charting he ambival-ent relationship f 3-D to dominant ilmstyle, I willmovealong two intersecting athways: irst, o estab-lish he grounds or 3-D's marginality, will travel hedead-end route of 3-D's failure by looking at econ-omic determinants, roduction nd exhibition prac-tices, and the way public discourse at the timedefined 3-D; second, and necessarily onsequent othis discussion, I will explore the aesthetic questionsraised by 3-D'saberrational tatus.

Visibility nd invisibilityStereoscopy s almostas old

JI^•• ~ as photography, and 3-Dcinematography has beenavailable to filmmakers rom;

1W 7very arly on, but it hasgenerally ppeared as a fea-

_W --, i ture f side-show ypepresen-tations9. Appropriately, hemost publicized 3-D filmofthe last decade in the US is

.^ ....^^.:- a short hat played outsideof::- i... : conventional inema venues,

although s far as shorts o

thisone was quite spectacu-lar: he big-guns 20 millionCaptain Eo, apparentlysomething of a cross be-tween Star Wars and amusic video, starring Mi-chael Jackson, directed byFrancis Ford Coppola and

'?i..z _ S 11__: 11111-.......:'..:.

:eriai withGeorge Lucas s execu-tive producer. It is beingshown exclusively t Disney-world and Disneyland. Hav-ingfailedas itdid inthe iftiesand again inthe early seven-ties and the early eighties,3-D has now returned o thefairground here it is inevit-ably successful 0.This s per-haps because it isonlyat thefairground hat 3-D can fullyexploit itself as pure sensa-

tion: Captain Eo s more hanthe most pectacular -Dpro-

cess ever mounted it eatures wointerlocked 0 mmprojectors nd polarized mages - it is also shownwith aser beams that shoot across the theatre udito-rium t appropriate moments. he DisneyCorporationclaims hey have come up with the total hree-dimen-sional experience'11 ut o do so they had to createmore ensation han 3-D itself.

If 3-D has never left the fairground, hen the

fairgroundever

quiteeft3-D, even in

feature-lengthfilms. fyou happen o be looking oran old movie onlate night v sometime and you come across a filmfrom he early iftieswhere they keep throwing hings

322 William Paul



Theaesthetics of emergence

at the camera, you've probably discovered one ofthe 46 feature movies that were released in 3-Dbetween 1952 and 1955. 3-D always had to find

very direct ways of announcing its status to the audi-

ence, paradoxically a point of attraction that prob-ably led to its eventual demise. How many thingscould you shove at the camera before the audiencewearied of the whole process12? A 1953 Time ma-

gazine article celebrating the amazing success ofThis Is Cinerama on the first anniversary of its pre-miere took note of this problem: 'Real stereoscopic3-D had enjoyed cometlike popularity, but only as a

novelty, mainly because Hollywood had merelythrown things at the customers and failed to provide

anything much to look at through the Polaroidglasses'13. Implicit n this statement s one of the mostfamiliar arguments of the period, namely that badfilms killed 3-D. But the exact terms of the argumentare intriguing. Could Hollywood, generally prized forits narrative drive and brilliant ability to subordinate

everything to story, actually have produced filmsmemorable only for their flying objects? Could the

story for once have been made fully subordinate tothe image? Conventional Hollywood wisdom deniedthis. In a frequently quoted statement, an unusuallypompous Samuel Goldwyn defined the classical Hol-

lywood aesthetic: 'In any consideration of newdimensions for motion pictures, the fact still remainsthat the most important dimension is that of the

story'14. And producer Jerry Wald, who said hefavoured any gimmick that brought people intotheatres, noted nonetheless: 'In a year it will be a tiescore in the gimmick game. Then it will be the sameold question - who has the story'15? But f Hollywoodwas convinced the story is always the main attraction,there was at least a period in which gimmicks tookover, with 3-D the most gimmicky of all, the least

capable of being normalized to conventional Holly-wood practice.

3-D had been seen in movie theatres before and

generally in a self-limiting ashion. There was some

experimentation with it in the twenties, but nothingthat developed into regular studio production of fea-tures. In 1936 and 1938, M-G-M had released aseries of anaglyphic shorts called 'Audioscopiks' in

their Pete Smith series. The fact that these were shortsalso operated as a kind of limiting actor: they were

presented before the real entertainment f the eveningbegan, a way of highlighting technology that the

story ilm o followwould render nvisible. Therewasa tentative move towards adopting the process tonarrative with the third hort n 1941, and signifi-cantly or later developments he narrative hosen as

appropriate or the medium was a horror mystery,albeit in parodic style16. But his particular echnologycould never move beyond the arena of novelty, akindof trick hotography hose peculiarity as mostappropriate o overtly expressionistic nd stylizedmodes of presentation17. twas only in the fifties hat3-D finally came into its own, when all the majorstudios committed hemselves o producing eaturelength ilms n 3-D.

Theyears 1952-55 saw a cornucopia f tech-

nological nnovation n Hollywoodmoviesunlike ny-thing n previous ilmhistory; n addition o 3-D,therewere Cinerama, tereophonic ound, new colour pro-cesses, the attempt o define a new standard wideaspect ratio, ranging from 1.66:1 to 1.85:1,CinemaScope and the expansion of filmgauges allthe way up to 70 mm. All hese developments ad along-range mpact n future ilmproduction xcept or3-D, which died out by 1955 only to enjoy revivals,equally short-lived, n the early seventies and again inthe early eighties. The failure of 3-D is odd to theextent that stereoscopy was often touted as an ambi-tion, never actually realized, for processes that man-

aged to outlive the genuine stereoscopy of 3-D.While there was a great excitement aboutinnovations in seeing in movies in the fifties with anexcitement generated about 3-D that extended intoother fields18, most of the apparently new technologyhad in fact been available much earlier. Itmight havebeen more accurate for me to have written that this

period witnessed the sudden deployment of techno-

logies which were for the most part innovated at anearlier date. The innovations weren't new; the econ-omic situation was.

The usual reason advanced for the arrival of 3-Din 1952 was the decline in theatre attendance from80 million per week in 1946 to about 45 million nthe early fifties, with the usual reason for the declineattributed o TV.19 I don't want to contest this, but Iwould like to be a little more specific on how theimpact of television was registered by the film studios

in the early fifties. Television would have been felt asthreatening in any case, but, as has often beennoted, the competition of television came at a particu-larly bad time because of the Consent Decree of

323



324 William Paul

Fig. 2. The rontpage of the 1936 pressbook dvertisinSmith's naglyphic horts, he 'Audioscopiks'.

1948 that separated heatre wnership romproduc-

tion/distribution ompanies. For most of the com-panies this was not something that happenedovernight: he actual details of divestiture ould oc-cupy a good deal of their nergy hrough hefifties20.Iwant to stress his everpresent uality f the ConsentDecree through his period because the loss of theassured venues theatre ownership granted the pro-duction ompanies was accompanied by a very realadditional hreat rom the Anti-Trust ivisionof theJusticeDepartment n the form f another uitaimed tofurther ndermine istribution ontrol f their

product.On 22 July 1952 the Federal Government ileda civil suit 'against twelve motion picture producingand distributing ompanies and their television-film

subsidiaries o break up an alleged con-spiracy in restraining rade affecting thedistribution f 16-mmprints f their eaturepictures to TV stations21'. The suit was

greeted by a near hysterical eaction nthepages of Motion Picture Herald, whichsaw it as a further low to an industry hatwas becomingly increasingly haky be-cause of television22. t was natural, ofcourse, that the industry hould react sostrongly o this suit, but its full importancemight best be gauged by more generalreaction: ccording to Variety he Depart-ment of Justice 'has been the target of

hostile editorials in papers across thecountry since its complaint was filed23,Time24 nd Collier's25 rote bitingattackson the suits, while 'the newspaper of rec-ord' The New York Times an three epar-ate editorials, all strongly pposed to thegovernment's osition: one on the actualeditorial page, one by a television olum-nist, and one by a film columnist26. llthree editorials pointed out the very realeconomic problems he suit raised, mostclearly tated by Jack Gould in his TVcol-umn: The basic absurdity f the suit is its

NtP*< assumption hat Hollywood not only mustaccommodate ts chief competition utdoso on terms uinous o itself.At its presentstage of development elevision s a whole

g Pete can afford to pay a total of about$25,000 in rental ees for a Hollywoodfilmmade some years ago, whereas show-

ing the same film for another run in theatres may

mean $200,000'27. These were minimal igures.AsA.H. Weiler pointed out in his filmcolumn, RKO tthe time he suitwas filed was rereleasing KingKong(1933) to theatres with an expected gross of $3-mil-lion28.Having ust ost their heatres, he companiescould have a great deal more to lose in giving upcontrol over the actual venues of exhibition, andpossibly not just or reissues, but or new releases aswell29

The terms of the suit were sufficiently uestion-able that

Darryl. Zanuck or one could accuse them

of being politically motivated30. nd the governmentdid seem a little n the defensive n pressing he suit:an ActingAttorney eneral wrote a letter o the Times

324 William Paul

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..I....It:

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The aesthetics of emergence 325

explaining hegovernment's osition n patriotic ermsappropriate o the period: But f we are to continueto preserve climateof economic reedom, which sin large measure responsible or our technological

progress, we must be ever alert against agreementsamong competitors eeking o stifle he new order'31.Still, herewere plenty f questionable spects aboutthe original divestiture uit, and the government adwon that as well32.As absurd as this uit mighthavebeen, there was reason to believe the producingcompanies mightwell lose it.

This s the context, hen, in which technologicalinnovationwould appear in movie theatres. On 30September 1952, a bit over two months after the

Department fJustice irst iled suit o force distributionof films o television, This s Cinerama premiered tthe BroadwayTheater n New York with tellarmediaresponse: Themorning apers greeted heeventwithconsiderable ttention .. The onguesof disc jockeyswagged into the early morning oursabout the pro-cess, and news programs carried reports'33. Al-though the film was booked into the BroadwayTheater or only an eight-week un,audience nterestwas so strong t had to be moved over to a moviehouse where t

eventuallyan orover wo

years.If he

government ould defend its position n the name of'technological rogress' nd a 'new order', hen themoviecompanies mightbe able to find a new orderthemselves, nd one that would ensure hem control.This esponse s made explicitby an article nMotionPicture Herald on the significance of This Is Cine-rama:

As revealed to the public at the BroadwayTheater n New York, Cinerama s spectacularaffirmation f the fact that he motion picture sdistinctly n art of the theater the theater oftoday and of the future and not an art of thehouse. For after you resolve its technical dif-ferences nto heirultimate ffect,Cinerama s anexpansion of the theaters motionpicture s tele-vised films re a contraction f it.And he motionpicture f the theater s going to grow, one mayassume for certainly tcan grow - indirectionsessentially arallel o those of Cinerama34

In hecontext f the anti-trustuit, he implicationsof this should be clear. If the government nsists hatthe movie companies release their product o televi-

sion, then the movie companies can fight back bydemonstrating hat the motionpicture s distinctly nart of the theater'. Theycan answer with movies hatcannot be shown on TV, movies that materially n-

scribe themselves.as nalterably heatrical. he onto-logy of the photographic mage is thus rewritten ndredefined by its essentially heatrical ature35. womonths fter he premiere f This s Cinerama n NewYork, Bwana Devil in 3-D opened in LosAngeles,also to turnaway rowds. This s Cinerama was littlemore than an extended travelogue, Bwana DevilaB-budget ction movie,yet both ilmspresented ome-thing new in the way of seeing that was enough toentice audiences back into theatres way from heir

TVsets. Within he next two years, variable wide-screen aspect ratios, CinemaScope, VistaVision nd55 mm and 70 mm films, most with stereophonicsound, all made their ppearance on US screens andhad a lasting mpact on the future f movies,yet bythe end of this period 3-Dwas dead, leftbehind by arevolution t had helped nitiate.

Product ifferentiation as clearly the spur tothese innovations, et a kind of successfulproductdifferentiation ad already been demonstrated ar-lier. Atthe

beginningf the decade, itwas

frequentlynoted hat big budget A-productions ithspectacularvalues were drawing record numbers despite thegeneral decline in attendance36. The most clear-cuteffectof television n production as that t killed ffB-movies37. ecause of simple economics, heatricalmoviescould always provide audiences with higher'quality' ntertainment, nd this sprecisely he reasonproducers nd exhibitors eared the forced sale oftheatrical movies o TV: hey wanted to preserve hesense that you pay forwhat you get. What was worthpaying orwas moreand more oughtout: more ilmsin colour, previously marker f qualityproductions,were called for by exhibitors38.

Still, these were at best stopgap measures. n1953 when the FCC ifted tsfour-year reeze on thenumber f TV stations allowed in the country, heeconomic base of tv would broaden and the qualityof programming ould nevitably mprove39. urther,colour elevision was in final stages of developmentand would clearly be available in the very near

future. n his ontext, headvantages of 3-Dnecessar-ily had to seem limited. 3-Dtelevision, or example,had already been experimented ith and, if not asinevitable s colour v,was at least a technical possi-




326 William Paul

bility40. -Dwas certainly uccessful s a novelty nthat it was able to attract huge audiences to a B-movieeven after he B-market ad died, but could itever move beyond the novelty tatus o offer a defini-

tion of moviesas a uniquely heatrical xperience?Furthermore, -D might have given movies a

temporary dge in their competition with television,but n theatres -D had to compete with a number fother processes, most notably Cinerama andCinemaScope, owhich tultimatelyostout. From urcurrent erspective n which widescreens of varioussizes have become the normal mode of theatricalpresentation t might eem odd that any of the com-peting systems were confused with 3-D, but they

were, and often quite nsistently. onsider he follow-ing advertising opy -

'... the filmwitha new dimension ..

'You ise right ut of your heater hair .. you'reright n the picture .. '

[This d was accompanied by a photograph fa movie

patronn his theatre chair

seeminglysuspended over Niagra Falls.]

'You won't be gazing at a movie screen you'llfind yourself wept right into the picture, sur-rounded withsight and sound'.

'YOU not the camera - but you are there asthis exciting adventure rama unfolds and itspassionate ove story tirs our every emotion '

Now infact those first uotations ren't or a 3-D

movie at all; rather hey're or the premiere howingof This s Cinerama 1952), the ultra-widescreen ys-tem that utilized hree projectors o spread an imageacross a deeply curved creen that covered a view-

Fig. 3. Arch Oboler peers through he view finder of the Natural Visioncamera o line up a shot during hefilming f Bwana Devil 1953).

326 William Paul



327

ing angle of 146? wide by 50? high, coming veryclose to normal human ision of 160? wide by 55?high. The finalquote is about real 3-D, from he firststereoscopic feature released at the time, Bwana

Devil 1953).Inaddition o the threat f competition, -D had

to deal with the problems hat confront ny techno-logical change in film.To put tthe most imply: owdo you implement ny kind of change in what wewould probably now call the 'delivery ystem'whenyou have to service approximately 0,000 outletsand most of them independent businesses hat aregoing to be called upon to foot the entire bill for thechange. What made things even worse were the

competing technologies which meant it could bepretty asy to get stuckgoing with he wrong one4.Therewere calls throughout hisperiod or he Societyof Motion Pictures nd Television Engineers SMPTE)to offer ome standardization or tri-dimensional' ro-cess, but standardization n this nstancewould havemeant stating a preference or one process overanother, not setting tandards or any particular ro-cess, and so SMPTE ightly efused o take sides in thematter. Exhibitors ould have to decide for them-selves42.

Finally,he

gravest problemswith 3-Dtech-

nology existed on the exhibition nd: the separatestrips f filmswere constantly etting ut of alignment,often causing more headaches than extra dimen-sions43.There eems to have been an assumption tthe time hat all systemswould yield the same resultsmore or less, at least n terms f differentiating oviesfrom elevision, o the only question emainedwhichsystemwould become the dominant ne.

One of the earliest news stories on Cineramawas entitled imply TheThirdDimension'44. notherannounced t 'has been described as "a new illusionof three-dimensional ight-and-sound" ..' and citedAlexander Korda's lavish encomium: 'This newprocess gives the most complete illusionof threedimensional ffects in color and sound without heauxiliary seof glasses'45. nall, thiswas a period nwhich airly xtravagant laims ould be made for hewelter of new systems hat were being developed.One that went by the name of 'Tri-Dimension' ur-ported to use one camera, one projector nd a

standard creen. We do not require nyone to wearglasses', [Stu]Sheldon the developer] s quoted assaying. 'A one-eyed man will see depth for the firsttime'46.Thiswould have found an appreciative udi-

ence in Andre de Toth, the one-eyed director ofHouse of Wax (1953), but how it was achieved wasnever explained, of course, and I've come across norecord of a demonstration.

In such an atmosphere t's understandable hatmost early press releases and news stories onCinemaScope refer to it as 20th Century-Fox's'3-Dimension' ystem, nd Fox helped perpetuate hismythby dubbing CinemaScope n its advertising orThe Robe (1953) as 'The Modern Miracle You SeeWithout Glasses'47. It seems very likelyFox's nsist-ence that all CinemaScope nstallations se a curvedscreen to a depth of five feet at the centre andstereophonic ound was to guarantee hat some illu-

sion of depth be experienced n the theatre. Theactual depth of the screen was complemented y asound track hat spread three channels across thespacious screen and a fourth ffects track in theauditorium tself hat attempted o turn hespace of thetheatre nto an extension f the space of the screen.But hese add-ons weren't really ssential eatures fCinemaScope, which was defined principally yimage shape and screen size: the first hings ogo insubsequent CinemaScope installations were thecurved screen and the fourth

rack,and most often

stereophonic ound was dispensed with altogether.When 3-Dceased offering ny real competition, oxin effectgave up on claims of depth or tssystem.

Much as other systems might have promisedsome effect of depth at the time, there has alwaysbeen one property hat belonged uniquely o 3-D. ANew York Times rticle reporting n the firstHolly-wood showing of Bwana Devil was headlined Lion"Leaps" romScreen', an improbable vent madepossible only by those quotation marks around'leaps'. The story told of the effect on the startledaudience: 'A new motion picture process broughtscreams from an audience as a lion apparentlyleaped froma screen at a theatre here last night ..Several persons creamed at one point n the picturewhen a lion eaped and the three dimensional ffectgave the impression t was jumping nto the audi-ence'48. What 3-Dhad that Cinerama nd CinemaS-cope clearly did not was the phenomenon ofemergence, and thiswas the one feature hat he ads

for 3-D movies repeatedly stressed. Stereo Tech-niques 3 DimensionMotionPictures 1952), a collec-tion of British nd Canadian shorts, boasted theirimages were 'so real heyreach out and almost ouch

The aesthetics of emergence



328 William Paul

Fig.4. The poster advertising

Bwana Devil 1953), 'theworld's irst eature engthmotionpicture n Natural Vision3 Dimension', romises a lionin your ap' and 'a lover n yourarms'.

you ' Another d for he same film howed a drawing

of a woman leaning from a movie screen as if shewere about to kiss someone while a man in theaudience literally umped bout 6 feet out of his seattrying o respond to the come-on of this imaginarygiantress. Other ads for early 3-D promised, Theshocking hills .. leap from he screen ..', 'Fantasticsights eap at you ' and '... ItSpans TheTheater romFront Row To Back Seat '49 3-D had to use emer-gence as its chief means of distinguishing tself romcompeting ystems50.

Ifhings

regoing

topop

out of the screen, whatshould heybe? The oftenquoted ag-line rom he adfor Bwana Devil s quite specific on this: A LION nyour lap A LOVERn your arms' Almost rom its

inception, hen, 3-D feature ilms could point with

hyperbolic ucidity o their two-pronged attraction:TERROR nd SEX , wo separate sensations magi-cally joined into one by two separate strips of filmand a pair of Polaroid glasses. Why exactly 3-Dshould be especially attracted o these sensations Iwill discuss in the second half of this essay, but fornow I want to note that hese are also elements hatHollywood normally onsiders the prime props ofexploitationmovies, ilmsmade quickly nd cheaplywithenough sensational lements hat heycan attracta wide audience

throughfast

playoff.3-D

produc-tion over the next couple of years pretty much borethis out: of the 46 3-D filmsmade, 16 were West-erns, 9 suspense, 5 horror nd 14 science-fiction.

328 William Paul



Theaesthetics of emergence 329

should also note that these were among the mostcommon genres of B-picture utput, o that he pres-umably orward echnology f 3-D peculiarly ookedbackward as it breathed ome life into a mode of

production lready hought ead.There were some complaints t the time that it

was bad movies hat killed3-D,and the great numberof B-pictureshould upport hisclaim, but his conten-tionalso overlooks he prime ppeal of 3-D nfeaturefilms. think t's worth noting hat he next big revivalof 3-D came in the early seventies following thephenomenal uccess n 1971 of TheStewardesses,low budget sexploitation ilmdistinguished rom allothers olely by its extra dimension. neffect, it was

the weakening of screen censorship nthe period hatheralded he return f 3-D. And if sex could be moreexplicit n the 'liberated' ays of the early seventies,so could horror, he other half of 3-D's double vi-sion51. The in-depth ex of The Stewardesses wassoon followed by in-depth orrorwith a particularlygraphic Andy Warhol's Frankenstein 1974), a filmthat thrust nternal rgans and dismembered bodyparts at its audience. And House of Wax, the realgranddaddy of all 3-D horror ilms, was given asuccessful ull-scale heatrical elease at this ime n anew single-strip rocess.

House of Wax was the first eature produced bya major Hollywood tudio n 3-D52.The producingstudio, Warner Bros. thought 3-D was the wave ofthe future,muchas it had thoughtVitaphonewas thewave of the future 26 years before. While otherstudio xecutiveswere saying that 3-Dwas fiveyearsoff, early in 1953 Harry Warner predicted hat allfilmswould be in 3-Dwithin wo years53. nitially, isfaith seemed confirmed by the box office perfor-mance of House of Wax: within hree weeks in justthirty cities it had grossed an impressive$1,000,00054. There were expectations f an $8million otal, but just ixweeks later Variety oted thefilmwas 'Running ut of 3-D Equipped Houses'55,and the final gross turned ut to be $3.2 million56.The filmwas stillone of the top grossers f the year,but considering he initial eturns he final igureshadto be disappointing, nd onlyfourmonths aterWar-ners was movingaway from 3-Dto embrace Scopeas the wave of the future57.

The number f theatres s not an entirely onvinc-ing explanation or the final gross of House of Wax.At the time of its release, there were about 4900

theatres, ut of a total of close to 20,000, that wereequipped o show 3-D58.Thismighthave limited heextensiveness f the playoff orany 3-D ilm,but n justa year's time This Is Cinerama was able to gross$6.5 million y playing nonlyseven theatres otal59.Thehighgross may be partly ttributed o the fact thatThis s Cinerama, which had had its nitial ight-weekrun n a Broadway heatre normally sed for plays,was able to charge advanced ticket prices in therange of legitimate heatre. This was not an optionavailable o House of Wax because itwas, after all,a horror ilm, albeit in costume and colour. Thedifferentmarketing trategies ossible or hetwo filmsindicate something of how audiences of the time

viewed the respective processes, and the differenceis one of class60.Ironically, usta couple of weeks after he world

premiere f House of Wax in New York, Foxheld apress preview at the New York RoxydemonstratingCinemaScope, whetting veryone's appetite for thefeature ilm o come. InSeptember heworld premiereof TheRobe was held at the same theatre, n eventthat rated a page one story nthe New York imes61.Thiswas not unique ince just year before he world

premieref This s Cinerama ad also been

greetedon page one62. Bycontrast, he premiere f BwanaDevilhad rated only that brief notice about the leap-ing lion I noted earlier, nd that was buried n page22. Whatever he artistic alue of any of these films,it is clear that both This s Cinerama nd The Robewere presenting hemselves s classier goods thanBwana Devil. None of the schlockand exploitationfare so common mong 3-Dmovies ould be found nearly CinemaScope ilms, nd withgood reason: Foxrequired cript approval from all independent pro-ducers who wanted to use the process, and furtherrequired that all CinemaScope films, from inde-pendent tudios nd majors like,be made in colour,itselfa mark f quality63. ven houghCinemaScopewas occasionally dubbed 'a poor man's Cinerama',Fox was quite conscious of maintaining n aura ofclass around he process in an ad that ran in theMotion PictureHerald outing ts new process, Foxmade clear one of its most salient virtues: Cinema-Scope - THEHALLMARKF QUALITY'64.

Little ore han a year after he release of Houseof Wax, Variety an a frontpage headline announc-ing, '3-D LooksDead in UnitedStates'65. hereasonfor the story was that Warner Bros., the studio hat




330 William Paul

had had the biggest success with 3-D, had decidedto make Dial M for Murder 1954) available n 2-Dprints,which s precisely he way itopened in mostofthe country. nspite of the claims hat a lack of qualityfilmskilled3-Dwhen quality ilmswere in fact offeredin 3-D towards the end of 1953, there was noclearcut ense that heprocess nany way contributedto the quality. nOctober M-GM did some test runsof KissMe Kate, playing t in some theatres n 3-D,others n 'flat' prints; he initial esults howed 40 percent better business or the 3-D version6. Nonethe-less, the validity f the test was questioned ince thetheatres howing the 3-D version had received farmore publicity, ome of it paid for by Polaroid nd

other nterested arties67. nactual release, KissMeKate ared differently.Polaroid till harboured ome hope for the future

of 3-D. They were about to announce their Vecto-graphs', a system hatenables 3-D to be shown roma single strip of filmwithout ny special projectionlenses, thereby making t the one new photographicsystem hat could be shown in all theatres cross thecounty without he need for installing new equip-ment68.But he public didn't care how the processwas achieved; heystillhad to wear glasses to see it,and that became an increasing oint of irritation:

While the Polaroid exec cites the current -Db.o. hits, there have been reports romvarioussectors hat heaters everted o standard projec-tion after opening them n 3-D. In many cases,

the return o 2-Dwas heralded with newspaperads, saying, 'Now, you can see it without pe-cial glasses'.

Fig. 5. One-eyed director Andre De Toth left),PhyllisKirk nd Vincent Pricewear special polarized glassesin order o watch House of Wax (1953) in 3-D.

330 William Paul




Of some 35 outlying heaters hatpicked up KissMe Katedirectly fter tstwo-week irst un n theLoop Chicago], only 12 of them played the picin 3-D, though most of the houses were

equipped for the extra dimension .. the surbur-ban theaters pparently re stilldubious aboutdepth.

Majority f ads boasted 'In 2-D' as ifthat werethe come-on lincher69.

Irritation gainst the process became increas-ingly amiliar n thisperiod. Therewere reports f eyeinfections aused by re-using -D glasses70. And aNew York assemblyman went so far to introduce

bill hat would require heatres howing 3-Dmovies oput a one-foot high sign above the box office thatclearlyannounced, Glasses Required'71.

It sclear, then, hatobjection o the glasses wasnot an insignificant hing hatcould be offsetby betterfilms.Therewas another problemwith 3-D hat had todo with tsvery nature, r more accuratelywithwhatwas perceived as its nature. Almost rom he begin-ning, there was concern with how to make use of theemergence effect within he context of a narrativefilm. In a New York Times article written or therelease of Sangaree (1953), Paramount's irst 3-Dmovie, Producers William H. Pine and William C.Thomasmade the following laims or heir new film:

From he first,we had decided to employ 3-Dlegitimately, otas a trick immick, ecause ourfaith in the permanent alue of this process isbased on itsuse as a tool to enhance storytellingon film .. It[emergence] was carefully voidedunless twas to be used to heighten heeffective-

ness of a scene legitimately ...As examples of how we have used 3-D toheighten he effect of certain dramatic cenes,there s the mob sequence, inwhich he frenziedpeople, fearing the spread of the Plague fromthe warehouse, throw laming orches nto thebuilding, etting t afire. A torch s thrown ightinto the audience and it is followed by flameslickingout from he burning uilding.Again, asthe climax to the fight in the tavern, Lamas,

whose back is to the camera, is thrown nto heaudience. A bottle, hrown t a shelf of liquor nthe wall, breaks, showering broken glass andflyingwhiskey nto he audience72.

How legitimate ll this might eem depends ofcourse on exactly how legitimate you find tricks.What's most important n this, in any case, is therationalization nvolved n trying o justify omethingthat reallyhas no narrative ustification. an the storybe the star while the audience is being startled?Clearly, ll those lying bjects are there or heir wnsake, or more precisely, or the apparent pleasureemergence offered early 3-Daudiences.

As 3-Dbegan to be used for quality ilmsby theend of the year, there was a tendency o downplaythe emergence effect. In DialM forMurder t is usedonly twice, both imes at dramatically ignificantmo-ments o that here s some attempt o incorporate he

effect nto a coherently xpressive tylistic hole. Thisattempt o 'normalize' he process as sound andcolourhad already been normalized ould never ullysucceed because it required ome degree of denyingwhat the initial ppeal of the process had been foraudiences. Without mergence, what was 3-D? Butwithemergence, what kinds f films ouldyou make?It's f some significance hat he last ilm nthisperiodto be released uccessfullyn 3-Dwas Revenge f theCreature 1955), a sequel o the horror ilm,CreatureFrom he Black

Lagoon1954).

Bythe end of its first

period of commercial xhibition, -Dseemed to havelittle ffect on quality ilms, xcept possibly negativeone. If t was a movie people wanted to see, they'dgo even if it was in 3-D73.

Theproblemwithemergence s really onnectedto the problem with the glasses. In fact, the centraldifficulty hat 3-D faced and continues o face is itsinability o become invisible. You can never forgetyou are watching 3-Dmoviebecause there must esome reason why you are wearing hoseglasses youdon't ordinarily ear, and so long as you're wearingthemyou might s well let rocks, ists, arrows, hairs,phallicmonsters, ven kissingwomen all emerge romthat normally lat space of the screen. CinemaScopecould become invisiblebecause it required o man-ipulation f the viewer o achieve ts effect, and this spreciselywhat has happened: Scope is stillwith us,under various brand names, accounting or possibly10 per cent of major tudiooutput74, ut how manypeople actually notice now when a film s in Scope?Genuine stereoscopy etains he potential or ransfor-ming ilmas Scope transformed t, but only if it canachieve the same kind of invisibility.




332 William Paul

Fig.6. To prevent ye infections, -D glasses were washed after usage, as seen here in a Chicago acility.

Themystery f the Gorilla's issMy concerns here, however, are not with orecasting:envisioning erfected echnologies f the future arelyhas anything o do with the future, unctioningmoreoftenas a metaphorical xamination f the present. n

some sense I am moving n a reverse direction. amlookingat a failed technology f the past - and onethat, n a kindof cultural daptation of Freud's com-pulsion o repeat', fails over and over again as if itwere in fact fixated at some moment n aestheticdevelopment. -D is born of the mainstream inema,yet must always be cast aside by it, and that playbetween what s mainstream nd what s aberrationalis mycentral oncern here. In he preceeding ectionI sketched out some of the technical and economicproblems -D aced. Now, Iwant o look more loselyat the aesthetic ssues t raised.

Previously was concerned with specifying howprecisely 3-D and the various wide-screen ystems

were economically etermined y the rising ompeti-tion with TV. Now, never osingsight of how import-ant a determinant economics might be in thisinstance, want to suggest another way of looking t3-D to present t as one development n an aesthetic

movement hat had been taking place in Hollywoodfilmsduring he previous 15 years or so75. There retwo ways I want to approach hisbecause there arein fact two intersecting evelopments hat move to-wards each other rom eparate sites. First want tolook at the purely photographic spects of the me-dium, at what happens o the film n the camera, onthe editing table and filtering ut of the projectionbooth. Second, I need to look at presentational s-pects, at how the screen that receives the photo-graphic image is related o the theatrical pace inwhich it stands and how the audience in turn srelated o the screen.

In a review of the earliest 3-D features, Manny

William Paul32




Farber proved o be the one writer t the time whonoticed what wasn't new about them:

Theconversion o 3-Dor its alternative, he widescreen, is not an

overnightccurrence reamed

up as a counter-attack gainst television.Holly-wood's move towards giant creen' effectsanda three-dimensional ook about the actors hasbeen going on in earnest ince the period of TheBest Years of Our Lives. In fact, it has been thechief drive n the work of every mportant meri-can director except DeMille, who never cha-nges, and Huston.The basic objective of 'newvision' ilms eems to be the same as that of 'flat'films a more accurate and natural mage76.

The concerns or depth that Farber notes here,which we now generally ee as the move towardsdeep focus photography, inds a parallel in stillphotography. Stereoscopy, which had been prettymuch eclipsed by the snapshot, uddenly ame intovogue after World War II with he introduction f aneasy to use stereo slide camera, the Stereo Realist.Thevogue hit tsheight n the early ifties, lmost s ifto herald hree-dimensional ovies,when a numberof

competingameras came on the market77.

There are strong onnections between 3-D andthe move to deep focus photography. Around hetime hatM-G-Mwas releasing he Pete Smith horts,Walt Disney's echnicianswere refiningways of cre-ating a realistic ense of depth nanimated artoons.Disneywas concerned with the obvious flatness ofanimation. twas possible o create a sense of depthmuch as painting had through ines of perspective,lighting effects to create a sense of volume, andshadow to suggest a figure's placement n space, allof which he Disneyanimators ad done. What wasnot possible was creating any sense of movementthrough hat depth. The solution he Disney techni-cians came up with was the 'multiplane' amera: acomplex animation tand that placed the contents fany given image on up to 12 different els as ameans of creating a very pronounced eparation fobjects and making t possible for the camera ac-tually o move through he drawing. The results requite startling, nd they were touted at the timeas a

kindof three-dimensional echnique.The sense of different lanes of action s clearly

important or ater 3-Dmovies,but hekey hing wantto point out about he multiplane amera s its use for

forward racking hots. In some ways, this seems tobe the feature hat most attracted he Disneyanima-tors. TheOld Mill 1937), the first hort made with hemultiplane, s structured round a movement-in hat s

finallybrought o a closureat the end with a reversetracking hot. And Pinocchio 1940), the only eaturemade entirely on the multiplane, hares a similarstrategy f structuring ts narrative tages around or-ward tracking hots78.

The creation of a deep space and a narrativestructured round movements-in ighthave alreadysuggested Citizen Kane (1941) to a number ofreaders, a comparison hat Kane tself eems to ac-knowledge in an opening that clearly echoes the

opening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs(1937)79. Patrick gle has also tried o place Kanein a context of a general movement owards deepfocus photography n the period by calling attentionto magazine photographs80. ut ilm and iveactionfilm at that) was becoming increasingly oncernedwith ways of defining real spaces. In he late thirtieswhile the Disney studio was developing the multi-plane camera, 20th Century-Fox tudios establisheda box-like et design that emphasized ide walls andoften

ceilingsto create a

deepsense of

spacestruc-

tured n receding planes, a kind of space that pulledyour eye into the setting81.The forties n generalbecame a period strongly oncerned with definingthrough taging, lighting and camera placement akind of three-dimensionality n its images. Whatstrikesme in all these nstances s the sense of movinginto a space, a phenomenon hat is perhaps sig-nalled by the very term deep focus, originally nter-changeable with pan focus, now the more commonterm.Theword 'deep' is used on the assumption hatthe foreground ouldbe infocusanyway. What wassignificant bout deep focus was the backgroundbeing brought nto focus. As a consequence, visionwas brought nto he depth of the image. Evenwith-out camera movement, hen, deep focus implies amovement n. In many ways, Kane is about thatmovement, movement hat can only be reversedonce the object of itssearch n the form f Rosebud sfound.

That deep focus does directly onnect to later

3-D and widescreen ilmmaking an be seen in oneother concern of the forties.When real 3-D did turnup on the screen in the fifties,writer after writer nAmerican Cinematographer nsisted here had to be




334

less cutting and longer takes in the average 3-Dmovie. Much the same thing was initially aid aboutCinemaScope as well. The point was that t took theeye longer o adjust, t was claimed, and there was

consequently greater difficulty in directing theviewer's attention ecause 3-Dpurportedly akesallspace equal. The need for ess cuttingmightnot havebeen articulated o clearly n the forties,but twas infact practised. As Barry Salt has demonstrated, hetakes became increasingly onger n the average filmof the period82. In film, space inevitably eems toconnect to time, and deep space whether chievedthrough ighting and lines of perspective r throughpolarized binocular ision seems to call for a kindof

'deep' or expanded timeas well.What comes out of the projection ooth necess-arily affected what kinds of screens were used in theearly fifties. Because of the great loss of light pro-

William Paul

duced by polaroid filters on both projectors ndglasses in 3-Dpresentations, ighly eflective creenswitha metallic urfacewere put ntouse83. ncreasingthe amount of lighton the screen was also a central

concern for CinemaScope and the various wide-screen aspect ratios because their mages were muchlarger han those on conventional creens, so bothbrighter ight sources and more reflective creenswere used84. An added benefit f the additional ightwas sharper definition,which, even in conventionalphotography, eads to a greater llusion f depth85.There was nonetheless another important evelop-ment in the screen itself not directly connected toprojection hat had been taking place several years

earlier and deals with how the screen is situated nthe theatre.In December 1951, about ten months before

This Is Cinerama premiered, he Plaza Theatre n

Fig. 7. The RCASynchro Screen eliminates he proscenium urrounding he traditional motionpicture creenand extends he screen, n the form of wings or reflective anels, into he theatre auditorium.




New York nstalled new screen which gave, ac-cording to its developers, he movie patron a newand dramatic ense of realism by making he actionon the screen appear to occupy a larger portion f

hisfieldof vision'86. henew screen, marketed s the'RCA ynchro creen', was also known s the 'mask-less screen' because it eliminated he conventionalblack masking hat n effectset the image apart romthe auditorium. ccording o the developers, heatrearchitect Ben Schlanger nd engineer William Hoff-berg, the chief advantage of the new screen was itsability o make he movie mage seem to blend nwiththe theatre by reflective anels extending out on anangle from he top and side into the auditorium hat

picked upand diffused

ightrom he screen.

The point of these changes was to reorient hespectator's elationship o the screen: Schlanger ndHoffberg laimed he Synchro creen was the culmi-nation of a long-held esire to get rid of black mask-ing which had a tendency of making the movieimage look like a small window at the frontof theauditorium he audience had to peer into87.Whatdifferencewould thismake? One critical esponse othe new screen, from a photography magazine,defined the transformed rientation of viewer toviewed in terms hat would become commonplaceover the next woyears with he introduction f Cine-rama, CinemaScope nd 3-D.With the new screen,the magazine claimed, ... spectators end to have agreater ense of actually eing present t the scene ofactivity'88. Economics might have determined hatsomething new was needed for theatrical ilms,butthe terms or the noveltyhad already been set. TheSynchro creen s here described nways that learlyanticipate Cinerama89.

If he Synchro creenwas in fact a realization fpast ambitions, s its developers laimed, henCine-rama in effect became the fullest xpression of thisdesire by transforming he side panels of the SynchroScreen into actual image area90. In the past theimage occupied a specific area that was clearlydemarcated nd set off from he rest of the theatre, nelement of architecture hat competed with other ele-ments f architecture. n act, Schlanger nd Hoffbergadvised their theatre-owning eaders hat hey could

modernize heir ld theatres y using curtains ocoverup distracting etail, precisely he kind of architectu-ral detail we have come to prize in the increasinglylimited umber f still xtant picture alaces:

'Neutralization' f the auditorium eliminatingarchitectural urfaces, ight ources, etc. that notonly 'date' the theatre, but hat orce themselvesupon audience attention y their ize, formand

tone - that s somethingwhich can make thou-sands of theatres definitely different' nd muchfor the better. Combine hiswith he eliminationof the black screen border nd you get a reallyradical, highly xploitable hange91

The point was to transform he notion of theimage as an element f the theatre's rchitecture ntosomething hat was not only more than just oneelement of the entire auditorium, uteven more strik-

ingly,more han one element f the front

wall,which

had generally een cluttered ithquitea few compet-ing objects92. Rather, his new approach dictatedthat he image define the auditorium, nd in a waythat made it impossible o say it was limited o onlyone wall93. This, of course, is precisely what hap-pened with Cinerama94.

Cinerama was really he most xtreme xample,but all the new projection ystems f this period hadthe common aim of breaking down our sense of theframe. In an article that tried to explain the newprocesses to his readers, BosleyCrowther ummedup the developments f the period in the followingway: 'the carry-off f the screen's borders; he devel-opment of a marginal urround' whereby lightingwould give the illusion f peripheral ision and theabsence of a 'frame'; he variation f 'aspect ratios'so that he proportions f the image would conform oartistic xperience; stereophonic' or multiple utlet- sound'95. 3-D's outward movement might havereversed he inward direction most common n the

widescreen processes, but its apparent goal ofgreater ealismwas congruent ith he aims of wide-screen, and even the emergence ffectmightbe seenas a further ttempt o break down the frame. n actit was soon thought hat 3-D itself needed a wideraspect ratio o 'diminish he unnatural llusion f look-ing through small window'96. Nonetheless, muchas 3-D could be adapted to the widescreen, itsoverriding nd continuing oncern withextending hepicture out into the audience effectively played

against widescreen aesthetics ince, paradoxically,movingbeyond he frame demands ome notion hatthere is a frame to move beyond: emergence de-pends on a sense of violation or tseffect. Perversely,




336 William aul

by its insistence on the emergence effect, 3-D, theprocess hat most closelyapproximated he reality four binocular ision, made us think bout how thatreality s constituted.

The dimensions of the problem are thrown nsharp relief f we look at the discourse n still tereo-scopy at about the same period. Instill tereo photo-graphy, mergence was actually egarded s a bitofan aesthetic problem, initially een almost as anaccident of the process, something ike an undesir-able side effect. In ts initial eriod of post-war opu-larity, the process was discussed in terms moreconsistentwith he ad copy quoted n the first ectionof this essay for Cinerama. One writer n a photo-

graphy magazine, trying o convince his readers ofthe virtues of stereoscopy, noted 'The viewer hasactually projected himself nto he scene and, justasin reality, he is forced to look at objects individ-ually ..'.9. And a writer for a science magazinespecifically nvokedCinerama o suggest heeffectofstereo still photography: Like he new Cineramamovies, stereo photos draw you into he picture. Anillusion f depth creates the impression hat you areright n the middle of things'98. n the case of still

stereoscopy,hen, writers

ommonlyaw the viewer

as somehow moving nto he image99.Inasmuch s aesthetic ssuesmay be looked at in

isolation, hen, there s no inherent eason why 3-Dhad to emphasize emergence so insistently. n fact,stereoscopic still photography had something of adifferent ias. The anguage of stereoscopy peaks ofa 'window', which signifies he plane that separatesthe viewer rom he scene being viewed. Emergence,technically known as 'negative parallax', s whathappens when an object seems to extend beyond hewindow. In a 1951 article on the 'stereo window',Herbert McKay, a photography olumnistwho, inadvance of the stereo bandwagon, advocatedstereoscopy hroughout heforties,noted stereogramsare criticized and thrown out of exhibitions' whenobjects extend out of the window'00.

McKay claimed a more iberal view on mattersof emergence, but why emergence should be thesubject f an aesthetic debate at all may be gleanedfrom one of his columns n which he stated a pref-erence for what he called 'orthostereo', hich meanta 'stereogram' een through viewer matched o acamera, because '...in viewing a stereogram heobserver ees just xactlywhat he would have seen if

standing n the position of the camera - the sameobject, the same depth, the same distance and thesame size. As a matter of demonstrable act, thestereogram eproduces nfull ifesize' 1. Theclose fit

between the relation f viewer o image and viewerto reality hat stereoscopy fferspoints o the centralproblemwith emergence: ar fromextending he illu-sion of reality nd the realism f the illusion, t some-how manages o disturb his it.

As mainstream inema moved the photographicimage intoa theatrical pace and narrativized t,wemight ay that he 'stereo window' became the photo-graphic quivalent f the fourth all inconventionallyrealistic egitimate heatre. As muchas we are deal-

ing with conventional ramatic narratives, hen, wecan find reasons or not acknowledging he windowwithin he fictionmuch as conventional heatre doesnot like to acknowledge its fourth wall. There is,however, a peculiarity f the 3-D window as anembodiment f the theatrical ourthwall: as long asnegative parallax s avoided, the window and result-ing fourth-wall emain nvisible, but as soon as thewindow is in effect smashed by the phenomenon femergence, which 3-D movies repeatedly did, theinvisible ecomes

visible,and the fictionof a fourth

wall is laid bare by making pparent he plane thatseparates he viewer rom he object'02. The windowends up constructing tself n itsown deconstruction.

The new relationship f audience to screen thattook place in the early fifties s perhaps mostclearlysignalled by 'audience participation', phrase re-peatedly used at the time o describe hevarious newprocessesl03. The phrase would resurface decadeor so later nexperimental nd improvisationalheatrewhere actors would directly ngage members f theaudience and encourage responses rom hem e.g.the 'Living heater' f Julian Beckand JudithMalina).Butapplied to movies t seems especially curious ome because the word participation' onnotesa moreactive response hanwe can ever take o a film.Afterall, no matterwhat we do, short of maybe stormingthe projection ooth, we can't really alter he unree-ling of images on the screen, regardless f size oraspect ratio. The phrase would make more sense ifwe could give 'participate' more of a passivemeaning to suggest that we become part of theimage on the screen. ...the engulfing creen' s whatThomas Pryor, one of the most skeptical of earlyobservers, alled CinemaScope n the N.Y. Times,

336 William aul




but he wasn't alone in regarding he new wide-screens n these terms:104

Both [Cinerama nd CinemaScope] use extra-

wide, curved creens o engulf he audiencel05... wide-screen productions an engulfyou in aTechnicolor rc charged with breath-taking c-tion, beauty, and stereophonic ound106.

The huge curved creen, more than three imesas wide and half again as high as the standardtheatre creen, wraps the viewer n the center ofthe scene107

A scene is flashed on an oversize, concavescreen which swallows up' the audiencel08

... the startling ensation of being spang in themiddleof the action on the screen 09

It Cinerama] anover hecustomers ikea colos-sal vacuum leaner, sucking hem up intowhat-ever it was doing. When the screen went for aroller oaster ride, the whole theater eemed toheave and be dragged, screaming, fter tl1

Participation, hen, means we passively giveourselves p to the image that has taken over our ieldof vision: the image becomes an all-consuming e-ality'1 3-D, however, ven inwidescreen atios,didnot engulf the viewer in its dimensional pace be-cause it was constantly umping ut of that spacetowards he viewer' 12

In the first part of this paper, I presented aneconomic determinant or how 3-Dstyledeveloped nfiction ilms: enuine tereoscopic hotography oulddistinguish tself from competing extra-dimensionalprocesses by the emergence actor, and so 3-Dhadto move quite literally n another direction rom tswidescreen competitors. As 3-D from its inceptionwas chiefly oncerned with he picture xtending utinto the audience, the process more directlyplayedwith the audience's essential passivityby constantlychallenging twithphantoms. he ikeliest esponse othe rapidly orward rackingmovements f the superwidescreen ike the roller oaster ride that initiated

This s Cinerama s to scream113. The terror ere isone of total engulfment, regression o a state inwhich boundaries etween self and other are totallyobliterated. -D audiences were given to screaming

as well, but heywere also likely o duck. Ina sense,both processes are engaging the audience n a kindof play, but in Cinerama he play is only acknow-ledged at firstwhen the lightsgo down and at the

end when they come back again: the fantasy of theall-engulfing pace swallowsup the reality f the realworldduring he illusion f the screen's eality. n3-D,on the other hand, the illusionary ature f the illusionis constantly nnouncing tself. Smashing he win-dow, as 3-D so insistently id, called attention o thefact that here was a window there o be smashed.Widescreen processes, on the other hand, deniedthe existence of the window altogether.

I have been skirting wo ways of exploring his

important istinction would now like to map outhere: psychological and metaphysical, reas of in-quiry which represent onnected and yet separatespheres of thinking bout 3-D. To begin with psycho-logical aspects, I must econsider he 3-D audience.Earlier had noted a difference n the way the differ-ent processes presented themselves, a differenceclosely connected to their respective audiences.Where 3-D was initially ied to exploitation are,Cinerama was first hown in a 'legitimate heatre',with reserved eats

only,mail-in rders or ickets nd

advanced prices closer o the theatre han movies 14.

Up until 1970 when the 'road show' market inallycollapsed, films in Cinerama and various 70 mmprocesses continued to be shown throughout hecountry n two-a-day eserved eat bookings hat setthem apart from more mundane moviegoing are. InNew York, hese filmswere generally dvertised nthe theatre pages of the New York Times o signifytheir legitimacy. Legitimate' s the key word herebecause it grants he theatre an acceptable socialfunction, setting it apart from the fairground ofmovies, true' rt as opposed to the baser appeal ofexploitation. heactual composition f the audiencesmightnot be all that different certainly t least someof the action audience must have comprised theaudiences or How the West Was Won (1962) andTheAlamo 1960) - but he manner f presentationnecessarily hanged the way the audience ookedatitselfby changing he way it had to lookat the films.The action film n effect could become legitimatedand the audience with t - through he process.

3-D was always at the opposite end of thespectrum: t could offer no such 'legitimacy' ecauseitplaced the audience na different elationship o the




338 William Paul

Fig. 8. The llusion f participation r engulfment: inerama udiences go for a roller-coaster ide n theopening sequence of This s Cinerama.

screen, and in so doing it inscribed different udi-ence than Cinerama and other widescreen pro-cesses. A drawing by Artsybashev for a Timemagazine cover storyon the technical nnovations f1952-53 depicted a 3-D audience with familiariconography or the period, very similar n fact to anadvertisement described in the first ection of thisessay: as a bespectacled audience looks up at thescreen, a gigantic incarnation f a glamour ctressleans far orward rom he screen's window' o tickleone of the patrons under the chin, while another

extends his arms towards her 15. Both patrons aremen, of course, and it is fairlyeasy to say that theaudience being inscribed here is male. Yet Artsy-bashev's creen s not simply -Dsince the article wasabout all the new processes: t is also a wide aspectratio and curved. As if to complement hese othercomponents, he adds something otfamiliar rom heiconographic discourse on 3-D that counteracts hemale inscription: urther own in front, a womanreaches up to touch a purple lower spillingout thebottom f the screen. Where the men have their iantlover, he woman has her giant lowerwith ts abiallyenfolded petals.

Clearly both objects are supposed o represent

stereoscopic iewing experience, but here s a strik-ing difference not only in what emerges here, buthow the emergence is portrayed, both in terms ofactivity and in size. And I think his difference haseverything o do with the difference in audiencegender the sketch portrays. The giant goddess isclearly reaching owards he men as much as one ofthem reaches towards her, while the flower merelyseems to spill rom he frame, he lack of any intent nitspart announcing passivity hatallows the womanto reach for it. Furthermore, hile both objects are

giant-sized, he goddess clearly overwhelms he malespectator while the flower is of more manageablesize. Idoubt fArtsybashev as consciously rying oinvoke difference etween widescreen and 3-D,yetthe difference here seems to me precisely hat, withgender the key to what makes he difference mport-ant: wide aspect ratioswith heir creens hat engulf'or 'swallow' he audience sketch ut a female space,and perhaps specifically a maternal space, thatdraws the spectator nto the screen. In this regard,widescreen iterally xpands what Robert Eberweinsees as the primal spect of the viewingexperience:

The cinematic creen, the ultimate rosthesis n

William Paul38




the history f human nvention, ervesas a surro-gate, deriving rom nfancy, or he physiologicaland psychic unionwe enjoyed with he mother:the screen is both breast and infant, he mother

and selfl 16ForEberwein, he experience f watching a film

is a regression omparable o the kind of regressionthat akes place in dreaming. 3-Dby defining pacein phallic aggressive terms hreatens o disturb ursleep.

In Against Our Will Susan Brownmiller efinesas a female positioning omething ery much ike hesense of engulfment scribed to widescreen pro-cesses:

The sex act, which can result n pregnancy, hasat its modus operandi omething mencall 'pene-tration'. Penetration', owever, describes whatthe man does. The eminist arbara Mehrhof assuggested that f women were in charge of sexand the language, the same act could well becalled 'enclosure' a revolutionary oncept I'mafraid he world s not yet ready or117

Perhaps because we are not ready for this weinsist hat he fictions f filmgenerally ndow forwardcamera movements with penetrating ignificance.This, I think, s congruent with a sadistic relationshipto the screen, a notion hat underliesLauraMulvey'sargument in 'Visual Pleasure and NarrativeCinema'18. But one can distinguish etween theeffectof the fiction nd actual ensation produced bythe image. One of the key things the widescreenpromisedwas to overwhelm he spectator, omething

that did in fact troublemore ceptical observers t thetime because it pointed o a breakdown f a criticaldistance that was still possible with the standardscreen:

Audiences will be put, especially with he addi-tion of stereophonic ound, somewhat in theposition of Tennyson's ancers n the LightBri-gade. They will have to ride unreasoningthrough olley and thunder nto any old melo-drama Hollywood ares to spread before hem.

'To be overwhelmed y great art is one thing',commented a New York critic after seeingCinemaScope. But o be drowned n mediocrity

magnified is another ... What's bad in most

Hollywood pictures will be exactly 2.66 timesas bad in this'l 19

As far as Ican see, theonly significant

esult ofCinemaScope] ... has been to make mediocrity,formerly pleasant adjunct of brainwashing,intoan obtrusive orror120

Thewidescreen, hen, held tsown kind of terror,and in some ways it was more mpressive han 3-D.3-D's hreats lways evaporated n mid-air, utwide-screen enveloped he audience hroughout hecourseof the movie in a way that rendered all resistanceimpossible.

Because it so completely pulled the spectatorinto the screen, Cinerama's reatest sign of powerwas the rapid forward racking hot which becamethe key signature f practically very Cinerama ilm,from he travelogues f the early fifties o the fictionfilms f the sixties,withGrand Prix 1966) by virtue fits subject matter erhaps he ultimate inerama x-perience. And especially nCinerama, lthough uiteeffective on conventional widescreens as well, therapid track forward s terrifying ecause it under-scores our

passivitynd threatens o

denyour ndivid-

uation rom he space of the image. Countering -D'saesthetics of emergence, Cinerama and its wide-screen derivatives fferedan aesthetics f merger. Assuch, wide-screen rocessesoffera kindof reinforce-mentof audience passivity hat represents erhaps aculmination f what Gaylyn Studlar as designatedthe masochistic esthetic of filml21.The pre-Oedipalpositioning f the audience Studlar roposes with tsdownplaying of gender-defined pleasure is espe-cially pertinent o the widescreen experience, sinceas Dorothy Dinnerstein as most extensively he-orized, a fear of engulfment y the maternal bjectholds or both male and female children'22.

On the other hand, 3-D with its profusion fthreatening bjects hatpenetrate hetheatre's udito-rium ketches ut a male space, with he threat f thead for Fort Ti 1953) specifically efined as the terrorof the phallicwoman. To locate more specifically heterrifying leasures of 3-D I have to consider brieflythe peculiar affinity etween 3-D and horror. t was

not just n aberration f the fifties:when 3-Dsuccess-fully eturned o theatres n the seventies nd eighties,horror ilms igured prominently n the releases. Butthiswas true ven earlier with heone attempt t mass




340 William Paul

It' . 1

I - JoAIOHSHOcRApBIAIALiI 3-DIllNSIONi , SAMKATZMANird IWAMASNfiACOLUtNBIACTURE

Fig. 9. The advertising or Fort Ti 1953). [Courtesy f Bob Furmanek]

distribution f stereoscopy roma major tudio, withthe Pete Smith Audioscopik' horts f the late thirties.Strikingly, hen Pete Smith ecided his third -D shortshould attempt a narrative, horror parody waschosen as the appropriate ehicle, 'a travesty n theFrankenstein raze of that era'123. 3-D is appropriateto horror ecause its mode of address s aggressive:it is constantly moving nto the audience space in away that s experienced s threatening. With a largevariety f weapons the most requent tems mergingfrom he screen, the emerging women were necessar-ily placed in a contextof intimidating ggression'24

From he very first 3-D feature, he alliance be-tween sex and horror as implicit n the alliteration fthe ad: lion, lap and lover. The sequencing of slo-gans in the ad, with the lion preceding the lover,posits a simple question: what could you do with alover nyourarms after a lionhad landed nyour ap?Further, hat could you do with a lover approxi-mately en times your size? There s certainly malebias in the come-ons f these ads, butcastration s themale concern being addressed nthese films125. on-sider the ad for Fort Ti,which promised ts audiencethe followingdelights: Pounding istsoverpower ou

340 William Paul




Flaming rrows corch you Scalping savages slashyou ' Why exactly hould ny of this be consideredsource of pleasure? The llustration f the ad sketchesout a possible answer: a white man finds himself

struggling in a delirious embrace between twowomen with weapons, a brunette ndianwith toma-hawk and blonde white woman with a long carvingknife. The deliberately ensationalisticmise-en-sceneof the sketch suggests a perverse menage-a-trois:while the left hand of the Indian hreatens he manwith a tomahawk, er righthand provides differentkindof threat s it seems about o ripopen the blouseof the blonde's already provocative 6colletage. Theblonde responds with a provocation f her own by

aiming a knife at the brunette, ut the knife s alsomoving n the direction f the man. Furthermore,orusin the audience it is the most hreatening lement ofthe image since together with her arm t is the objectmost fully emerged from the screen. Significantly,although he blonde sthreatening hebrunette ho inturn s threatening he man, we can see clearly onlythat he man has grabbed hold of the blonde's arm.Oddly, she becomes more the object to restrainrather han the woman offering he most mmediatethreat.

The titillation f this image lies in its multipleconfusions f threats hat conjoin race, sex and vi-olence in a whirlpool ertiginously wirling ogethermultiracial nd polymorphous urrents. he pleasurein the threat of castration ies in the confusion ofimpulses ere: he menage of physical ontact held nan unexpected balance and accompanying eroticcharge, the pleasure elt in a surge of muscular orcebrought n to repel the threat. The man is finally hecontrolling orce in the image, and this sense ofcontrol s key to understanding he pleasure f 3-D.

But,on the flipside, there s also pleasure n theway 3-Dthreatens oundaries we might onvention-allyand consciously scribe o, not boundaries f selfas with Cinerama, ince self always emerges glori-ously ntact rom 3-D's llusory mergence as the egoasserts ts ability o control by withstanding; ather,the threat s to boundaries f affect and identity. usthow extensive his hreat an be mightbe seen mostclearly in the following description f a 3-D short,

Spooks, starring heThreeStooges, which played inthe original unswith FortiTi:

It .. includes persistent nd gleefulassault on

the audience with he followingprops: a sickle,an over-sizehypodermic eedle, a bread knife,a meat cleaver, a fountain en, a blow torch, afire extinguisher, pitchfork, ight custard pies

and one wheezing gorilla.After heforegoing, abuss by the last-named s pleasure126.

Themajority f the objects here are sharp; f theremaining our, two promise xtinction y both fireand water. Thecastration nxiety s clear enough, yetthe whole list ends once again with a kiss, but foronce the sexual dentity f the kisser s not so explicit,in part because of Hollywood's own practice ofcastrating male animals by concealing heir enitals,

placing chimpanzees and select other simians inpants the gorilla here must necessarily e polymor-phous. Further, he shot with the hyperdermic men-tioned in this description s distinctive n a fairlypeculiar way: even without ndertaking systematicsurvey, 'm pretty ure this is the only anal point ofview shot in the history f Hollywood cinema. Asboundaries f sexual identitybecome confused, asthe very boundaries f body parts become confused,merging yeballs and assholes, boundaries etweenpain and pleasure are likewise erased: what theTimes ritic under ordinary ircumstances ould ap-parently indrevolting erebecomes a positive ourceof pleasure.

There s one other ignificant ay in which 3-Dtransforms n apparent ppeal to pain pleasure, butin order o get there I have to take a detour hroughmore metaphysical oncerns. For all its horror ilmghoulishness,Houseof Wax philosophically xploresthe play between illusion nd reality entral o theexperience of stereoscopic ilmsby using the wax-works as a kind of metaphor or 3-D itself. Waxsculpture s a popular rt orm more ifelike han tonesculpture ecause of the eerie abilityof wax to sug-gest flesh; or this reason t has normally een usedonly orsculpting uman orms.Likemovies, t has notbeen taken seriously s art, yet its popular appeal,like hat of film, ies in itsability o recreate eality, rmore accurately, reate the fullness f an illusion freality. It is this fullness hat probably accounts orhow wax sculpture s displayed. Unlike tone sculp-ture, t inevitably omes complete, as it does in Houseof Wax, with its own mise-en-scene, ettings hatmeticulously ecreate an environment nce inhabitedby the real-lifemodel or he sculpture.




342 William Paul

Even more specifically ike 3-D movies, waxsculpture eases us with tsfalse reality.There s a jokeabout this in House of Wax as two women see aman lookingat his watch and take him o be a wax

figure. They remark ow he looks ike a real man, towhich the man replies, 'You'd be surprised'. n asense, this sets the stage for the film's darkest oke,namely that all its wax sculptures re in fact realpeople, corpses covered over with an embalminglayer of wax, almost acting as the unconscious ulfil-ment of the 'mummy omplex' hat Andre Bazin pro-poses as the psychological origin of the plasticarts127. ndrede Toth, he director f House of Wax,has claimed he filmwas designed to be in 3-Din its

earliest planning tages, from he writing f its scriptto the construction f itssets128, nd the resultant ilmdoes seem to substantiate hisclaim. As much as it isin 3-D, it is a film bout the nature f 3-D not depth,but quite specifically he 3-D process itself. It mightseem a bit perverse because they are such contradic-tory modes of address, but he filmdoes present tselfas both a meditation nd an exploitation f its photo-graphic process.

There s one specificaesthetic debate articulatedin the dialogue early on in the film that seemingly

ignores the issues of reality and illusion 've beenaddressing here, and yet in a way these notionsunderlie he argument. culptor arred s arguing withhis businessman artner Matthew over what kind of

wax figureshe should reate. Thebusinessman antsthe artist o put n a chamber of horrors, ut the realartist pparently nly appreciates beauty and thinksthat can be as muchof a commercial ttraction:

Jarred: There re people in the world who lovebeauty'.

Matthew: 'But more who want sensation -shock '

Jarred: The morbidly urious. Humph won'tcater to them'.Of course, the morbidly urious s precisely o

whom the film tself s catering, rightdown to its finalimage of a severed wax head thrust ut at the audi-ence. In hecontext f the film's ggressive morbidity,the debate itself may be understood ifferently romwhat its speakers ntend, o that beauty' nd 'shock'serve as code words for 'illusion of reality' thebeauty residing n the totalizing quality of the artwork, ikeCinerama and 'recognition f illusion'

Fig. 10. The life-like'wax sculptures n Houseof Wax (1953) prove obe real people,embalmed n wax. HerePhyllisKirk right) sstartled yJoan of Arc'suncanny esemblance oa former riend, asVincent Price inwheelchair) ookson.

VINCENTR1CE

(86Pr~ sPn STDR s,,: ..N ..

-

William Paul42



343

the shock hat omes from tartling hesenses as 3-D'semergency ffectconstantly oes.

The hirties ilm hat House of Wax is based on,Mystery f the Wax Museum 1933), is contempor-ary in setting and at times almost more newspapercomedy than horror ilm.House of Wax was movedback to the 1890s, and itseemsa deliberate hangein part odeal with heVictorian ultof beauty. Oddlyenough, however, wax sculptor arred, he great ex-toller f beauty, ndescribing iswork o an art critic,in the film's econd explicitdiscourse on art, keepsemphasizing he meticulous way in which he hasrecreated eality.Reality nd beauty are thus yokedtogether by the film: beauty s an expression f per-

fection, the created totality f a self-contained nvi-ronment hat defines itselfas real. As the film akesover a Victorian levation f beauty, talso connectsit to a Victorian ecadence: beauty n this ilm s quiteliterally uilt n an underlying ot,so that beauty tselfis necessarily llusory.A sense of beauty as the filmpresents t, then, is built on idealizations hat wewillingly ubmit urselves o at the same time we keepin reserve he knowledge they are as false as theobjects hat eemingly merge rom he 3-D screen.

The restof the film,whichembracesprecisely

hekindof shock he all-toopure artist rom he beginningrejected, s filledwitha constant lay between realityand its llusion hat s often rrelevant o the film's plot,and in some instances eems to expose the illusionismof the plot itself. At the opening of a new waxmuseum un by the once pure artist who has nowbeen converted o the value of shock, a man in atuxedo tries o attract ustomers y hitting paddleball in their direction. At one point he faces thecamera and says, 'Well, there's omeone witha bagof popcorn. Close yourmouth. t's he bag I'm imingat, notyour onsils.Here she comes. [He hits he ball,which is apparently emale, directly out to the ca-mera.] Well, look at that - it's in the bag'. I'vesuggested an element of play in 3-D,and I think hesense of play is particularly tronghere. It's apparentin the punning n the dialogue, of course, but evenmore playful s the obvious rrelevance f the wholeaction to the narrative. ustas this movement wayfrom he narrativemakes us aware of the constructed

nature f the narrative tself, he movement ut of thescreen inescapably makes us aware of the fact thatwe flinch rom omething hatdoesn't exist.

The odd thing, hen, as this movieknows, s that

3-D not only makes the image more real, in theprocess talso pointsup its llusory ature.Psychologi-cally, this relates o the play of any horrormovie byundermining ur sense of mastery ver something hat

disturbs s,at the same time hat t also reinforces hatsense of mastery ecause we always keep in reservethe knowledge hat he threat s psychological atherthan physical.We know hat none of this s real if itwere, we would not stay in the theatre ery ong andrisk ll those objects being thrown t us - and yet ofcourse we continue o flinch right down to the finalshot of the severed head thrust owards us.

The act that he final hot of House of Wax is asevered head returns e frommydetour f metaphysi-

cal speculations o the main road of the psychologi-cal appeal. Castration nxiety ears ts severed headonce again here, with a kind of double force sincethe head without body belongs o a woman, hat s,to a body already severed. We are being chal-lenged to look at what the film egards s the ultimatehorror, n image of total disintegration, ut whatmakes t ultimately orrifying s its threatening hrusttowards us, so that he image of castration erverselytakes on a phallic ggressiveness. Through llthisweknow, of course, hat he head within hefictiveworldof the image is not real - it is a wax sculpture f ahead. But ven more mportantlyorourexperience fthe film s a film,precisely ecause the head is thrustinto our space, we are made inescapably ware ofthe unreality f the image itself.

3-D is constantly hallenging us with phantomsthat demand we recognize their existence as phan-toms, a physiological ffect of the peculiar way theindependent mages we receive hrough woeyes areyoked together by the brain. As a psychologicalphenomenon, 3-D constantly challenges the con-fidence of our own perceptual quipment. The psy-chological appeal of 3-D, then, is that t presents uswith a kind of irreality esting,a nifty nversion f thereality esting f infant eek-a-boo ames. Translatingthis perceptual phenomenon into psychoanalyticterms, s 3-D narrative ilms nevitably id, the realitytestingbecomes a testing f integration f both bodyand mind mages. With the first hreatening bjectflung rom he screen, we inevitably uck, flinch,or

even close our eyes. With each successive object,we stillexperience he shock to our nervous ystemsbutwe also learn we can stare tdown without hreatof actual dismemberment. ngaining a kind of mas-




344 William Paul

Fig. 11. 3-D assaults he audience: publicitymaterial or ItCame fromOuter Space (1953) features hehand of the monster eaching out of the screen and into he space of the audience. Theartist, however, hasclearly mbellished hisrepresentation f 3-D technology, ransforming t intoan ersatz CinemaScope notethe curved creen and extreme widescreen spect ratio).

tery over the peculiarities f our binocular ision,wegain a pleasure in confronting llusory hreats pre-cisely because we are convinced of our own inte-grity. Much as the peek-a-boo ame grants he infanta sense of presence by denying presence, 3-D en-ables us to confirm ur wholeness as subjects ulti-mately by denying the integrity f the image fielditself' 29

At the beginning of this essay I wrote about 3-Das an institutionalized berration. have been con-

cerned here n part withdemonstrating ow it movedaway from mainstream hat he various widescreenprocesses easily flowed into. But here are aspects of3-D style that antedate the process and do figure nmainstream Hollywood ilms.Earlier had quoted aseries of advertising blurbs or various Cinerama,CinemaScope and 3-D movies. Now let me addsome ad copy that mightwell fit n with hese others:

YOU accept an invitation o a blonde's apart-ment YOU

getsocked in the jaw

bya murder

suspect YOU slug the crooked cop who tries oframe you YOU look into the gun of a fear-maddened killer

Much as this sounds ike he other come-ons, t'sactually an ad for a filmof the forties, made in nospecial process TheLady n the Lake 1946)130. Butthe come-on ounds enough ike he touted appeal ofa 3-D movie, even threatening he audience with apunch in the nose, to suggest that the style hadexisted before 3-D. At the time of its release, the filmwas greeted as an interesting xperiment, ne thatmight open up possibilities or future ilmmakingl31But herewere no takers, nd this apparently ltrasub-

jective style remained pretty much of an oddity until3-D came along to dip into a similarbag of tricks.Therewas a problemwith he stated objectives f TheLady in the Lake that Robin Wood has astutelypointed out: rather han reinforcing subjectivity, hefilmultimately oints o a separation between specta-tor and image132

But his s only a flaw if subjectivity s in fact thedesired goal. Similar ffects may be found in otherfilms, and specifically n small screen, non-stereo-

scopiccinema. Consider, or

example,the

followingscene from Alfred Hitchcock's trangers n a Train(1951): a head-on hotof FarleyGranger eeming opunch he camera, slugging his fist directly t it. The

William Paul44

^



345

punch sactually ntended or RobertWalker, and weduly get a reverse angle shot of him receiving hepunch, but not before here s some intervening lackleader o signal what seems to be a break n the film.

As always, Hitchcock s too sensitive o the implica-tionsof film tylenot o understand hat is happeningby thisdirect address o the camera: tseems to bringabout a literal breakdown n the image field133.Thisalso signals an important reak n the narrative, ithan important hange in the relationship etweenWalker and Granger ending he story n a differentdirection rom he course t has taken up to this point.

In this regard, while Strangers n a Trainmightofferan extreme xample, his igure f styleof move-

ment out along a perpendicular s not unfamiliar nmainstream inema: for example, the train rollingover the camera, photographed ya camera unk na pit between he tracks. But uch mages are usuallypresented within onventional tylisticrameworks hatmark hemas aberrational, ransitional oments hatcan, most explicitly n the case of Strangers n aTrain, ignal a literal reak n the narrtive. na sensethese are all remnants rom he 'cinema of attraction',moments f a style of shooting hat find themselves

collidingwith he

stylisticemands of the more

rigidlycodified classical Hollywood narrative inema134The prototype or all of these is probably he famousshot from The Great Train Robbery 1903) of thecowboy pointing his gun directly t the camera andfiring.Strikingly, hiswas sent o theatres s a detach-able shot which could come at either he beginningor the end of the film,or perhaps ven both. Theverynature f the shot dictated hat t had to exist outsideof the narrative roper because of itsdirect ssaultonthe audience. Such shotsare deliberate hocks o oursystem hatmomentarilyiftus out of our submersion nthe image. 3-D, however, in effect institutionalizedthe shock effect, demanding hat the narrative estructured round t.

While the other new processes of the early iftieswere trying o promote hemselves s stereoscopic ovarying egrees, only hegenuinely tereoscopic ro-cess of 3-D effectively nverted he aesthetic enden-cies of the other processes and offered a challenge othe dominant aesthetic trend of the period. Andre

Bazin's notion of the integral ealismof the photo-graphic mage depends on our acceptance of itas adocument of reality. But there is a qualifier o ouracceptance that Bazin does not point out: the docu-

ment can be certified nly by moving nto he seem-ingly hree-dimensional pace of the screen. 3-D, bymoving out into the three-dimensional pace of thetheatre, onstantly alls our attention o the fantastic

nature f the image, to its almost magical ability ocreate a seeming reality hat is in fact an illusionthinner han he air through hich t moves.+*

Notes

1. '3-D Boom In FullSwing; 13 Ripe For 83, DozensBeyond' Variety, December 982, 5, 28.

2. Lawrence ohn, '3-D Lenses een As Standard tem'Friday' Spurs Par To Hardware Role', Variety, 5

August 982, 1.3. Cohn, 25 August 982, 51.

4. Variety laimed his was 'the irst ime3-Dhas everbeenattempted n over-the-air ommercial elevision'. MCAOffering 3-D Horror eatureFor Commercial 'cast',Variety, November 1981, 1. Even hough iewerswould have to purchase naglyphic lasses at a storein order o see these movies at home, there was onceagain enough excitement bout 3-D hat airly ired ldmovies n black-and-white ould offer ndependent ta-tionsunexpected uccesses,as a later rticle ndicated:

'After xtensive romotion, ncluding tie-inwith ocalconvenience tore hain o sell herequired -Dglasses,WGNO-TV lobbered ts network pposition ..' JohnPope, 'Indie TVStation Uses 3-D Feature or RatingsWin', Variety, 7 February 982, 1.

5. The irst ttempted evival, n the early sixties,was themost hort-lived, ncompassing nly wofilms,Septem-ber Storm made in both CinemaScope nd 3-D,andTheMask. The next wo revivals, n the early eventiesand the one in the eighties 'vedescribed here, weremore uccessful n their imited ime rame.

6. Even 0th Century-Fox, hose representatives emainedoutspoken n heir ttacks n 3-D,did manage oreleaseone film n the despised process, Inferno, lbeit anindependent roduction hecompany ad pickedup ordistribution.

7. Bordwell, The lassicalHollywood tyle,1917-60', inBordwell, anet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, TheClassical HollywoodCinema: Film tyleand Mode ofProduction o 1960 (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1985), 3-4, Elsewhere nhisdiscussion fclassi-cal style, Bordwellwrites, Reallyproblematic Holly-wood films become limit-texts, ork which, whileremaining raditionallyegible,dramatize ome imits fthat legibility'(81). he majority f 3-Dfilmsmightnotappear problematic' ntheway I hink ordwellntendsthe term here because we can so neatly onsign hem




346 William Paul

to exploitation enres, yet in heir ecessary oreground-ing of style do think hey unction s 'limit-texts'.

8. TomGunning, TheCinema of Attraction: arly ilm, tsSpectator nd theAvant-Garde', ideAngleNo. 3/4

(1986), 66.9. Histories, f 3-D ilm resentation aybe found nLenny

Lipton, oundations ftheStereoscopic inema:AStudyinDepth NewYork: an Nostrand Reinhold ompany,1982) and James L.Limbacher, ourAspects f the Film(New York:Brussel nd Brussel, 968) Limbacher e-scribesmoreparticular nstances f 3-D Showings, lbeitin scattershot ashion; Lipton ends o be more echno-logically etailedand accurate.

10. It s infacta standard eature t Disneyland nd Disney-world: n 1982 Variety eported n the premiere f

Murray erner's agicJourney t Disneyworld, hichwas the first se of the dual 70 mm ystem.Of this ilm,the article noted, '... uses in non-sensational ashion the

ability f 3-D o reach outward nd seemingly ouch heviewer. But he touchesof gimmickry re not there ustforexploitation'. heaesthetic valuation ere s worthnoting: t s possible o have the gimmick f emergencebut deny it as a gimmick f the film defines tself s ahigh-class tem, which the very elaborateness f theprocess at Disneyworld ssured. Thomas M. Pryor,'KodakUnveils ts3-D Journey' xhibit tDisney's pcotCenter', Variety, December 982, 106.

Afurtherairground-typeightmaybe found nOmnimaxtheaters ntheUS.These heaters re generally ttachedto science museums r aquariums, hichare currentlyplaying an 11-minute omputer raphics nimation ri-dimensional pectacular, We Are Born of the Stars',albeit ilmed nanaglyphic -D,presumably ecause ofan impossibility f using a two-projector ystem orOmnimax.

11. 'Let'sGo to the Feelies', Time 22 September 986),80.

12. Inwriting his, am deliberately choing a question hat

was frequently sked at the ime. That -D right rom hestartwas thought bout n very pecific and delimitingterms hatdefined tas a gimmickmaybe seen from heresponses f thestudios t the ime.After hebig successscored by the independent roduction f Bwana Devil,Variety nan article ntitled StudiosWary of 'Too Much3-D' It'sFuture eldVague' reported, Feeling s that,as long as specs are required, -Dwillcontinue n thegimmick ategory, whichdoesn't warrant eavy nvest-ment .. It's igured hat 3-Dapplied o quality roductwilldo even better han Devil' fora while'. 18 March1953, 3]. Sixmonths ater, after he successful elease

of a number f 3-Dfilms rom he major tudios,here

was some thought hat he processwas appropriate orcertain kindsof films.Variety onsidered hat t mighthave a future n 'action houses' ['3-D B.O. Fad orFixture'? September 953, 3]. This ine of thinking

was continued nto 1954 when 3-Dwas clearly ading.Anexecutive orPolalite, company hatwas toutingsingle trip -D ystem, rying ofinda niche ora systemhe hoped would have a future, oted hat he processwas good for a Western ike Hondo, but not for amusical ikeKissMe Kate.He claimed, Peoplewho likeWesterns nd melodramas ill ake o the dimensionalpicture ..' ['Easy Cheap Gear as Hypo for 3-D ViaPola-Lite', ariety 7 February 954, 4]. He provedwrong at the time people were simply iredof 3-D,regardless f the kind f film t was attached o - buthewas right osee 3-D nevitablyagged bygenre, as future3-Dcycleshave continued odemonstrate.

13. Time, Cinema Birthday f theRevolution', 2 October1953, 110. 'Evenmore outspokenwas Darryl .Za-nuck, who, of course, had an interest n seeing the

superiorityfCinemaScope:

Soyou

throwhings

t theaudience. You hrow ireand water ntheir aces. Howlong can we keep that up? We don't need depth. Mybrain ivesmeall the depth need. I'vebeen supplyingmyown third imension llmy ife.What we need is toopen up open up wide' Strictlyor he Marbles', Time,8 June 1953, 71 ].

14. 'Cinema-Birthday f the Revolution', 10.

15. 'Strictlyor he Marbles', 4.

16. For description f the production f these shorts,PeteSmith, ThreeDimensionally peaking' n Martin Qui

gley, Jr., ed., New Screen Techniques New York:QuigleyPublishing ompany, 1953), 17-20.

17. This sperhaps more xtreme han he reatment fothernew technologies n films,but t mightbe worth notingthat he most ignificant ther new technologies, oundand colour, were treated n a way that would eem todeny Andre Bazin's eleology hat charts n inevitableprogress owards reater ealism f presentation inceboth sound and colour were initially llied to genresmore tylized han realistic,musicals n the case of thefirst, istorical omances nd musicals nthe case of thesecond. See 'TheEvolution f Film anguage', nBazin,What Is Cinema? Vol. I (Berkeley: niv.of CaliforniaPress, 1967), 23-40. In a thoughtful rticle on 3-Dmovies,Michael Kerbel stutely otes, 3-D's endencytoward expressionism may indicate that directorspreferred oemphasize tsdistortions ver tsrealism ..(18 Kerbel, 3-Dor Not 3-D', FilmComment', ovem-ber/December, 1980, 11-20.

18. A Business Week article noted the use of 3-D bysalesmen forpresenting roducts, epping up stuff' swellas proliferation f 3-Dmagazines nd comicbooks.Time oted a boom n 3-Dpublications ngeneral: Bylastweek 3-D

publishingas

beingtried

verywhere'.'Promotion akesOver 3-D', BusinessWeek, 11 July1953, 96-8. 'ThePress nto he Third imension', ime,3 August 953, 53.



The esthetics f emergence

19. These igures hould t best be regarded s approxima-tions ince heir eliabilityeemsuncertain, specially orthe numbers n the war years, with he peak in 1946occasionally eported s high as 90 to 100 millionweek. Iuse these igures ecause Ihave ound hemostagreement n them.

20. The breakup f Loews,parent f M-G-M, nd the mostcomplicated arrangement was not completed until1959. See Michael Conant, Antitrust n the MotionPicture ndustry: conomic nd LegalAnalysis Berkeley:Univ.of California ress,1960).

21. 'US ActsTo FreeFilms orTVUse', New York imes, 3July1952, 19.

22. 'New US Blast AtFilm ndustry emands ale to TV,All16 mmSpots', MotionPicture erald 6July 1952, 5.

23. 'Gov't Shaky n 16m-TV'? ariety, 7 August 952, 3.

24. 'In calling it [the suit] stupid, Hollywoodwas beingpolite. n act, thisaction by Attorney eneralMcGran-nerywas an example f deliberate fforts odestroy, yGovernment nterference, reedom of bargaining'.'Cinema: tupid or Worse'? Time,18 August 952,84.

25. ... an undue and unfair dvantage o a new industryover one already established. We can't see how itserves the public nterest'. Collier's Editorials: eallyHappy Marriages Don'tStartThisWay', Collier's, 0September 1952, 78. The case was regarded assufficientlymportant o rate a second editorial he ollow-ing year when it was expected hat policies mightbedifferent: ... Mr Brownell's epartment, s of now, isseeking egal remedy nd punishment n matters hichare not only contradictory nd illogical, but at totalvariance with he policiesand promiseswhich broughtvictory to the Republic party in last November'selections'. Even under he Eisenhower dministration,however, he Department fJustice ontinued o pressthe suit, ventually ringing tto trial n 1955. 'Collier'sEditorials: r Brownell's eadache', Collier's, 5 April1953, 78.

26. Editorial: TVand the Movies', New York Times, 8August 952, 16; Jack Gould, Radio nd Television',1August 952, 14; A.H.Weiler, Department fJustice- Problem osed by One Phaseof Federal uit o ForceSale of Films oTV', 17 August 952, 11, 1. One of themost urious spects of this uit s the ack of attention thas received n filmhistories, hile he Consent Decreeof 1948 has been dealt with xhaustively. arth owettpossiblyhas this suit n mind, but his reference o it isgarble to the point of having the government in:'Eventually, ntitrust ction again forced he studios omake heir product vailable or elevision se, and thesale or ease or pre-1949 eatures as a primary ourceof income or distributors nd producers'. owett,Film:TheDemocratic rt) Boston: ittle, rown, 976), 354.

Michael Conant reports he case accurately, ut n abook xtensivelyoncernedwith ntitrust ctions gainstthe film ndustry, e oddly devotes onlyone briefpara-graph o this ase. Conant, 197-98.

The uithas probably one so unnoticed ecause, unlikethe divestiture uit, the government ventually ost thecase. It's s if history ouldonlyacknowledge success-fulbattle s having mpact n the losers; f the accuserturns ut to be the loser, which he government as inthis case, it's apparently ot worth determining hateffects he actual uit might avehad on the victors eforetheyachieved victory.But his uit dragged on for hreeyears before t finally ame to trial nd in the trial heindustry mployed ome of their most prestigious ndpowerful awyers n their efense. Furthermore, erusalof press and trade response makes clear how very

seriouslytwas taken.

Timings the

mportantssuehere:

comingafter hesuccessful uit o divorce heatres romstudios nd moving owards he height f the televisionthreat as the FCC was about to lift the freeze onchannels, hesuit,win or lose, had to produce strongresponse rom he ndustry. rguably, n he mpact thadon changing he shape of films, he suit s at least asimportant s the ConsentDecreeof 1948.

27. Gould, 14.

28. Weiler, II, 1. Weiler further ointed out the irony,'company xecutives re ready to boast that a largemeasure f credit or this success

storys due to the

$400,000 spenton advertising ing Kong ia TV 'Hisimplicit oint ndefending his tatus uo sthat v tationsshould not complain, hat they themselvesmay reapgreat benefits rom heatrical xhibition.There s a further rony nWeiler's using he KingKongreissue s an argument gainst he forced ale of filmsto TV: or the previous month r so RKO had beennegotiating possible sale of its entire backlog o aconsortium hatwould show them on TV. Flexing uchbox office muscle, he mightyKong hanged all that:'Heavy grosses rung up by King Kong played animportant art n inally illing ffrecently deal thathasbeen manymonths n the making or ale of RKO'S ilmlibrary .. ' KingKong caresOffRKODealForBacklogSale to Syndicate', Variety, 0 August 942, 18.

29. How serious hiswas may be gauged by the fact thatthe uit, s initiallyiled, ould n act overnew releases,forcing hem o be made available or vat the ame imeas theatrical elease. This ed the government ntode-fending tsposition y claiming hat heywouldofcoursemake allowances or some kind f clearance, buteventhisclearance would be something nder overnment,rather han ndustry ontrol.

30. ThomasM. Pryor, USSuit Politics', anuckDeclaresHe Charges Anti-Trustction n Films sTruman eprisalforSupport f Eisenhower', ew York imes, August1952, 6. Zanuckwas not alone insuspecting olitical

347



William Paul

motivation;hehead of a midwestern heatre hain ameup witha more onspiratorial heory, harging he suitwas a favour o tv interests ranted by the Trumanadministrationorgiving heDemocratic onvention et-ter coverage han he Republican. Rembusch hargesTrust uit s Payoff o TV or DemoConclaveCoverage',Variety, ugust 1952, 3. These charges notwithstand-ing, thesuitwas continued o the point f trialduring heEisenhower dministration.

31. Newell A. Clapp, ActingAssistant ttorney eneral,Department fJustice, Letters Film uitCharges Exam-ined - Application f AntiTrust aw n Use of MotionPictures xplained', ew York imes, 0 August 952,24.

32. A succinct presentation f some of the contradictoryaspects of the suit may be found n Ernest orneman,

'United tatesversusHollywood: heCase Study f anAntitrust uit',Sightand Sound, February 951, 41 8-20+ &March 1951, 448-50. Rpt. nTinoBalio,ed.,TheAmerican ilm ndustryMadison:Univ.of Wiscon-sin Press, 1976), 332-345.

33. 'New York PublicGets a Look t Cinerama Eight-Week BroadwayRun aid to Be Sold Out at ReservedSeat Policy',MotionPicture erald, 10 October 1952,19.

34. George Schultz,Editor, etter heaters, Cinerama ndthe Future',MotionPicture erald, 10 October 1952,

19.35. I am deliberately choing Andre Bazin here not just

because he will be important or a later tage of myargument. also want o suggest hatany considerationof ontology hould ake nto account not just he meansof recording, azin'smain oncern, butalso the meansof playing back, the site of exhibition. ee Bazin, TheOntology f the Photographic mage', -16.

36. For example, Time noted, 'Strangely, ven while TVboomed, the big movies, e.g. Quo Vadis and TheGreatest how on Earth ere doing a bigger business

than ver. But heones that ost onlya million ollars rso were hardly paying their way'. 'Strictly or theMarbles', 6.

37. 'In hort, because of television, he B-picture udiencehas virtually isappeared. .. Rentals n Hollywood rethe best evidence of the decay of the B-picturendustry.Along owerSunsetBoulevard the section nce knownas Poverty ow all available ndependent icture otshave been cornered by folkwho are making ilms ortelevision r hope to'. [p. 119] MiltonMacKaye, TheBigBrawl:Hollywood ersusTelevision Part wo',TheSaturday vening ost 6January 952, 30, 119-22.

38. 'Industry pinion, xpressed by panelists f TheHeraldInstitute, verwhelminglyakes the position hat: Thereshould e morepictures ncolor.Thepresent seof colorin relation o output s inadequate'. Panels Urge Big

Increase nOutput f Color Films',MotionPicture erald23 January 952, 22.

39. Even o the point, of course, of old theatrical movies,which s preciselywhat happened n the years 1955-

57, ironically ightfter he ilm

ompaniesmanaged owin their uit against he government. hisdid have animmediate ffecton theatre ttendance: report pre-pared or the TheaterOwners of America oted, withthe nflux f top-quality ld pictures n free elevisionastfall, [there] has been a 7,000,000 drop in averageweeklymovie ttendance n he inalquarter f lastyear,compared with the same period in 1956'. BosleyCrowther, Old Movies on TVPerilHollywood-SecretReport ays Rise in Home Viewing Threatens ife ofWhole Industry', ew YorkTimes, 7 January 958,1.

40. The earliest reference have been able to find to apractical -Dtelevision ystem s one successfully sedby theAtomicEnergy ommission:Stereo o extend heeye of atomic xperimenters ypermittinghem o see -from safe distance what happens when they man-ipulate emotely ontrolled adioactive materials'. hesystem sedpolarized lasses;an accompanying hotoshows hat he mage appeared ide-by-side ather hansuper-imposed; his would necessarily ave restrictedcommercial pplication. Now It's Three-DimensionalTelevision', usinessWeek, 30June 1950, 26.

41. See, for example, 'ExhibsWary of 3-D Hangover',(Variety, February 953, 7), whichdiscusses he earsofexhibitors hat heywouldget stuck uying quipmentfor a process hat had no future.Throughout he yearthere were frequent rticles on the need for stand-ardization.

42. PeterWollen has argued, Projection as been the mostconservative ide of film technology. Exhibitors, orinstance, efeated 3-D-anattempt y Polaroid o chal-lenge Eastman's upremacy n the filmstock market.CinemaScope ... was able to make headway becauseit involvedminimal daptation f the projector, ndereconomic

pressuref

competitionromTV

andalso to

eliminate -D).Exhibitors aveconsistently esisted on-version osts'. PeterWollen, Cinema nd Technology:A Historical Overview', in Teresa de Lauretis ndStephen Heath, eds., The Cinema Apparatus NewYork: St. Martin's Press, 1980), 19] An economicargument f this ort hould peak in favour f 3-D,butWollen's conclusions re erroneous ecause his factsare wrong. While exhibitors ere worried bout tand-ardization see note #41], economics made 3-D themost ttractive f the new 'tri-dimensional'ystems or hetheatre wner: The stimated ostofconverting heatersfor [CinemaScope] projection runs from $5,000-$25,000, compared with$75,000 forCinerama ndroughly 1,000 forNatural Vision'. 'Fox'sMoves ..,BusinessWeek, 7 February 952, 27]. There wereevenclaims,probably ased on an estimate hatdid not

348




include new highly eflected creen, hat3-D ould beinstalled n any theatre n the nation t a cost a gooddeal under $100'. ['Natural VisionReady or PublicShowing',MotionPicture erald, 2 November 952,38]. For his eason,MotionPicture erald ontinued o

be a primary ooster f 3-D ven as itsend was nearing,claiming n an editorial hat quality 3-D movies were'especiallyworth nvestigating ompletely ow because3-D swithin heeconomic each falmost very heater'.[Martin uigleyJr., ARealTest f 3-D',MotionPictureHerald, 28 November 1953, 7]. Thiswas in spite ofthe act hata pollof theatre atrons ythe Herald bitovera month efore had reported hat34.9 per cent ofmoviegoers iked3-D,while 65.1 per cent disliked t.Uames D. Ivers, Industry anelistsFind: 3-D FutureHinges on Better Stories, Motion PictureHerald, 3October 1952, 13]. Itwas clearly he public, not theexhibitors, ho killed -D.

WEVIEW HEWORLDFROM WO OINTS FVIEW22" APART

(THE ISTANCEETWEENHE EFTANDRIGHT YESSCALLEDTHENTEROCULARISTANCE)

Wollen's entire article is astonishingly naccuratethroughout. here re a number f other mistakes venin this brief quote that I would like to correct or therecord- Polaroidwas not involved n conventional ilmstockproduction, lthough heydid begin, in 1988, to

produce ilm tock.But n 1954, they had to enter ntoan agreementwithTechnicolor orproduction urposeswhen they stillhoped they would be able to use theirVectograph ystem or feature ilms. 'New Attempt oHype3-DFilms', ariety, 0January 954, 11 .Asoneofonly woproducers fpolarized lasses,Polaroid id,however, have a strong nterest n the success of 3-D:'Since December, Polaroid as expanded productionfrom 100,000 to 12 million airs a month, but t stillcannot ill he demand at 10 apiece to exhibitors..... But he bestangle forPolaroid sthat heglasses areused only once (for sanitary easons)'. 'Business&Finance- 3-DBonanza', Time, 3 March 1953, 101].

t tEFT

TWO AMERASHOOTFROM WO OINTS FVIEWWITH HE AMENTEROCULAR22'")ASTHE UMAN YES

4

mm

THE EFTANDRIGHT YESARE OMBINED"OVER UNDER"ONONEFILMFORPROJECTION

Fig. 12. How3-Dworks:publicitymaterial orSpacehunter: dventuresintheForbidden one(1983).

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4)

5POLARIZATIONEPARATESHETWO MAGESIKEENETIANLINDS

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THE LASSESREENCODED HROUGHOLARIZATIONTO EPARATEHE WOMAGES,OTHAIEACH YE ECEIVESHE ROPERIMAGE.

L R

,; uJ 1]T h =3-D

349

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William Paul

Finally,CinemaScope as Fox originally onceived itcompletewith tereophonic ound did involve ar morethan minimal daptation ftheprojector', nd of coursetherewere major ights ver his.Single trip -D ystems,which were viable by 1954, were the simplest nd

cheapest systems available, yet exhibitorswere notinterested.

43. Fora detailed description f the problems n projecting3-D, see Allen Long, '3-D: A Two-EyedWonder',Science News Letter, August 1953, 74-5. Illumina-tionwas one problem nherent n the system tself ndnot capable of mechanical djustment: Since thesepolarizing ilters nock ut about half he light eavingthe projector, nd since the polarized lasses worn bythe audience ilter ut about halfof what s left, he 3-Dpicture ends o be dark' 751.On the mechanical ide,the articlemakes ynchronizationhechiefheadache n3-Dprojection, ut hiswas nonetheless heone problemthat had been solved before he disappearance f 3-Dfrom heatres n 1954, as I note ater nthispaper withPolaroid's Vectograph' ystem. Also throughout hisperiod American Cinematographer arried reports fother ingle-strip -Dprojection rocesses.Two ameraswere still eeded orproduction, ut composite eleaseprint ould be made from he two negatives.A numberof filmswere released n these processes, but it wasalready oolate o have much mpact n 3-Dexhibition.Still,when 3-Dmade ts hort-livedomeback n heearlyseventies twas in a single-strip rocess. Even his new

process had some technical roblems, owever: lign-mentwas perfect, f course, but he singleprojector tillhad to split he image and pass it through wo light-reducing olarizing ilters, o that heamount f light nthe screen was even far less than that from he twoprojector ystem.Polaroid's ectograph ystem idhavethe advantage f no light ossat the projectors ecausethe polarization as inthe ilm mage tself nd no filterswere used, but his ystemhas neverbeen used theatri-cally o myknowledge.

44. 'TheThirdDimension', ime, July 1951, 94.

45. 'Korda n Film Deal With Thomas-Todd', ew YorkTimes, 4 March 1952, 28.

46. 'Mapping heGrowingWide-Screen, -DMaze', NewYork imes,12 April1953, 115.

47. This ampaign partly ackfired o the extent hat he irstpress reaction o advance previews f the new systemdrew negative comment recisely bout the lack of areal sense of depth. ThomasM. Pryor n the New YorkTimes omplained, The rocessdoes notachieve a truethree-dimensional ffect, such as the depth of visionobtainable ia stereoscopic hotographs .. the feeling

of audience participation laimed or he process as aresult ftheengulfing hape was notexperienced ythisspectator'. 'MetroWillUseFox3-DProcess', 9 March1953, 34) Variety, eporting n the same preview,

noted henew process ailed ogivethe llusion fdepthwhich the reporter was nonetheless willing o grantCinerama. 'PixExecsHail 20th CinemaScope For tsPracticality nd LowCost', 25 March 1953, 4).

48. TheNew YorkTimes, 8 November 1952, 22.

49. Ads reproduced n Hal Morgan and Dan Symmes,Amazing 3-D (Boston: Little,Brown and Company,1982), 73, 69, 80. The respective moviesare TheMaze, It ame From Outer Space andnfemo.

50. In a provocative paper on spectator positioning nCinemaScope ilms,delivered t the SCS-UFVA on-ference 1988, John Beltonnoted that early Cinema-Scope ads often showed characters merging rombeyond heframe, but hiswas never s extreme s theemergence eatured n 3-Dads where characters ouldoften seem to leave the frame

altogether.Belton nter-

prets, ightly hink, heemergence nCinemaScope dsas havingmore o do withbreaking own our sense ofthe rame. willhave more o say about his n he econdhalfof this ssay thatdeals withaesthetic ssues.

51. The next uccessful evival f 3-D in the early eighties- was facilitated ythegrowth f theexploitation arketand was dominated yhorror, ithFriday he 13thPart3 and aws 3-D he most uccessful f the releases.

52. Although t wasn't the first o be released. ColumbiaPictures ushed ntoproduction nd release Man in theDark n 3-D, which managed to have its New Yorkopening ust prior o the opening of House of Wax. ButHouse of Wax was a major roduction, et in period,which lwaysraised osts,and fairly laborate, noughto give the tie to later laims hatall 3-D ilmswere lowquality.The real ssuehere was one of class, a pointwill develop shortly. Horror ilmswere generally on-sidered ow class, something esigned for immediateappeal and quickplayoff.

53. Abel Green, 'Tri-Dimension ectic Race', Variety, 8January 953, 3. Andaccording o a New York imesarticle hree months ater, ack Warner n announcing

thatDialM for Murder ould be shot n 3-D

expressedhis faith n the future f this system ven though thershad already stated hat he futurewas in widescreenfilms.

54. 'Wax' (3 Wks 30 Cities) Is Greased Lightning -DGrosser f $1,000,000', Variety, 9 April1953, 4.

55. 17June 1953, 3.

56. 'As Depth sRe-Studied, he Short History f 3-D HasMany a Question', Variety, October 1953, 7.

57. 'Warners een QuicklyDropping - As Studio Hops

on Scope Wagon', Variety, 6 August 1953,7. The

'Scope' in this case was not Fox's CinemaScope because Warners hoped to have theirown anamorphicprocess under the name 'WarnerSuperScope', he

350




moniker WarnerScope' aving lready been appropri-ated for 1.85:1.

58. '3-D Priority ivenCurrent olidProduct enews Exhibi-tor Beef', Variety, 0 December 953, 3.

59. $6,500,000. So Far ForCinerama', Variety, 0 De-cember 1953, 7.

60. The low playoff hat Houseof Wax was compelled ouse because twas in3-Dwas generally omething sedfor more prestigious enres ikemusicals.Not too longafter he release of Houseof Wax, Warners remieredTheBeastFrom 0,000 Fathoms n 1,422 theatres nd,a year later, Them n 2,000, both of them horror ilms.('Plan Fast PlayoffFor WB 'Beast', Variety, 7 June1953,3 [the same issue that carried he item aboutHouse of Wax running ut of theatres] nd '2000

Playdates orWB's Them'Within Month ' Variety,June 1954, 5).

61. 17 September 953, 1.

62. BosleyCrowther, New Movie Projection hownHere;Giant Wide Angle Screen Utilized', The New YorkTimes, October 1952, 1.

63. 'There will be no black-and-white ictures made inCinemaScope, ntil wentieth entury-Fox, hich rantslicenses or use of the trade name, lifts ts contractualrequirement hatall CinemaScope roductions ust eincolor. This eport n TheNew York imes nnouncedthat both Warner Brothers nd M-G-M had to makechanges in their plans to filmRebel Without Causeand Trial, respectively, n black-and-white inema-Scope. After ivedays of shooting n black-and-white,Warners crapped he footage and switched Rebel ocolour. M-G-M,which had not begun photography nTrial, ecided, probably orbudgetary easons, oshootTrial n 'ordinary ide screen projection n black-and-white'. ThomasM. Pryor, Color s Required orCine-maScope', New York imes, April1955, 33.

64.

65.

66.

The Motion Picture Herald, 12 December 1953, 6.

24 May 1954, 1.

'3-D Regains Much Lost Prestige as Metro Test of KateFavors Depth', Variety4 November 1953, 4.

67. 'Debate Significance of 3-D Versus Flat Test of Metro's'Kate' Film' Variety, November 1953, 7.

68. 'New Attempt o Hype 3-D Films', Variety, 20 January1954,11.

69. 'Polaroid Execs Sure 3-D Has Overcome Grief', Variety,13 January 1954, 7.

70. 'Another Warning', Variety, January 1954, 10.71. 'Polarite Co. Protests That Sign', Variety, 27 January

1954, 4.

72. William H. Pine, William C. Thomas, 'Behind the 3-DScreen Scenes of 'Sangaree", New York Times, 31May 1953, 113.

73. A test run of Miss Sadie Thompson, for example,'showed 'surprisingly qual strength' n both [3-D andflat] formats'. "Sadie' in the Flat, Too', Variety, 13January 1954, 7.

74. This s quite frankly guess and limited o major studioproductsince ndependent producers are much ess likelyto use Scope. This has to be a guess because it'sbecoming increasingly difficult o tell which films are inScope. Trade papers rarely ist his anymore, and thingsbecome impossibly onfused when films uch as CharleyVarrick nd Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, both filmed n1.85:1, carry the credit 'In Panavision'.

75. In writing this I don't want to suggest that an 'aestheticmovement' can itself exist outside of economic determi-nants, but I find this a particularly omplex matter, andone that can be pinned down with much less certaintythan has been assumed in some writing on film style. Forexample, the frequent association of self-concealingillusionismwith patriarchal capitalism seems to me anespecially dubious proposition. It might be more accur-ate to say that art which promotes a sense of its ownwholeness, reality, llusion s art appropriate to a domi-nant culture, whatever the the economic arrangementsof the particular ociety. The rise of Socialist Realism nStalinist Russia

presentedart that was more

concretelyillusionist han anything in the more decadent West atthe time. On the other hand, art that constantly bares itsdevices and calls attention to its artificial nature iscommensurately ppositional, appropriate to aestheticmovements hat feel themselves at odds with the domi-nant culture. n hisregard, it s significant hat 3-Dduringthose brief periods in which it flourishes inevitably at-taches itself to exploitation material, lower class formsthat do stand in opposition to what the dominant cultureis willing to regard as 'art'.

76. Manny Farber, 'Films', The Nation, 8 August 1953,

117-18.77. 'Amateur photographers now have a choice of five

stereoscopic cameras for still photos in color, two three-dimensional attachments or movie camera, and a var-iety of viewers'. 'Stereo Photography Is Back in Style',Business Week, 12 June 1952, 72-76. Further, hen3-D did arrive in movie theaters, the tie to stereophoto-graphy was made explicit: '... (Bwana Devil)will get aThanksgiving Day premiere n Hollywood, then tour hecountry. In some cities, its showing will be tied in withlobby exhibits of stereo still equipment by David WhiteCo. of Milwaukee, makers of the Stereo-Realist amera'.'Third Dimension: New Bait for Movie Box Offices',Business Week, 8 November 1952, 135.

78. This visual structure s discussed in William Paul, 'Art,

351



William Paul

Music,Nature nd Walt Disney',Movie,Spring 1977,44-52.

79. Theopening, of course, also parallels he beginning fRebecca( 940), but he connection oDisneymightwell

have been the consciousone for Welles since Disneyanimators ere used oprovide ome birds or he orestby Kane's astle during hepicnic equence.

80. Interestingly,n thisarticle Ogle has also pointed o aconnectionwith he technological evelopments f thefifties: Deep-focus inematography oreshadowed, nasense, the development f the wide-screen ormats f adozen years later ...' although he claims these filmstransferred he nterest ndepth o breadth. Ogle, 'Tech-nological nd Aesthetic nfluences n the Developmentof Deep-Focus inematography n the UnitedStates',Screen, Spring 1972; rpt. BillNichols, Movies and

Methods Vol. II (Berkeley: niv. of California Press,1985), 58-83.

81. See, forexample, TheStory f AlexanderGraham Bell(1939; Irving umming, irector; eonShamroy, ine-matographer; ichard ay,MarkLeeKirk, rtdirectors);Drums long he Mohawk 1939; John Ford, director;Bert Glennon, Ray Rennahan, inematographers; i-chard Day, Mark LeeKirk, rt directors); ow GreenWas MyValley( 941 ;John ord, irector; rthur iller,cinematographer; ichard ay, Nathan uran, rtdirec-tors).

82. Salt, FilmStyleand Technology: istory nd Analysis(Lnond: Starword, 983), Ch. 15, 287-308.

83. Please ee footnote 43 fora technical iscussion f theproblems f screen lluminationn projecting -D ilms.

84. Prior othe ntroduction fwideraspect ratios, n articlein Motion PictureHerald noted hat he move o largerscreens n the early iftieswas 'the nevitable utgrowthof better arbons, amps, ensesand screens'. PicturesAre Getting BiggerThan Ever,Too on the Screen', 1March 1952, Section2: Better heaters, 4.

85. RobertGottschalk,

resident f Panavision,rgued

oranamorphic ver standard widescreen photographybecause of its greater ightdistribution nd the betterdefined images that result: ... anamorphic photographywith ts63 per cent greater negative nd positive reaproduced harper nd clearer mages nmotion icturestheaters'. Gottschalk, A History f Anamorphic hoto-graphy nModern MotionPicture roduction', nArthurC. Miller nd Walter Strenge, ds., American inema-tographerManual, Third dition Hollywood: mericanSocietyof Cinematographers, 969), 81.

86. 'Plaza Gets New Screen RCA Wide Vision'Device

Said to Give 'New Sense of Realism', ew York imes19 December 951, 41.

87. Ben Schlanger, rchitect nd WilliamHoffberg, ngin-eer, 'How Theaters Can be Revised or 'FullVision",

Motion PictureHerald, 1 January 1952, Section 2:Better heaters, .

88. 'MovieScreenGivesNew Dimension', merican hoto-graphy, April 1952, 6. The only other response 've

been able to locate did describe the screen in a fashionthat uggested hewidescreen rocesses o come: Thisimparts o the viewer a new and dramatic ense ofrealism y making he action on the screen appear tooccupy a larger portion f his field of vision'. MovieSynchro-Screen eightens isual mpact', opularMech-anics, anuary 953, 231.

89. There sone other ery pecificway inwhich he SynchroScreen nticipated mminent idescreendevelopments.Commenting n this creen, an article n MotionPictureHeraldadvised, Tobe noted also inone of these recentinstallations thatof the RKO 8th Street is a changein aspect ratio .. The ratio of height o width wasreduced by only 71/2per cent'. This s not as much sthe 20-30 per cent that 1.66:1 and 1.85:1 wouldreduce he heightof the image, but he principle s thesame, and it took place about four months efore hefirst fficially dvertised wide screen' ilmwas shownwithParamount's ropped eleaseon Shone n 1.66:1.The article lso referred o the Synchro creen as 'thepoor man's Cinerama'. AGreater TheatricalMediumin heMaking'Motion icture erald, 0January 953,12. Althoughtwas clearly mportant nd did have omeeffecton subsequent heatre esign, heSynchro creen

seems o have fallenbetween he cracks f filmhistory;it s, forexample, not isted na well-researched hrono-logyof widescreen evelopmentshat o back o 1897.DavidKatz, AWidescreen Chronology', n TheVelvetLight rap, ummer 985, 62-4.

90. A personalmemory s relevant ere: 'mnot sure twasspecifically heSynchro creen, but heCrown"TheaterinNew Haven,whichwas equipped by RCA, id havea maskless creenwithextendingwall panels opickuplight eflection.Muchas thismight ave anticipated hewidescreen, t turned ut to be a problem or Cinema-Scope installation ince the panels were part of the

architecture nd not adjustable ora wider creen. Thetheatre's nitial olutionwas to paint a reflective creensurface on the panels, and project he CinemaScopeimageon to them, herebymaking cope ooka bitmorelikeCinerama s the angles of the wall sharply ividedthe image into three separate parts. Eventually, hetheatre uspended flat creen ut nto heaudience hatextended rom hefurthest ointof the wall panels.

91. Schlanger nd Hoffberg, . A great many of the oldpicture alaces did do precisely his n the ifties, over-ing up the more glorious xcesses of their rchitecturaldesign with extensive drapery, often a pale goldencolour hat ould pick up and reflect iffused ight romthe screen precisely s Schlanger nd Hoffberg prescribed.

352



The esthetics femergence

92. A New YorkTimes rticle n the opening of a theatredesigned by Schlanger hought tworthmentioning hatthere would be no curtains. The screen was clearlyintended odominate he heatre. Murray illGets NewMovie House', 4 October 1959, 49.

93. Itmight eem hat he new mall heaters uilt ver he astdecade or so in reducing he average screen size toabout what twas in the ortieswouldoffer contradic-tionof this erm, et thedesign of many fthese heatresdoes in fact offer a continuity hat really sets theseauditoriums part from their closest counterpart, heneighbourhood heatre, f forty ears ago. The cham-bers might e small,but manyare for he mostpart tilldesigned o that he Scope image ills he entire ront fthe theatre, with 1.85:1 a close runner-up. he ield ofvisionmight e more restricted yvirtue f the architec-ture tself,but he

imagestillhas the aim of

fillinghat

field.

94. Someof theargument verappropriate spect ratios hattook place at the time did in fact deal with he issue ofarchitecture nd the relationship f the screen to itsspace. Paramount, he one studio hat refused o useCinemaScope, laimed a preference or the 1.85:1dimensions f Vista Vision because they were moreappropriate o the spaces ofexisting heatres. ee NewYork imes, March 1954, II, ; Arthur avin, Tomor-row's Wide-screen Camera', American Cinemato-grapher, April1954, 174-76, 202-4.

95. BosleyCrowther, TheThree-Dimensional iddle', TheNew YorkTimes, 9 March 1953, VI,57.

96. Charles G. Clarke, Practical ilming echniques orThree-Dimension nd Wide-screen Motion Pictures',AmericanCinematographer, arch 1953, 138. Forthe LosAngeles premiere f House of Wax, followingthe New York opening, Warners technicians ex-perimented with shorter enses and cropping n theaperture ocreate a wider mage. Thiswas right roundthe time hat Paramount nnounced he introduction fthe 1.66:1 aspect ratio nd had Shane hown at Radio

CityMusicHall n hecropped ormat ven hough twasshot or 1.33:1.

97. William Mortenson, Mortenson n Stereo', AmericanPhotography, ay 1950, 13.

98. KennethM. Swezey, 'Stereo FoolsYourEyes', PopularScience, December 952, 220-21.

99. Here are two other nstances rom erydifferent ourcesthat define stereoscopy n terms f a kind of movementin:About a filmof an operation taken or showing atmedical meetings nd post-graduate nstruction oursefor doctors', a writer noted, '... we seemed to bewatching he operation hrough plate glass windowinstead of a motion picture creen. Because of thisillusion f depth, we felt we were looking with the

surgeon nto he patient's hest nstead f looking ntoa picture of it'. Jane Stafford, Three-DimensionalMovies',Science News Letters, 3 August 952, 118.

'In hreedimensions, colourpicture f mountain cen-

erygivesyou the llusion f actually ooking uta cabindoor'. nterestinglynough,when hiswriter witched isconcern othehomemovies n 3-D, mergence uddenlyemerges s a possible hrill, nd not ust mergence, utterror s well: You an scare yourguestswitha sceneinwhichan automobile harges traight t the camera.Theeffect sso realistic heaudience nstinctivelyucksout of the way'. Ewart Thomas, StereophotographySweeps the Country', opular Mechanics, September1952, 106, 108.

100. HerbertMcKay, Notes From Laboratory', mericanPhotography, ugust 951, 453.

101.Herbert C. McKay, Notes From Laboratory TheStereo Battle', American Photography, eptember1949, 591.

102.Compare hiswithBosleyCrowther's orry orhow 3-Dwas being used at the ime: 'Though resently ovel ndsensational, his rick f pushing hings ntoyour eyes,likepistols r lionsor fallingbodies, is inconsistent ithaesthetic armony which s a pretty igh ounding ayof saying hat tdoesn't o with henormal oint f viewof a person ooking t a movieand his relation owhatis happening on the screen'. Crowther everactuallydefineswhat aesthetic armony' nd a 'normal oint fview' are, but he point s he doesn't eallyhave to; heregards tas apparent o his readership hat ome kindof invisibilitys necessary, much as playgoers of theperiod would not doubt the necessity f keeping hefourth all invisible.Crowther, 3-Dor Not 3-D', NewYork imes, 6 April1953, II, 1.

103.A New York imes rticle May 1, 1953, p. 16)on thecompletion f photography orTheRoberefers o Cine-maScope as 'the audience participation' creen'. Anunconvinced homas M. Pryor 'MetroWillUseFox3-DProcess',New York imes, 9 March 1953, 34) noted'... the eelingof audience participation laimed or heprocessas a result f the engulfing hape of the screenwas not experienced by this spectator'. till,Foxwasconfident noughabout his power of the process ousethe ag line ItputsYOU nthe picture ' ntheir arlyadsforCinemaScope.

104.James Spellerberg ismisses hisnotion: ... writers oonunderstood hat ngulfment id not occur withCinema-Scope. ... Rather, heeffectof the rame was describedas panoramic, nd the discourse noted the frame'susefulnessor hepresentation fscenery nd spectacle'.

My reading of reviews, articles nd ad copy of theperiod uggests omething uitedifferent, s I indicatehere. Spellerberg, CinemaScope nd Ideology', nVelvet ight rap, 0.

353



William Paul

105. 'HowTheyMakeMoviesLeap tYou', Popular cience,April 1953, 98.

106.Andrew R.Boone,"'Sqeezed" Movies Challenge 3-Ds'Popular cience, August1953, 102.

107.Richard F. Dempewolff, Movieson a Curved ScreenWrap You nAction', opularMechanics, ugust 952,122.

108.'Business-Motion ictures: he ABC of '3-D',' News-week, 16 February 953, 69.

109.John McCarten, The Current Cinema - One MoreDimension', ew Yorker, 1 October 1952, 126.

110. 'Strictlyor he Marbles', 7.

11 1.Parker yler,who accepted the then current otion of'audience participation', iewed hisat the ime n termsalmost diametrically pposed to what I am presentinghere: 'The psychic tensions deriving rom hese newsensory xperiences ccordingly epend on a modifica-tion of the spectator's assivity.The implied estheticproblem s where the line is to be drawn betweenvicarious xperience f the real world and that purelypassivepsychological tate necessary o the experienceof art'. To prove his point, Tyler ites a moment romHouse of Wax, but his also points o the problemwiththe erms f his argument: ikemany thers nthe period,he treats -Dand the various widescreen processes asiftheywere all the same. If imited o 3-D,hisnotion hat

the processdisturbs udience passivity scongruent ithwhat I am arguing here. Tyler, TheEra of the 3-D's',New Republic, 8 May 1953,123.

112.There was one other way in which 3-D necessarilypointed o a separation etween creen and spectatorthat was noted by Bosley Crowther, ne of the mostinsistent pponents f stereoscopic inematography, na review f Second Chance: ... dark glasses betweenthe screen and the eyes of the beholder seem anobstruction o a full and perfect iew'. Crowther, TheScreen n Review',New York imes, 3July 1953, 28.

113.One of the irst f the Pete Smith horts n 3-Ddid infacthave a roller oaster equence of itsown. Again, herewas nothing ntrinsic n the process tself hat made itinhospitable o movement n; tsimply ouldnotdevelopthat way inthe fifties. ee Smith, p.cit.

114.The premiere f This s Cinerama as at the BroadwayTheater hich was normally sed for stage plays. Afterthe eight-week un or which the theatre was booked,the ilmwas moved over o the Warner, movie heatrethat had been shuttered or several months ecause offinancial roubles. ronically, efore heCinerama ook-ing the owners of the Warner had hoped to save thetheatre y turning t intoa legitimate heatre.

115.Time, June 8, 1953, Cover. Witty, accurate, andinformative,Strictlyor he Marbles', 66-74) the ong,

"JAWS 3-D" Director of Photography JAMES A. CONTNER and crewAn ALAN LANDSBURG members cover the search for a killer shark with a new 3-D

Productions Presentation camera system.

Fig.13.Jaws3-D 1983)was filmed nArriVision, 3-D ens echnologydeveloped orusewithArriflex ameras.

354

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Theaesthetics of emergence

well-researched piece that accompanies this cover, isquite simply one of the best pieces of writing on newscreen processes in the period.

1 16. Ebernwein, Film & the Dream Screen: A Sleep and a

Forgetting Princeton: rinceton UniversityPress, 1984),35.

117. Brownmiller New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975; rpt.New York: Bantam Books, 1976), 372.

1 18.Mulvey, Screen, Autumn 1975; rpt. in Nichols, 303-15.

119. 'Strictly or the Marbles', 72.

120. Donald Malcolm, 'Film', The Nation, 14 February1955, 19.

121 .Studlar, 'Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures of theCinema', in Nichols, 602-621.

122.Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur: SexualArrangements nd Human Malaise (New York: Harper& Row, 1976).

123.Smith, 19.

124.1 should note that the emerging woman was more oftena conceit of the advertisements han the actual films,which generally preferred more obvious threats. The factthat emerging women were such a prominent part of thediscourse in the ads is nonetheless indicative of how

people thought about 3-D at the time.125. Itmight be worth keeping in mind hat Freud would have

a female audience equally interested n castration, alsoseeing the maternal figure as the castrator.

126.H.H.T., 'Colonial History Viewed Through Polaroid',New York Times, 20 May 1953, 7.

127. Bazin, 'The Ontology of the Photographic Image', 9-10.

128.Morgan and Symmes, 56-8.

129. In an article on thepsychological significance

ofpeek-a-boo games James A. Keelman writes:

Peek-a-boo represents formof exploration and a meansto a number of beginning differentiations rucial o earlyreality esting: nternal rom external, me from not me, mefrom animate not me (boundary setting of Federn),distinctions which in turn contribute o the concept ofbody image and to ego structure building including heconcept of self. Also involved are a perfection of visualperception, the mastery of making an object go andcome, as well as the magical manipulation uggested

by now it is here and now it is gone and I can controlitsgoing and coming 262).

Even more akin to 3-D is what Keelman esignates'passivepeek-a-boo', game inwhich he appearance-

disappearance scontrolled ytheadult nteracting iththe nfant.About his he notes:

It s associated withbeginningmental go, the onsetofMahler's hase of differentiation nd the early separ-ation of selfand object .. (268)

The particular ignificance hisgame can have for ourunderstanding f film ies in Keelman's bservation:

Theanlage of peek-a-boo s inherent n heanatomy ndphysiology ftheeye with he id's unction fpermitting,limiting, r shutting ff vision ... Vision s of greatimportance n hedevelopment ftheego in he irst ear(261).

James A. Keelman,M.D., 'The Peek-A-Boo ame PartI: ItsOrigins,Meanings, nd Related henomena ntheFirst ear', ThePsychoanalytic tudy f the Child,Vol.XXIINew York: nternational niversities ress, Inc.,1967),239-273.

130.1 want o thank TomGunning orcallingmyattention othisad and pointing ut ts relevance o the discourse n3-D.

131. BosleyCrowther, Subjective ilm',New York imes,

February 947, II, 1.132.Wood, Hitchcock's Films London: A. Zwemmer,

1965), 37.

133.There s a similar equence nNorth yNorthwestwhenCary Grant s knocked ut by a state rooper, lthoughhere Hitchcock oes not use the black eader.

134.'Cinema of attraction' ight ctually eem mostappro-priate or Cinerama, because the process remainedsuccessful or almost eight years with a series oftravelogues, ilms hat reallydid return s to the earlieststages ofcinemaby making heimage tselfhekeypointof interest, heonly real drama presented n a non-dra-matic orm. But hese films lso differed rom he early'cinema of attraction' n terms of class: where themovement o narrative ilmmight ave been undertakento court middle-class udience, hemanner f presen-tation or Cinerama, s Iexplain n the text,defined tsveryrespectable ature. inally, ineramawas able toadapt tselfullyo the narrative ilm oralmost decade,moving hrough ts greatest xpansionist hase in thesixties. tsdemisewas triggered y changing conomicconditions hat ollowed he collapse of the roadshowmarket n 1970.

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