This is Cinerama

[emaidel]

Other than myself, does anyone here at AR remember the super-widescreen process "Cinerama?" For those who do, here's your chance to relive history, or at least a very close facsimile of what Cinerama was. For those of you who've never heard of it, this is a chance to see the film process that changed the look and sound of movies - forever - on the evening of September 30, 1952, Briefly, Cinerama used three cameras and three projectors with a field of vision of 146 degrees. The screen was enormous - 92' wide by 33' high, and deeply curved (a 146 degree arc). The sound system - considered by film critic Leonard Maltin to be superior to any current Dolby digital system he's heard in his career - was a 7-channel system with five then state of the art loudspeakers (Altec Lansing "Voice of the Theater") behind the screen, and with two others in the rear. Cinerama was created when movie attendance was shrinking due to the advent of television, and was designed as something that couldn't possibly be experienced outside a movie theater equipped to demonstrate the highly complex system. How then is it possible that "This is Cinerama" has made it to a BluRay disc, designed to be seen on a flat screen HD set? The answer to that is an amazing format called, "Smilebox," that actually simulates a deeply curved screen on an otherwise flat HD screen. And Smilebox works very well indeed, though the bigger the TV, the better, and it pays to sit fairly close to the TV for the immersive effect one felt in an actual Cinerama theater. Smilebox was used several years back on a BluRay restoration of "How the West Was Won" (the last film made in the Cinerama process) and looked exceptional (I never much liked "HTWWW," finding it talky and boring, but then it WAS the box office champion when it was released in 1962). While HTWWW looks better than "This is Cinerama," the historical significance of the latter is much more important since it was the first of only 7 films made in the 3-camera/3-projection system, and the one and only film in history to get a glowing review the following day on the front page of The New York Times. It played in only one theater for the remainder of 1952, yet became the number one box office hit of that year. It's dated, corny and a bit hokey, but an absolute blast. The format isn't without its flaws, the most noticeable being the seams or "join lines" where the three images meet. This is a problem that was never solved with the so called "three strip" process, but the restoration from some truly horrible film stock for ''This is Cinerama" is remarkable. The join lines are there - sometimes quite obvious, but not at others - but one has to realize that this is a movie that's 61 years old. The problem with the join lines was eliminated with the creation of "Single-lens" Cinerama (purists refer to it as "Fake" Cinerama) in which a movie was filmed in a 70mm process with the edges of the image "rectified" to squeeze additional visual information on the film, and then via the use of an anamorphic lens, the picture was spread clear across the entire Cinerama screen without any seams. Initially, it was very, very impressive, but the sense of depth was completely gone as the field of vision of these 70mm cameras was rarely more than 60 degrees, and so the image just looked really big, but without the enormous scope and sense of depth of the original "Three-strip" Cinerama. Here's your chance to see what it looked like, or at least a decent replica of what it looked like, and for those of you old enough to remember it, this is a wonderful nostalgic trip back in history.

[Worf101]

Yes... I'm quite familiar with Cinerama. It ran in a special NYC theatre for what seemed like decades. Also TCM just re-aired "How the West was Won" one of only 2 REAL Cinerama films ever shot. After airing the film they showed an hour long documentary on the process, its protagonists, detractors and many imitators. Very interesting process.

Worf

[emaidel]

I suspect that documentary was "Cinerama Adventure," which accompanies the BluRay disc set of "How the West Was Won." And, not to be picky, but HTWWW was one of the only two actual stories - with real human actors - filmed in Cinerama. The other five films made in the process were all travelogues. Another film, "Windjammer" was filmed in a competing process called "Cinemiracle." That process also used three cameras and three projectors, but differed in how the side projectors operated (they filmed and projected the side images off a mirror, allowing all three projectors to be in a single booth) and the claim was that the join lines were significantly reduced.

Cinerama owned all the patents on the 146 degree screens, and so Cinemiracle was left to use a 120 degree screen. In short order, Cinerama bought out Cinemiracle, whose prints fit the Cinerama projectors, and most people who saw "Windjammer" (including myself) saw it in Cinerama, and not Cinemiracle.

And thus began the parade of copycat processes, all confusing the typical movie patron, but none ever matched Cinerama. There is a Cinerama revival starting on October 22nd at the Pacific Cinerama theater showing the "real thing" and not a BluRay Smilebox disc. Such revivals generally sell out completely, but are worth attending if anyone lives nearby and hasn't ever seen what Cinerama actually looked like.

[Worf101]

Okay.... now the main question... the "500 Pound Gorilla" so to speak. How does Cinerama fare against the current "Heavyweight Champ" IMAX? Same basic principal is it not with IMAX somply adding a curve to the screen and 3D? Which do you prefer?

Worf

[Feanor]

Okay.... now the main question... the "500 Pound Gorilla" so to speak. How does Cinerama fare against the current "Heavyweight Champ" IMAX? Same basic principal is it not with IMAX somply adding a curve to the screen and 3D? Which do you prefer?

Worf

Good question. It's been decades since I saw a Cinerama and a few years since I've seen the full-scale Imax -- hard to say.

[emaidel]

Cinerama's my choice, and by a long shot. The IMAX screen is flat as a board, and just plain BIG. There's no attempt to duplicate the human field of vision, but rather to overwhelm one with a giant picture that's actually hard to try to watch all of at once. The Cinerama screen had a deep curve of 146 degrees, and not by accident: that's the exact curvature of the retina of the human eye, and Cinerama tried to duplicate the full scope of normal human vision - straight ahead, side to side, and even out of the corner of the eye. IMAX is just a big, blown up image that you have to sit far away from in the theater to prevent neck and eye strain. With Cinerama, since the film ran at 26 vs. 24 frames per second, and was shown on a louvered screen that further sharpened the image, one could sit in the 9th row (which I always did!) and still see a perfectly clear, sharp picture, that fully encompassed one's field of vision. Try that with IMAX, and you'll be VERY uncomfortable at the end of the movie!