The Hollywood Twin was the worst of the repertory cinemas. Unlike
Bleecker Street, Carnegie Hall and the Regency, they used platters rather than reel to reel projection. Whenever a film played there, it got scratched or damaged before it was sent to the next venue. I recall watching a near mint Technicolor print of “Thunderball” get torn up while I was there. The audience laughed but I cringed realizing that this would ruin it for the other rep houses. Whenever I saw a classic booked there I knew I would not see it in good condition again.
The theater itself was like one of those muliplexes with the bowling alley style and small screen. It had none of the character of other small screen rep houses like The Thalia. I guess it was certainly better than operating as a porn house but I didn’t like the impact it had on the limited number of classic prints that were in the field.
On the other hand, I did a great double bill there of two Technicolor classics, “West Side Story” and “Bell, Book and Candle”.
I don’t know what kind of condition they left the theater but the prints were mint when I saw them. Another time they played a completely faded print of “Ben Hur” in Metrocolor and wouldn’t give me my money back. I knew there was a good Technicolor print floating around because it played the 8th Street Playhouse previously. They also played a totally faded print of “Pit and the Pendulum” and the same thing happened. No refund. Once again I argued that a new print had been struck on this title for the Corman festival at the Joseph Papp theater and they shouldn’t charge admission for junk copies. It was real hit and miss there. Sometimes they had great prints, other times total garbage. I don’t think they had the contacts or knowledge of people like Frank Rowley (Regency, Biograph), Bruce Goldstein (Film Forum) or Charles Zlatkin (Elgin Cinema) to know how to secure the best surviving release prints from the exchange. For example, I did get free passes from Rowley when MGM accidently sent them a red Eastmancolor print of “King Solomon’s Mines” instead of a Technicolor copy. If you saw a bad print at The Hollywood Twin, you were out of luck.
If memory serves, the name of the man who ran it when it was the Angelika 57 was Salah Hassenein. I four walled the theater to play my 3-D movie, “Run for Cover” in 1995 before it was demolished. In fact, when it shut down I lost the silver screen that I had installed there for my show. For our premiere we had celebrities like Ed Koch and Curtis Sliwa in attendence (they also had cameos in the movie) and a party at the Hard Rock Cafe next door. Ironically, there was a blizzard that day and I couldn’t travel to see my own premiere from Westchester.
Prior to it’s first run venue, I did attend this house when it was The Biograph and run by Frank Rowley. They basically had the same type of double bills as the Regency. They were set up for magnetic stereo and played a new 35mm print of “2001” circa 1991 there.
Thanks for the clarification. I got confused because I believe the print was made in 1982. Todd-AO at 30 frames per second did have a three dimensional quality to it but was not adaptable to standard 35mm print downs at 24 frames per second. The first two
Todd-AO movies were shot twice simulatneously. “Oklahoma!” was filmed in 65mm at 30 frames per second and in 35mm Cinemascope at 24 frames per second. “Around the World in 80 Days” was shot twice in 65mm with the camera(s) at both 30 frames per second (for 70mm prints) and 24 frames per second (for 35mm Technicolor print downs).
It’s really a pity that Goldwyn didn’t utilize more hype and hoopla so people knew how rare the original Todd-AO screening of “Oklahoma!” was. Both screenings I attended were pretty empty which was sad. They had announced they were going to re-issue “South Pacific” in 70mm around the same time but the poor results from the former made them change their mind. I don’t recall
it ever being shown in NYC in a new 70mm print although they did make new 35mm prints of Fuji stock for the repertory houses which looked pretty good. Too bad Goldwyn never restored the movie to the original Roadshow running time. I had a friend who saw some of the missing footage when he visited there. I don’t know if this footage still exists or if it’s too faded to do anything with now. A number of songs were heavily cut, especially “Wash that Man right outta my hair”. You can hear the complete version on the CD of the soundtrack. The current version of the movie is missing a large chunk of the number. “Bloody Mary” was also trimmed.
So we can look forward to all the digital problems that television stations and industry trade screenings have experienced. System break downs, digital artifacts, glitches, image freezes, image breaking up and coming back together, the image stops but the sound keeps going then appears again out of synch and so forth. It will only cost theaters a mere $100,000 or so every three to five years to replace the digital ‘projectors’ as the heat from the lamphouse burns out the electronic components. Will they also have a print running simultaneously as a back up to the unreliable digital formats? Let’s hope so since film projectors are inexpensive and last the life of the theater. Of course, film prints look better and have a great sense of depth and dimension compared to digital imagery which tend to look ‘flat’ and artificial like a computer screen.
Of course is the audience is bored, they can count the pixels, especially if they sit in the first few rows of the theater.
And for this digital technology, the industry abandoned the dye transfer process (aka “Glorious Technicolor” which was briefly revived from 1997-2001), Cinerama and 70mm?
If you want to hear an interesting commentary about film lighting,
check out Paul Morrissey’s on his “Blood for Dracula” and “Flesh for Frankenstein” Criterion discs. Both films were made in Italy with a topnotch crew and excellent lighting and photography. Morrissey complains about how many cameramen in the U.S. were not lighting the actor’s faces at the time. You couldn’t see the expressions on their faces nor did the style of camerawork make them look attractive. If anything it made the stars look ugly.
I discuss this problem in my commentary track on the DVD or “Run for Cover” too.
One of the strangest trends of recent years is to have the entire feature filmed with an overall bluish cast. The fleshtones and backgrounds look like a black and white film tinted blue. “Minority Report” is a good example. The high speed prints of that film looked like a 10th generation dupe.
One thing you could count on prior to 1968, that whether the movie was good or bad, it was always great to look at. Top quality release prints and cinematography in virtually all movies made prior to that year. First generation release prints. Even cheap Roger Corman films had sparkling black and white or plush color like his Poe adapatations (i.e. “Pit and the Pendulum”) which looked better than any current film.
Today, whether the movie is good or bad it’s pretty much guarenteed to look murky and gloomy. The style of cinematography combined with high speed printing and platter projection. The irony is ticket prices are higher than ever before.
To note the quality difference, a number of years ago The Paramount showed a camera negative copy of “Dances with Wolves” at a screening.
It was reportedly Costner’s own print of the film borrowed for the screening. The Paramount had reel to reel projection and a professional operator to ensure no damage would come to the copy.
Prior to the screening, the manager told me the print was unfortunately missing one reel so they sent a high speed print of that reel. “Dances with Wolves” had fairly good cinematography and the camera negative copy looked very nice on the large screen. Then either reel two came up which was the reel made from an internegative
on a high speed printer. There was actually an audible gasp from the audience because the image quality was so different. Rather than being razor sharp and grain free, reel two was murky, fuzzy and grainy. It was almost like vaseline was on the lens. Then reel three came up twenty minutes later the it was like someone washed the image with windex because it was sharp and fine grain again.
That’s the quality difference between what Hollywood insiders screen
and the high speed junk shown in megaplexes. It’s really a rip off since we’re being charged to see substandard junk that does not reflect the quality of the cinematography. Of course video masters are made from fine grain materials. They wouldn’t dare use a high speed print for DVD. People would complain. How ironic that showmanship seems to exist in home video formats but had disappeared from theatrical exhibition with some notable exceptions like NYC Ziegfeld and Suffern’s Lafayette which still put on great shows.
I just remembered one of the wildest double bills of all time.
In the nineties, the Paramount Center of the Arts (a restored movie palace with 70mm Norelco machines) played the original silent “Ben Hur” in 35mm with a new 70mm print of the 1959 version. Quite an impressive (and exhausting) experience. Although the new 70mm print was spherical (instead of anamorphic), it still looked and sounded quite good except for a couple of shots in the middle of the chariot race which remained squeezed for a second or two.
I agree that most new movies are pretty poor. Even if the photography is good, the high speed printing system degrades
the cinematographer’s intent. Very difficult to see some notch
release copies outside of Hollywood or film festival screenings.
I am still furious that only Coppola and Beatty utlized the revived
dye transfer process for “Apocalype Redux” and “Bulworth”. Why didn’t everyone else get behind it? It would’ve dramatically improved release print quality since every copy would’ve had camera negative sharpness and resolution as well as superior color and contrast. Very frustrating.
Robert,
I forgot to add that the John Wayne film you referred to is probably “Donvan’s Reef”. Great Technicolor, mediocre movie.
I guess it depends on who you consider ‘great’ within the New Hollywood movement. I do agree Scorsese and Coppola were great
and both were Technicolor buffs but I would say they were the exception to the rule. Scorsese championed the Technicolor process and was instrumental in persuading Kodak to improve the stability of Eastmancolor dyes. Coppola was one of the few contemporary directors to utilize the dye transfer process after it’s brief revival from 1997-2001. In fact, Coppola was the last director to use it for “The Godfather II”. The equipment was in the process of being dismantled while they made the last run of dye transfer prints of a new feature. The last print to have a dye transfer run there was a revival of Disney’s “Swiss Family Robinson”. Scorsese simulated the classic Technicolor look in two films, “New York, New York” and the recent “Aviator” (both two strip for the early scenes and three strip for later scenes).
Others like Wadleigh, Hopper, Downey, Van Peebles were not afficianados of Old Hollywood and their pictures represent a rejection of those standards and content. I don’t think thier pictures have held up over the years either but at the time they were taken quite seriously as the ‘new direction’ for cinema. Their pictures were also heavily politicized which is another trend I’m not fond of. All movies have a perspective but the blatant propoganda contained is so many counter-culture pictures of the late sixties and early seventies has severely dated the movies. They may be interesting as cultural artifacts now but their entertainment value is pretty limited. Try sitting through “Putney Swope” today.
Very primitive and hokey.
Another controversial question. The answer is, it depends what year the prints were made in.
Early thirties Technicolor prints had a very toned down use of primary colors. It was thought that vivid primaries would be an eyestrain to people used to B&W. Technicolor prints of “Tom Sawyer” almost look like a sepia tinted film. However, when “The Adventures of Robin Hood” was released an ultra-saturated, vibrant color scheme was used which audiences responded to. 1939 was an interesting year for the process since both types of ‘looks’ were shown. The original 1939 prints of “Gone with the Wind” were very sepia and held the primary colors down. In contrast, “The Wizard of Oz” featured a garish color scheme that was appropriate for the story.
By the mid-forties, Technicolor had become “Glorious Technicolor” and most picture opted for the rich use of primary hues.
Not realistic perhaps but quite beautiful to watch. “The Gang’s All Here” was an example of an almost surealistic use of wildly exagerated primary colors especially in the “Lady in the Tutie Fruitie” hat number.
I should mention that pre-1950 Technicolor prints were not that consistent in quality. The problem they had was that the dyes were made up of multiple components and had to be mixed. While the prints from each set of matrices tended to be consistent, if another run was made from the same set and another batch of dyes mixed, they probably looked slightly different than the first run.
When Dr. Richard Goldberg became head of the research department at the company, one of his first efforts was to create single component dyes so prints would have consistent quality for the entire run. He accomplished this so post-fifties Technicolor copies had much better quality control than those made in the thirties and forties.
Now comes the controversial point…
When the television medium started to usurp motion picture popularity, the studios panicked and started to devise different methods to compete with the boob tube. One of the first things they did was to increase color production. Since Technicolor remained the best lab in the buisiness and TV was Black and White, post-fifties Technicolor prints tended to emphasize primary colors to a greater extent. “Blazing Technicolor” would be a good way to describe these copies. This applied to re-prints of pre-1950 3 strip films. When “Gone with the Wind” was re-issued in 1954, it had much more saturated color than when it was originally released.
Since Selznick supervised this re-issue (and retained a copy of this release rather than the 1939 original for his archive), you could consider it ‘a definite look’ of the film although not what was originally shown. The single component dyes were richer than the earlier multiple component dyes so by their nature, they changed the look of the process. I happened to be an afficianado of fifties Technicolor movies. It’s my favorite decade of cinema, at least from a visual perspective. Virtually ever color movie looked sensational regardless of the process it was made in.
De Luxe and Metrocolor movies also utilized a vibrant use of primary colors and they did look quite good in their original release since they were struck directly from the camera negative as I mentioned. Of course, the contrast and dyes were never as rich as Technicolor prints but they still looked good…until they faded that is.
So, if you see an old nitrate Technicolor print, it will look different than a safety Technicolor copy of the same title. It will look more vibrant and saturated due to the single component dyes and re-timing of the image to confirm to fifties' standards of color.
I don’t know if they can be considered definitive or not but they sure looked breathtaking.
In terms of VHS and DVD, no video format can replicate the Technicolor ‘look’. Technicolor prints had that kodachrome appearance of three dimensional vibrancy due to the superior contrast, black blacks and pure primaries. Reds almost glowed from the screen. Video pixels tend to bleed when they’re that saturated (especially reds) so they are re-timed and toned down during the mastering process. At it’s best it can ‘simulate’ the film look
(i.e. “The Band Wagon”) but never replicate it. Video by it’s nature has a limited contrast ratio and other flaws. Still, there’s no denying video masters look much better now than they did decades ago within the severe limitations of that technology.
In terms of other films made in Eastmancolor and printed at De Luxe, Metrocolor and other facilites, all new prints and video masters will have problems due to color fading of the originals.
Sometimes they can ‘tweak’ them on video, other times they cannot.
Eastmancolor was a very unstable process until 1983. Unless large sums of money are spent to restore the original quality (millions were spent restoring “Lawrence”, “My Fair Lady” and others), they
will never look like they did on their first release unless a surviving dye transfer print exists in a film collection somewhere.
To a certain extent, the New Hollywood approach to filmmaking could not be debated since they took an artistic relativist stance. When you would note that when they aimed the camera at the movie lights in “The Strawberry Statement”, it made you lose your suspension of disbelief that you were watching a real story unfold, advocates would argue, “Who says you cannot aim the camera at the movie lights”. Others would argue, why should there be a standards. That’s too restrictive. Who says a movie can’t be grainy. Why should it always have to be sharp. Why should all films have to be picture postcard pretty. Besides, who’s to say what pretty color camerawork is. This is no right or wrong, truth or fiction. Only a person’s perspective which is always biased based on their background and so on. When you take that perspective, it’s impossible to determine what is good and bad. Art or junk. What’s worse, you may not even recognize motion picture art when you see it because you’ll have no frame of reference. I’ve gotten into these arguements with many advocated of post-1970 film buffs and you just go in circles. I get labeled as very ‘bourgeoisie" or closed minded when I state that Freddie Young (“Lawrence of Arabia”), Ted Moore (“Thunderball”), Lionel Lindon (“Around the World in 80 Days”) or
Robert Burks (“Vertigo”) were greater talents than any contemporary cameraman. Anyway, I call em’ the way I see em' and often get into trouble as a result.
This topic has gotten me thrown off of two film related sites.
It’s quite a controversial subject.
I guess I can safely say that regardless of a person’s personal preference of cinematography or their aesthetic taste, there was
definately a trade off between screen content and exhibition.
In other words, if you want the large screen experience, there needed to be some form of production code in place (even if liberally applied as it was from 1966-1968) to ensure general attendence. Without general attendence, they folded like dominoes.
“New Hollywood” screen freedom resulted in a major demographic change in movie attendence. General audiences were abandoned and beginning in the late sixties most movies were geared for 16-26 year old viewers. It cut weekly attendence from 41 million weekly to 25 million from 1968-1972. It was further reduced to 22 million by 1978. Basically the extremelly graphic sex, violence and profanity that glutted cinema after 1968 alienated a large percentage of adult movie goers which simply stopped attending the single screen cinemas and movie palaces on a weekly basis. They still went to an occasional mainstream hit like “The Sting” but pictures like “Woodstock” and “Deep Throat” kept many viewers away in droves
at least on a weekly basis. The movie palaces and cinemas like The Rivoli needed enough mainstream G/M/GP/PG product to fill their seats which the numerous R and X rated pictures weren’t accomplishing. So, they got twinned or shut down. Another option was to become a rep house which had a broader based demographic but even these weren’t too solvent in the long run.
The big debate is whether “New Hollywood” post-code films (usally rated R or X) contained the same level of craftsmanship as “Old Hollywood” features designed for general attendence and presented in Cinerama or Technicolor. The short answer is, they didn’t by design. New Hollywood rejected most of what they found objectionable in Old Hollywood including modifying content for middle class consuption and the emphasis on spectacular technology.
New Hollywood championed avante guarde, cinema verite style camerawork from a counter-culture perspective. The appeal was in the rejection of old standards. The appeal was limited to the targed ‘youth’ viewer of course, not the adult audience that appreciated a movie like “Lawrence of Arabia” in 70mm. Rather than classifying cinema as an artistic entertainment medium, they re-defined it as medium for social commentary and activism. Many contemporary directors like Spike Lee still define the medium in these terms.
I’m kind of caught in the middle. I do find movies like “Easy Rider” interesting as a time capsule of an era. It actually had pretty good photography for a counter-culture movie, most of which were very primitive in the technical specs. However, I don’t like the impact it had on exhibition or the moviegoing experience.
I wish there was some sort of compromise made at the time to keep most pictures mainstream and an occasional release off the beaten track but that’s not how it played out. Within a few years following the demise of the production code, there were more restricted pictures than general release movies. There was no way theaters like the Rivoli could survive when the principal product of the industry either restricted too many potential viewers or allienated whole segments of the population. That was the trade off that proponents of New Hollywood resent when you mention it. The conventional wisdom that New Hollywood ‘saved’ the industry or freed cinema from it’s former restraits only applies if you don’t care about the exhibition side of the medium. From an exhibitor’s perspective, New Hollywood was a disaster since they lost their general audience.
I’ve discovered that many people who give accolades to the contemporary style of cinematography have never seen a movie in Cinerama, 70mm or Technicolor. In most cases they don’t know what they’re missing so there’s no reason they should believe us when we describe how superior the release copies, cinematography and theater showmanship was thirty years ago.
On many other sites, I’ve been called every name under the sun for daring to suggest that current films are not as well
photographed as those of the past or that New Hollywood or what ever group constitutes the contemporary film industry lack the artistic sensibilities, taste and talent of “Old Hollywood”.
On my own features, I do try to simulate the classic style of cinematography to the best of my ability within my low budgets. I had some success in “Space Avenger” since I made dye transfer prints at the Chinese Technicolor lab in 1989. More recently, I replicated the ‘film noir’ look in B&W in “Unsavory Characters” in 2001. It was like pulling teeth to get the cameramen to light in the old style. They don’t like spending so much time ‘painting with light’ as Freddie Young described it.
Get there early and make sure you get a sweet spot seat. For the fun of it, take a walk around the theater before it’s over so you can see how grotesquely distorted the image looks from the side asiles or from the back the cinema. That was always the problem with both Cinerama and Todd-AO. It only looked really good in a few rows of the theater.
I saw the Dayton print of “This is Cinerama” which was in Technicolor so the panel joins matched fairly well. I don’t know what the new LPP print looks like. I imagine it must show some negative wear and differential fading between the panels. You will see the panel joins in most of the travelogue. They’re pretty well hidden in most of “How the West Was Won” in comparison.
Most people don’t know that “This is Cinerama was one of the first movies to use Eastmancolor negatives. The first use of them was in Super Cinecolor. However in that case they were only utilized for principal photography. Afterwards, they were separted into three B&W records (similar to the Technicolor 3 strip method) to make the Super Cinecolor dual emulsion release prints.
Although both Kodak and Ansco developed their color negative/color positive processes circa 1951, no one used them for features. Why? There was a flaw in the process. They didn’t have duplicating stock to make optical effects like fades, dissolves and transitions. Obviously, this was problem for features.
They got around this in Super Cinecolor since the original color negatives were not used to make prints. When they filtered them and separated them into 3 B&W records, they incorporated the opticals into those records. In other words, the B&W records had the opticals but the not color original. For Cinerama, they actually
made the fade ins and fade outs (there were no dissolves) as the prints were being struck. The film was edited in short sections of about 5 minutes each. All three records were contained on the same reel. For example, the rollercoaster had panels A, B and C assembled onto the negative roll. Technicolor devised a printer to fade in each panel as it was being struck on Eastmancolor stock.
Then Reel 1 part "B” section had all three panels of the dancers.
Reel 1 part “C” section had all three panels of Niagra Falls and so on. The reason they did it this way is so the color timing would be reasonably consistent between the three panels for each section. After printing, the Cinerama print was assembled in a synchronizer.
There were many splices in each reel because each 5 or 6 minute section was printed separately. Even with this technique, the panels didn’t always match. The original prints of all of the 3 strip Cinerama films were printed in Eastmancolor in the fifties even though Technicolor did the lab work. All of these prints had faced. However, in 1962, Technicolor adopted it’s optical printers to derive matrices from the three negatives so the two narrative features were printed in the dye transfer process which didn’t fade and had better quality control. I suspect that the compilation film released last, “The Best of Cinerama” was also printed in the dye transfer process but I cannot confirm it since no copy has survived.
The Dayton prints were 1962 dye transfer prints of “This is Cinerama” and “How the West Was Won”. In general they looked great except for some Eastmancolor replacement footage used to fill missing frames of the travelogue.
In 1953, Kodak developed a less than satifactory method to make opticals in Eastmancolor. The shot in question would be filmed with their color negative. Then they would make B&W separations of that image, incorporate the optical effect and reprint them on the same negative stock. The end result was an incredibly grainy and contrasty optical effect. It did allow the production of feature films in Eastmancolor although you could always see the image degredation in the opticals. It looked so bad that they only used this method for the actual frames containing the effect. For example, a shot would be camera negative for a person walking away, then the same shot would be continued in grainy dupey optical effect. After the dissolve it would cut back to camera negative. It was pretty distracting and created a visual ‘pop’ on screen which you can see in all of the early CinemaScope features. Later, Kodak developed Interpositive/Internegative stock for opticals which was slightly better but still rather grainy with poor resolution.
Why didn’t Technicolor prints in scope or flat derived from Eastmancolor negatives show these artifacts? The reason was that Kalmus developed a method of “A and B” rolling the color camera negative and putting it through the printer twice (actually six times for the three matrices). That way they could incorporate the fades, dissolves and even superimpositions directly off the camera negative. In other words, the original camera negative of “Spartacus” did not have any opticals. They were made directly from the A and B roll negatives while the 70mm or dye transfer print was being made. In the early sixties, Technicolor devised a different method for first generation opticals known as ‘auto select’ printing. Rather than A & B roll the camera negative for two passes through the printer, the entire shot was included on the cut camera negative sometimes up through the slate or flash frame.
When a dissolve was needed, the printer was rigged to fade out the first shot on the roll, they automatically rewind and fade in the next shot of the same roll for the dissolve. The same applied to other effects like fades. When “Lawrence of Arabia” was restored, every optical had to be remade. The advantage was that the entire release print contained the same generation regardless of whether it was regular action or an optical effect. Thus Technicolor large format prints as well as dye transfer prints looked far superior to prints from other labs like De Luxe which never had these capabilities and always contained the grainy looking opticals.
One of the reasons that “2001” looks so good is that most of the effects were made directly onto the camera negative in multiple passes. Quite different from combining multiple elements and reprinting them on duplicate stock. In other words, Kubrick would
mark the beginning of a take on the actual negative (possibly a hole punch) then shoot his miniature against a blue screen. The the same camera negative would be rewound inside the camera in a dark room back to the start mark. Next, the other elements would be filmed like planets and then another pass would add the stars and so on. This went on for years with small rolls of film adding elements over a long period of time. It was primitive and hand rigged but quite effective a technique since you saw first generation optical effects on screen with razor sharp depth of field which added to the illusion of being in space.
For “Star Wars” Lucas used optical effects combining different separate elements and reprinting them on improved internegative stock. The reason they tended to look good was that he photographed them in large format VistaVision. This added sharpness and improved the resolution. They would not have looked as good had he filmed them in 35mm Panavision. Even so, they were not as razor sharp or impressive as the camera negative effects in “2001” filmed in 65mm.
However, the 70mm blow up print shown at Loews Astor Plaza did look good back in 1977. What helped was that the special effects were cut quickly and not lingered on like the “2001” effects. Combined with the innovative use of stereo sound, they were quite effective although if you looked at some of them a frame at a time you would see artifacts like off registration engines on the backs of the ships and so on. In any event, Lucas made them work within the context of the narrative.
I can’t say I’m impressed at all with CGE space effects. To me they look completely artificial compared to those filmed in 65mm or Vistavision in the sixties and seventies. They lack dimensionality
of filming with miniatures and tend to have that ‘flat’ computerized look. When you have a motion controlled camera moving past a miniature properly lit, it gives that optical distortion of any movement passing a lens which it part of what makes it look real.
Computer generated effects lack that optical distortion inherant with shooting through a lens although the distortion is part of what tricks the eye into thinking it’s real and giving the object a sense of dimension and roundness. CGE effects out putted to film also generate a ‘thin’ negative which effects the resolution and alters the grain structure of the image. However, audiences don’t seem to mind the look of CGE effects which have replaced optical effects.
Regarding the “2001” cuts, a number of articles stated that Kubrick had the trims in his vault in England but this has not been confirmed. What is interesting is the change in reviews after the director cut the film. The early reviews were pretty bad. The post cut reviews were much better. The movie as it exists now is probably by favorite film of all time with “Lawrence of Arabia” a close second. I’d like to see the extra footage but I’m not sure it should be incorporated back into the movie.
I’m not sure to what extent Kubrick was involved with film preservation. He donated his standard cut 35mm Technicolor anamorphic print of “Spartacus” (182 min.) to MOMA. “Dr. Strangelove” negative was heavily damaged from over printing by Columbia although it had recently been ‘restored’. I plan on screening one of the restored prints to see if they replicate the contrast ratio and gray scale of the originals. I do know that Dick
May stated they had made two sets of 65mm B&W separations from the original negative of the film which is the only method to preserve pre1-1983 ‘quick fade’ Eastmancolor negatives. The new 35mm print looked great so either the camera negative is still in good shape or they made new elements from the seps.
It’s interesting to note that while many directors retain creative control over their pictures, very few get involved with the actual preservation or restoration of their movies. In many cases, it’s outsiders who restore them as it the case of Bob Harris who restored Kubrick’s “Spartacus” and Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia”. While the directors supported the efforts after the fact, they did not initiate the projects. Lean did not even have a reference print of “Lawrence of Arabia”. They borrowed my Technicolor copy to use as a timing reference for the restoration.
Since I am so aware of the problems of film preservation and restoration, I maintain my own negatives in a private vault and
won’t let distributors near them. I supply internegatives or digital masters for the deals to retain my cut and quality control.
Cinerama as a process was designed to generate the illusion of
peripheral vision. The concept was to make the audience feel as if
they were ‘inside the picture’. The same year it was introduced (1952), a competed process premiered which was 3-D. Rather than put the audience in the picture, the picture seemed to emerge out of the screen, especially with ‘off screen effects’ (i.e. the paddle ball man in “House of Wax”).
The way the three projector process gave the peripheral illusion was as follows:
Principal photography was photographed with 3 35mm cameras that used a 27mm prime lens. It was determined that 27mm replicated the human eye’s focal length, at least in respect to distance. The cameras were in a “U” formation so that they not only photographed was was in front of them but also the sides. To project these three images, the projectors replicated the formation and exhibted them on a deeply curved screen. “Giggilos” were in the projectors to merge and blur the join lines. Louvered screens were used so the left and right panel didn’t reflect the images onto the opposite side of the screen. The effect worked in that when you had a sweet spot seat
(in the middle of the theater), the screen wrapped around you and you could see down the center and sides of a street or in a location.
When the camera moved or was on a helicopter (i.e. the America tour or rollercoaster in “This is Cinerama”) you definately felt you were inside the image. However, the join lines were always noticeable.
In “How the West Was Won”, the cinematographers went out of their way to hide them so they were less noticeable in trees or building edges but it was a distracting way to film a movie. Rather then getting the most dramatic composition, you spent most of your time
trying to hide join lines.
The man who made Cinerama a viable entity was Michael Todd. While the process had been trade screened for many industry personnel, no one saw it’s potentional except for Todd who was really an outsider from Broadway. The first thing he did was to tell
the creators to put the rollercoaster up front and shoot in color.
Todd and his son became part of the company with Lowell Thomas and
shot the first half of “This is Cinerama”. Others shot the second half. It premiered and was an enormous hit. Todd proposed to his
partners to modify the process and get rid of the multiple projectors, join lines and make ‘everything come out of one hole’.
His partners rejected the idea since they were making money with the process ‘as is’.
Todd hired Dr. Brien O'Brien to create the “Todd-AO” process.
70mm had been tried in 1929 but didn’t catch on, primarily because of the difficulties in converting to sound and because the image was not that impressive in mono sound and B&W. Todd-AO was also a deeply
curved screen process that generated a similar peripheral illusion
to Cinerama at times. A series of prime lenses were developed that
had a very wide field of view. Technically, only the ‘bug eye’ lens
photographed what was in front of the camera as well as the sides.
It was used extensively for the travelogue sequences in Todd’s “Around the World in 80 Days”. It was an interesting lens and gave the illusion you were being sucked into the screen, a bit different than Cinerama. It did have some distortion but then so did Cinerama’s three panel projection. Fortunately, the other lenses used for medium shots and close ups did not distort but didn’t generate the peripheral illusion either. Basically, Todd AO
gave the peripheral illusion intermittently depending on what was required for the scene. It was not as wide as the original Cinerama although it was determined that in a ‘sweet spot’ seat, having the image go beyond your vision was unecessary. So from eyeball to eyeball you still got the impression you were inside the picture.
The other factor for this illusion was depth of field, namely, foreground to background sharpness. In standard Hollywood features,
close ups and medium shots had a shallow depth of field. The background was soft. In both Cinerama and Todd-AO, the lenses had an expanded depth of field so in most cases the foreground and background were always sharp rather than soft. This was integral to the peripheral illusion.
Todd died in a plane crash in 1958 and his process was purchased by Fox which dumped their CinemaScope 55 and made future blockbuster features in Todd’s 70mm process. However, they abandoned the bug eyed lens and it wasn’t used again. How did the new 70mm prints look? In general they attempted to retain the sharp depth of field
on a deeply curved screen which did generate somewhat of a peripheral
illusion but was not as effective as the Cinerama’s three lens version of the original bug eyed lens. I guess they felt it worked well enough and presentations were impressive so audiences would not miss the actual illusion of being ‘inside the picture’.
The Panavision company created superior anamorphic lenses in 1957
which eventually replaced the heavily distorted CinemaScope lenses which created a very wide image but had shallow depth of field and a great deal of distortion. For “Raintree County” and “Ben Hur” they also added a 25% anamorphic squeeze to the 70mm process and dubbed it MGM Camera 65 and later Ultra-Panavision. Basically they replicated the aspect ratio of the original 3 panel Cinerama process
on 70mm film. However, they in now way simulated the peripheral illusion. The image was wide and sharp but just looked like an upgraded scope picture. The presentations were impressive but the peripheral illusion was gone. In 1963, Cinerama dumped the three panel process and went with this system for “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”. The quality was as good as “Ben Hur” shown flat on a wide screen but was not really “Cinerama” in terms of the original impact. Later, Cinerama abandoned the Ultra-Panavision process and
played standard spherical 70mm (pretty much identical to Fox’s application of Todd-AO) until it’s demise in 1972. Things became more confusing when Cinerama started releasing regular flat 1.85
features in the early seventies that weren’t even in widescreen.
“2001” was filmed in 65mm and the effects had a razor sharp depth of field. When projected on a curved screen, they did make you feel as if you were in outer space. It wasn’t really the Cinerama peripheral illusion but it worked for what it was. One of the things that Kubrick did to make these effects so convincing was to have constant movement on screen. The camera would pan past planets and space stations as the ship flew by. The movement helped generated the illusion of ‘being in the picture’. In contrast, similar effects in “Star Wars” were locked down and things flew past the frame. Not as effective as having constant movement in the space shots like “2001”. The movement also hid the fact that they
were miniatures or stop motion ships. Kubrick also lit them dramatically to improve the illusion. The key to special effects in space was the lighting of the miniatures and to film them a different speeds but never at 24 frames per second. Also, you moved the camera, not the miniatures so the movement was smoother.
In summary, I don’t think that 70mm Cinerama was ‘inferior’ to three panel Cinerama. They were both great presentations but had different impacts. Three panel gave a realistic illusion of peripheral vision but had the flaw of panel joins and headache of keeping three projectors and a magnetic sound reproducer in synch.
Single strip Cinerama gave a razor sharp widescreen image that surpassed CinemaScope and didn’t have the distortion of the Bausch and Lomb lenses used in that process. It generated a ‘you are there’ effect at times but less of a ‘you are inside the picture’ peripheral illusion. All these processes had tradeoffs. None was perfect.
One of the main advantages of all of the fifties and sixties processes was that all prints were struck directly off the camera negative. This was as good as you could get quality wise. This was also the case for standard flat and scope 35mm features in either Technicolor or Eastmancolor. Everyone saw first generation sharpness and resolution. While the quality was topnotch in theaters, striking so many release copies off the original wore out the negative. In 1968, Kodak introduced CRI (Color Reversal Intermediate). Fox was the first studio to use it, then others adopted it too. While negative wear was alleviated, a great deal of quality was lost (resolution, graininess) when making release copies from a second generation element. Later, CRI’s were abandoned and prints were made from internegatives derived from an interpositive.
Today all release copies are three generations removed fromt he camera negative also a small number of EK copies are struck for Hollywood screenings. Prints derived from CRI’s and IN’s look horrid when shown on the enormous Cinerama type screens. The image breaks up into blobs of grain floating around the enormous screen.
They look passable in small screen multi-plexes. Thus, even if the
enormous curved screens still existed throughout the country, contemporary films would not look good on them. The current style of cinematography is completely different that that utilized in the pre-1970 era. Rather than extensively lighting the image to generate saturated colors, rich fleshtones and a sharp depth of field, many cameramen underexpose the negative today with very little light, de-saturated colors and fleshtones and a shallow depth of field. The latest Oscar winner, “Million Dollar Baby” was shot in this fashion. Very de-saturated, murky and dark. It would not be appropriate for large screen presentation in Cinerama but will look presentable on DVD since they’ll derive the video master from
pre-print material. The high speed general release prints looked terrible in my opinion although I have a friend who saw a camera negative copy in Hollywood and he said it looked ‘okay’.
I guess the dramatic difference in cinematography during the studio era vs. the “New Hollywood” era (post-1968) is a whole discussion in itself. Personally, I really hate the way most post-1970 films look but my frame of reference tends to be movies like “2001” and “Lawrence of Arabia” which I find aethetically
breathtaking and spectacular. I can’t say I found the camerawork
or imagery in “Million Dollar Baby” aethetically pleasan to sit through not withstanding the fine acting. I’m sure there are supporters (or appologists) for the contemporary style of cinematography but this much is certain. It is not appropriate for large screen (or curved screen) exhibition…
If anyone still has any flyers/schedules from this theater from 1975-1977, I’d love to have copies. Specifically, I’ll like flyers that advertise “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” and “Lawrence of Arabia” screenings. In return I still have many schedules from the Thalia and Regency I could copy along with vintage Village Voice newspapers
that have movie ads from the era.
Among the many memorable festivals was the Fox retrospective. New prints of many CinemaScope prints were shown. Since most were originally De Luxe color (and had completely faded by then), seeing new prints was a treat. Most had pretty good color with the exception of “The King and I” (greenish) and “The Robe” (very grainy and dupey). The print of “There’s no Business Like Show Business”
looked sensational.
At one time, either Rowley or one of his staff went through various exchanges to piece together an excellent Technicolor print of “Around the World in 80 Days”.
The only time I saw a really bad print there was “King Solomon’s Mines”. It wasn’t a Technicolor copy but an old faded Eastmancolor print. They gave me a pass to see another show.
The scheduling was always innovative. There were retrospectives of Bette Davis, Comedies, Hitchcock and others. One of the great thrills of the seventies was opening the Village Voice and circling all the movies worth attending in the various repertory houses and devising a schedule so I could see as many as possible between classes at NYU. When I was short on cash, I would walk from 8th Street to Lincoln Center to see a screening at this theater.
I attended repertory screenings at Cinema Village throughout the seventies. Although it had a relatively small screen compared to the Elgin Cinema and Regency, they did play some great titles.
The biggest surprise was a showing of “The Wild Bunch”. The Pekinpah classic had played most of the revival cinemas in the standard cut 135 minute version. Then to my surprise and un-announced, Cinema Village played an uncut 2 hour and 25 minute version with all of the missing flashbacks. I had heard about the deleted scenes but it was the first time I’d seen them. The print was mint in Technicolor, possibly a studio vault print that the theater was unaware they were getting. Anyway, it was a great show. It’s always a thrill to see ‘lost’ footage (for the era anyway) for the first time.
It would appear that the “Oklahoma!” Todd AO print I saw in 1982 played Cinema I rather than the Baronet or Coronet. They didn't
advertise or promote it properly. I saw it twice and both screenings were nearly empty. The studio scenes looked sensational.
Some of the exterior opening scenes had washed out skies due to fading or improper timing since the new CinemaScope prints struck at
the same time also had de-saturated skies. I had seen original Technicolor prints of the film and know the skies were a deep blue.
It was not a liquid gate 70mm
print so the opticals were quite scratchy including the opening fade into the corn field. Overall though, it was quite a show.
I’m interested in some technical information about Bleecker Street Cinema, if you’d be so kind…
What kind of projectors did you use? When I booked “Space Avenger” there back in 1991, the theater only had one Simplex projector with a 6000 foot capacity. The house lights were left off as they changed reels for the second half of the movie. I know this is after your involvement with the cinema but I was wondering if that was one of the original projectors you used.
I assume you went reel to reel rather than platters. The only rep house that used platters was The Hollywood Twin and they used to trash the prints as a result. I was at a screening when they trashed a near mint Technicolor print of “Thunderball” at Hollywood 2.
Did you use carbon arc or Xenon illumination? I believe the Elgin Cinema used carbon arc and the other rep houses Xenon but I'm
not sure.
What was the typical booking deal? The basic rental price of the prints in the sixties and seventies? I know Zlatkin and Gould shut down the Elgin due to the increase in print rentals in 1977 (among
other reasons).
How difficult was it to get good prints from the exchanges? I know the prints at the Regency were often brand new (i.e. Fox festival). The Carnegie Hall occasionally got studio vault prints for it’s festivals (Brando and Hitchcock, “Cheyenne Autumn”). I recall most of the prints at Bleecker Street looked quite good. Other rep houses played worn prints, especially Cinema Village. Did you have to make friends with a specific person at the exchange or were some better at quality control than others (i.e. Kino, MGM/UA)? I do recall speaking to some people there at the theater in the seventies and they told me they were having a tough time getting a long print of “Spartacus”. Universal kept sending them prints of the heavily cut 1967 re-issue.
I believe that “2001” started as a hard ticket show in NYC during it’s initial run then they changed it to allow people to see it without reserved tickets. The hard ticket policy was gradually abandoned over the next few years, not over night. I did see “Oliver” in a reserved seat Roadshow engagement somewhere in Florida in 1968. I don’t recall whether it was in 70mm or 35mm mag stereo.
I’m well aware of the ratios of Cinerama films over the years. It’s possible however that they made a special rectified print of “2001” that played around or even for a single theater. They made custom rectified prints of “Oklahoma!” among other titles. Perhaps it was just an optical illusion though based on the screen masking or lens they used at the Rivoli in 1976 and 1978 although since Vincent recalls the wider image I suspect there was some difference in the presentations.
Technicolor was capable of making all sorts of unsual prints in custom made ratios. “Around the World in 80 Days” 35mm magnetic stereo prints had the entire silent academy ratio with picture but with a 1.75 x 1 squeeze so that when it was unsqueezed it replicated the 70mm 2.21 x 1 ratio. You needed one of those Tushinsky variable squeeze anamorphic lenses to show it. The 35mm optical mono Technicolor prints had the standard 2 x 1 squeeze and 2.35 x 1 slightly cropped ratio. “Ben Hur” 35mm Technicolor prints had the standard 2 x 1 anamorphic squeeze but contained a slight ‘letterboxing’ (black borders) on top and bottom of the frame to simulate the 70mm MGM Camera 65 2.76 x 1 ratio. The 1969 release prints in 70mm were spherical cropped 2.21 x 1 and the 35mm Metrocolor prints 2.35 x 1 without the black borders. So, Technicolor could custom make any kind of print you wanted in 35mm and 70mm.
By the way, “2001” was the film that changed the “Roadshow” presentations. Prior to that movie, all Roadshows were hard ticket.
That meant you needed to buy your ticket and numbered seat in advance. “2001” was popular with young people who prefered to wander into the theater at whatever the next screening was rather than reserve their seat. It was such a success that theaters decided to alter their Roadshow policies. Incrementally then
retained the exclusive area showing for the film with the higher
ticket price and superior presentation in 70mm and stereophonic sound but abandoned the reserved seat policy. You could go see the film whenever you wanted.
Roadshows continued through the eighties although the window shortened to only a week or so before the same movie went into general release. At least many movies were released in 70mm.
When digital sound was introduced in the nineties, distributors
dumped the 70mm process which was the last nail in the coffin of
showmanship. The last new feature to be shown in 70mm was “Titanic"
which played the recently closed "Loews Astor Plaza” in 1997. There have been occasional classic films reprinted in the format like “2001” and “Lawrence of Arabia”. Otherwise, it’s another superior format abandoned by the film industry. The same year that “Titanic” was released, the Technicolor dye transfer process was resurrected. Classics like “Rear Window” and “The Wizard of Oz” were reprinted in “Glorious Technicolor” along with some new films like “Toy Story II”, “Pearl Harbor” and “Bulworth”. It was shut down again in 2001.
Today, unless you attend a screening in Hollywood, you’ll be seeing a garbage high speed print struck from an internegative three generations removed from the camera negative. Due to the static charge in the estar stock, it’s likely that dust will be printed into the release copy which has poor contrast and inferior resolution.
In comparison, most prints were struck directly from the camera negative in 70mm, or in 35mm Eastmancolor and 35mm Technicolor through 1968. That’s among the reasons that films looked so spectacular in the large screen theaters like “The Rivoli” or movie palaces like “Radio City Music Hall”. The sub-standard high speed prints cranked out at 2000 feet per minute made on features today would not look good on a 40 foot or 80 foot wide screen common in the fifties and sixties. In contrast, release prints were made at a very slow printing speed in the fifties. 45 feet per minute which allowed for a good exposure on the release print and contrast changes. High speed prints are made on a ‘one lite’ setting and look it. One of the reasons that even blow up 70mm prints looked good is that there were no high speed printers. All 70mm copies were made at a slow printing speed. In addition, many were camera negative blow ups. For example, “Camelot” 70mm prints were optically enlarged directly from the 35mm Panavision negative. A first generation blow up. I saw it at the Warner Cinerama in 1978 (“Broadway Comes to Broadway” festival) and it almost looked like a 70mm original.
So I’m not the only one who noticed this. It might have been a 1968 ‘rectified’ print then in 1976. What this means is that they
slightly cropped the movie and spread it out with a differential squeeze from the center to the edges. A special lens would incrementally unsqueeze it so it looked normal when projected but was very wide. Technicolor was certainly capaple of doing this.
They had done it with “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” which is why the extra faded scenes they found from the Roadshow look strange on Laserdisc and DVD. “2001” actually utilized two labs. Both Technicolor and Metrocolor are listed in the credits. Alas, if either print that was shown at the Rivoli still exist for examination, they would be totally faded by now. Despite the superior sharpness of 70mm, it was chemically unstable like all Eastmancolor prints made prior to 1983 (the year Kodak introduced ‘low fade’ Eastmancolor stock).
The new prints of “2001” in 70mm and 35mm look quite good. It’s one of the most ‘protected’ films that exists. Not one but two sets of B&W 65mm separations were made on the movie by MGM.
Did anyone here see the original “Roadshow” in 1968 shown at the Strand in Cinerama that was 20 minutes longer? Kubrick cut the film after a few days and no one has seen the 162 minute version since.
Allegedly, the cuts exist at his house in England.
Another film that only played uncut at The Rivoli was “The Sand Pebbles”. It was 13 minutes longer than the version played every where else. There’s a website on the film that has B&W copies of the cut scenes in French. I wish Fox would restore it to the original running time.
“Gone with the Wind” played in the heavily cropped 70mm version there in the seventies. They blew up the center of the 1.33 35mm image making wide shots into medium shots, medium shots into close ups and close ups with the actors missing their heads and chins.
The even changed the title design.
My guess is that the 76 showing was an original 1968 print that Kubrick supervised since it had the “Cinerama” logo. The 1978 print
was a new one made by MGM and not supervised by Kubrick so the contrast and saturation was not as good. It had the “70mm” title card at the end. Either that or the 78 was from an internegative and the 76 was from the camera negative which accounts for the image quality difference.
Perhaps it was my imagination but I do recall the 76 print being wider than the 1978 print. I know that the aspect ratio for 70mm had been standardized at 2.21 x 1 after 1966 (when they used the Ultra-Panavision anamorphic 70mm ratio of 2.76 x 1). Do you recall it being wider too? It might have been a specially made rectified print to fill out the ratio of the earlier Cinerama width. Maybe it’s just my imagination but I had a sweet spot seat both times and I do seem to recall the image being narrower in 1976.
The Hollywood Twin was the worst of the repertory cinemas. Unlike
Bleecker Street, Carnegie Hall and the Regency, they used platters rather than reel to reel projection. Whenever a film played there, it got scratched or damaged before it was sent to the next venue. I recall watching a near mint Technicolor print of “Thunderball” get torn up while I was there. The audience laughed but I cringed realizing that this would ruin it for the other rep houses. Whenever I saw a classic booked there I knew I would not see it in good condition again.
The theater itself was like one of those muliplexes with the bowling alley style and small screen. It had none of the character of other small screen rep houses like The Thalia. I guess it was certainly better than operating as a porn house but I didn’t like the impact it had on the limited number of classic prints that were in the field.
On the other hand, I did a great double bill there of two Technicolor classics, “West Side Story” and “Bell, Book and Candle”.
I don’t know what kind of condition they left the theater but the prints were mint when I saw them. Another time they played a completely faded print of “Ben Hur” in Metrocolor and wouldn’t give me my money back. I knew there was a good Technicolor print floating around because it played the 8th Street Playhouse previously. They also played a totally faded print of “Pit and the Pendulum” and the same thing happened. No refund. Once again I argued that a new print had been struck on this title for the Corman festival at the Joseph Papp theater and they shouldn’t charge admission for junk copies. It was real hit and miss there. Sometimes they had great prints, other times total garbage. I don’t think they had the contacts or knowledge of people like Frank Rowley (Regency, Biograph), Bruce Goldstein (Film Forum) or Charles Zlatkin (Elgin Cinema) to know how to secure the best surviving release prints from the exchange. For example, I did get free passes from Rowley when MGM accidently sent them a red Eastmancolor print of “King Solomon’s Mines” instead of a Technicolor copy. If you saw a bad print at The Hollywood Twin, you were out of luck.
If memory serves, the name of the man who ran it when it was the Angelika 57 was Salah Hassenein. I four walled the theater to play my 3-D movie, “Run for Cover” in 1995 before it was demolished. In fact, when it shut down I lost the silver screen that I had installed there for my show. For our premiere we had celebrities like Ed Koch and Curtis Sliwa in attendence (they also had cameos in the movie) and a party at the Hard Rock Cafe next door. Ironically, there was a blizzard that day and I couldn’t travel to see my own premiere from Westchester.
Prior to it’s first run venue, I did attend this house when it was The Biograph and run by Frank Rowley. They basically had the same type of double bills as the Regency. They were set up for magnetic stereo and played a new 35mm print of “2001” circa 1991 there.
Michael,
Thanks for the clarification. I got confused because I believe the print was made in 1982. Todd-AO at 30 frames per second did have a three dimensional quality to it but was not adaptable to standard 35mm print downs at 24 frames per second. The first two
Todd-AO movies were shot twice simulatneously. “Oklahoma!” was filmed in 65mm at 30 frames per second and in 35mm Cinemascope at 24 frames per second. “Around the World in 80 Days” was shot twice in 65mm with the camera(s) at both 30 frames per second (for 70mm prints) and 24 frames per second (for 35mm Technicolor print downs).
It’s really a pity that Goldwyn didn’t utilize more hype and hoopla so people knew how rare the original Todd-AO screening of “Oklahoma!” was. Both screenings I attended were pretty empty which was sad. They had announced they were going to re-issue “South Pacific” in 70mm around the same time but the poor results from the former made them change their mind. I don’t recall
it ever being shown in NYC in a new 70mm print although they did make new 35mm prints of Fuji stock for the repertory houses which looked pretty good. Too bad Goldwyn never restored the movie to the original Roadshow running time. I had a friend who saw some of the missing footage when he visited there. I don’t know if this footage still exists or if it’s too faded to do anything with now. A number of songs were heavily cut, especially “Wash that Man right outta my hair”. You can hear the complete version on the CD of the soundtrack. The current version of the movie is missing a large chunk of the number. “Bloody Mary” was also trimmed.
So we can look forward to all the digital problems that television stations and industry trade screenings have experienced. System break downs, digital artifacts, glitches, image freezes, image breaking up and coming back together, the image stops but the sound keeps going then appears again out of synch and so forth. It will only cost theaters a mere $100,000 or so every three to five years to replace the digital ‘projectors’ as the heat from the lamphouse burns out the electronic components. Will they also have a print running simultaneously as a back up to the unreliable digital formats? Let’s hope so since film projectors are inexpensive and last the life of the theater. Of course, film prints look better and have a great sense of depth and dimension compared to digital imagery which tend to look ‘flat’ and artificial like a computer screen.
Of course is the audience is bored, they can count the pixels, especially if they sit in the first few rows of the theater.
And for this digital technology, the industry abandoned the dye transfer process (aka “Glorious Technicolor” which was briefly revived from 1997-2001), Cinerama and 70mm?
If you want to hear an interesting commentary about film lighting,
check out Paul Morrissey’s on his “Blood for Dracula” and “Flesh for Frankenstein” Criterion discs. Both films were made in Italy with a topnotch crew and excellent lighting and photography. Morrissey complains about how many cameramen in the U.S. were not lighting the actor’s faces at the time. You couldn’t see the expressions on their faces nor did the style of camerawork make them look attractive. If anything it made the stars look ugly.
I discuss this problem in my commentary track on the DVD or “Run for Cover” too.
One of the strangest trends of recent years is to have the entire feature filmed with an overall bluish cast. The fleshtones and backgrounds look like a black and white film tinted blue. “Minority Report” is a good example. The high speed prints of that film looked like a 10th generation dupe.
One thing you could count on prior to 1968, that whether the movie was good or bad, it was always great to look at. Top quality release prints and cinematography in virtually all movies made prior to that year. First generation release prints. Even cheap Roger Corman films had sparkling black and white or plush color like his Poe adapatations (i.e. “Pit and the Pendulum”) which looked better than any current film.
Today, whether the movie is good or bad it’s pretty much guarenteed to look murky and gloomy. The style of cinematography combined with high speed printing and platter projection. The irony is ticket prices are higher than ever before.
To note the quality difference, a number of years ago The Paramount showed a camera negative copy of “Dances with Wolves” at a screening.
It was reportedly Costner’s own print of the film borrowed for the screening. The Paramount had reel to reel projection and a professional operator to ensure no damage would come to the copy.
Prior to the screening, the manager told me the print was unfortunately missing one reel so they sent a high speed print of that reel. “Dances with Wolves” had fairly good cinematography and the camera negative copy looked very nice on the large screen. Then either reel two came up which was the reel made from an internegative
on a high speed printer. There was actually an audible gasp from the audience because the image quality was so different. Rather than being razor sharp and grain free, reel two was murky, fuzzy and grainy. It was almost like vaseline was on the lens. Then reel three came up twenty minutes later the it was like someone washed the image with windex because it was sharp and fine grain again.
That’s the quality difference between what Hollywood insiders screen
and the high speed junk shown in megaplexes. It’s really a rip off since we’re being charged to see substandard junk that does not reflect the quality of the cinematography. Of course video masters are made from fine grain materials. They wouldn’t dare use a high speed print for DVD. People would complain. How ironic that showmanship seems to exist in home video formats but had disappeared from theatrical exhibition with some notable exceptions like NYC Ziegfeld and Suffern’s Lafayette which still put on great shows.
Bill,
I just remembered one of the wildest double bills of all time.
In the nineties, the Paramount Center of the Arts (a restored movie palace with 70mm Norelco machines) played the original silent “Ben Hur” in 35mm with a new 70mm print of the 1959 version. Quite an impressive (and exhausting) experience. Although the new 70mm print was spherical (instead of anamorphic), it still looked and sounded quite good except for a couple of shots in the middle of the chariot race which remained squeezed for a second or two.
Bill,
I agree that most new movies are pretty poor. Even if the photography is good, the high speed printing system degrades
the cinematographer’s intent. Very difficult to see some notch
release copies outside of Hollywood or film festival screenings.
I am still furious that only Coppola and Beatty utlized the revived
dye transfer process for “Apocalype Redux” and “Bulworth”. Why didn’t everyone else get behind it? It would’ve dramatically improved release print quality since every copy would’ve had camera negative sharpness and resolution as well as superior color and contrast. Very frustrating.
Robert,
I forgot to add that the John Wayne film you referred to is probably “Donvan’s Reef”. Great Technicolor, mediocre movie.
CConnelly,
I guess it depends on who you consider ‘great’ within the New Hollywood movement. I do agree Scorsese and Coppola were great
and both were Technicolor buffs but I would say they were the exception to the rule. Scorsese championed the Technicolor process and was instrumental in persuading Kodak to improve the stability of Eastmancolor dyes. Coppola was one of the few contemporary directors to utilize the dye transfer process after it’s brief revival from 1997-2001. In fact, Coppola was the last director to use it for “The Godfather II”. The equipment was in the process of being dismantled while they made the last run of dye transfer prints of a new feature. The last print to have a dye transfer run there was a revival of Disney’s “Swiss Family Robinson”. Scorsese simulated the classic Technicolor look in two films, “New York, New York” and the recent “Aviator” (both two strip for the early scenes and three strip for later scenes).
Others like Wadleigh, Hopper, Downey, Van Peebles were not afficianados of Old Hollywood and their pictures represent a rejection of those standards and content. I don’t think thier pictures have held up over the years either but at the time they were taken quite seriously as the ‘new direction’ for cinema. Their pictures were also heavily politicized which is another trend I’m not fond of. All movies have a perspective but the blatant propoganda contained is so many counter-culture pictures of the late sixties and early seventies has severely dated the movies. They may be interesting as cultural artifacts now but their entertainment value is pretty limited. Try sitting through “Putney Swope” today.
Very primitive and hokey.
Robert,
Another controversial question. The answer is, it depends what year the prints were made in.
Early thirties Technicolor prints had a very toned down use of primary colors. It was thought that vivid primaries would be an eyestrain to people used to B&W. Technicolor prints of “Tom Sawyer” almost look like a sepia tinted film. However, when “The Adventures of Robin Hood” was released an ultra-saturated, vibrant color scheme was used which audiences responded to. 1939 was an interesting year for the process since both types of ‘looks’ were shown. The original 1939 prints of “Gone with the Wind” were very sepia and held the primary colors down. In contrast, “The Wizard of Oz” featured a garish color scheme that was appropriate for the story.
By the mid-forties, Technicolor had become “Glorious Technicolor” and most picture opted for the rich use of primary hues.
Not realistic perhaps but quite beautiful to watch. “The Gang’s All Here” was an example of an almost surealistic use of wildly exagerated primary colors especially in the “Lady in the Tutie Fruitie” hat number.
I should mention that pre-1950 Technicolor prints were not that consistent in quality. The problem they had was that the dyes were made up of multiple components and had to be mixed. While the prints from each set of matrices tended to be consistent, if another run was made from the same set and another batch of dyes mixed, they probably looked slightly different than the first run.
When Dr. Richard Goldberg became head of the research department at the company, one of his first efforts was to create single component dyes so prints would have consistent quality for the entire run. He accomplished this so post-fifties Technicolor copies had much better quality control than those made in the thirties and forties.
Now comes the controversial point…
When the television medium started to usurp motion picture popularity, the studios panicked and started to devise different methods to compete with the boob tube. One of the first things they did was to increase color production. Since Technicolor remained the best lab in the buisiness and TV was Black and White, post-fifties Technicolor prints tended to emphasize primary colors to a greater extent. “Blazing Technicolor” would be a good way to describe these copies. This applied to re-prints of pre-1950 3 strip films. When “Gone with the Wind” was re-issued in 1954, it had much more saturated color than when it was originally released.
Since Selznick supervised this re-issue (and retained a copy of this release rather than the 1939 original for his archive), you could consider it ‘a definite look’ of the film although not what was originally shown. The single component dyes were richer than the earlier multiple component dyes so by their nature, they changed the look of the process. I happened to be an afficianado of fifties Technicolor movies. It’s my favorite decade of cinema, at least from a visual perspective. Virtually ever color movie looked sensational regardless of the process it was made in.
De Luxe and Metrocolor movies also utilized a vibrant use of primary colors and they did look quite good in their original release since they were struck directly from the camera negative as I mentioned. Of course, the contrast and dyes were never as rich as Technicolor prints but they still looked good…until they faded that is.
So, if you see an old nitrate Technicolor print, it will look different than a safety Technicolor copy of the same title. It will look more vibrant and saturated due to the single component dyes and re-timing of the image to confirm to fifties' standards of color.
I don’t know if they can be considered definitive or not but they sure looked breathtaking.
In terms of VHS and DVD, no video format can replicate the Technicolor ‘look’. Technicolor prints had that kodachrome appearance of three dimensional vibrancy due to the superior contrast, black blacks and pure primaries. Reds almost glowed from the screen. Video pixels tend to bleed when they’re that saturated (especially reds) so they are re-timed and toned down during the mastering process. At it’s best it can ‘simulate’ the film look
(i.e. “The Band Wagon”) but never replicate it. Video by it’s nature has a limited contrast ratio and other flaws. Still, there’s no denying video masters look much better now than they did decades ago within the severe limitations of that technology.
In terms of other films made in Eastmancolor and printed at De Luxe, Metrocolor and other facilites, all new prints and video masters will have problems due to color fading of the originals.
Sometimes they can ‘tweak’ them on video, other times they cannot.
Eastmancolor was a very unstable process until 1983. Unless large sums of money are spent to restore the original quality (millions were spent restoring “Lawrence”, “My Fair Lady” and others), they
will never look like they did on their first release unless a surviving dye transfer print exists in a film collection somewhere.
To a certain extent, the New Hollywood approach to filmmaking could not be debated since they took an artistic relativist stance. When you would note that when they aimed the camera at the movie lights in “The Strawberry Statement”, it made you lose your suspension of disbelief that you were watching a real story unfold, advocates would argue, “Who says you cannot aim the camera at the movie lights”. Others would argue, why should there be a standards. That’s too restrictive. Who says a movie can’t be grainy. Why should it always have to be sharp. Why should all films have to be picture postcard pretty. Besides, who’s to say what pretty color camerawork is. This is no right or wrong, truth or fiction. Only a person’s perspective which is always biased based on their background and so on. When you take that perspective, it’s impossible to determine what is good and bad. Art or junk. What’s worse, you may not even recognize motion picture art when you see it because you’ll have no frame of reference. I’ve gotten into these arguements with many advocated of post-1970 film buffs and you just go in circles. I get labeled as very ‘bourgeoisie" or closed minded when I state that Freddie Young (“Lawrence of Arabia”), Ted Moore (“Thunderball”), Lionel Lindon (“Around the World in 80 Days”) or
Robert Burks (“Vertigo”) were greater talents than any contemporary cameraman. Anyway, I call em’ the way I see em' and often get into trouble as a result.
Vincent,
This topic has gotten me thrown off of two film related sites.
It’s quite a controversial subject.
I guess I can safely say that regardless of a person’s personal preference of cinematography or their aesthetic taste, there was
definately a trade off between screen content and exhibition.
In other words, if you want the large screen experience, there needed to be some form of production code in place (even if liberally applied as it was from 1966-1968) to ensure general attendence. Without general attendence, they folded like dominoes.
“New Hollywood” screen freedom resulted in a major demographic change in movie attendence. General audiences were abandoned and beginning in the late sixties most movies were geared for 16-26 year old viewers. It cut weekly attendence from 41 million weekly to 25 million from 1968-1972. It was further reduced to 22 million by 1978. Basically the extremelly graphic sex, violence and profanity that glutted cinema after 1968 alienated a large percentage of adult movie goers which simply stopped attending the single screen cinemas and movie palaces on a weekly basis. They still went to an occasional mainstream hit like “The Sting” but pictures like “Woodstock” and “Deep Throat” kept many viewers away in droves
at least on a weekly basis. The movie palaces and cinemas like The Rivoli needed enough mainstream G/M/GP/PG product to fill their seats which the numerous R and X rated pictures weren’t accomplishing. So, they got twinned or shut down. Another option was to become a rep house which had a broader based demographic but even these weren’t too solvent in the long run.
The big debate is whether “New Hollywood” post-code films (usally rated R or X) contained the same level of craftsmanship as “Old Hollywood” features designed for general attendence and presented in Cinerama or Technicolor. The short answer is, they didn’t by design. New Hollywood rejected most of what they found objectionable in Old Hollywood including modifying content for middle class consuption and the emphasis on spectacular technology.
New Hollywood championed avante guarde, cinema verite style camerawork from a counter-culture perspective. The appeal was in the rejection of old standards. The appeal was limited to the targed ‘youth’ viewer of course, not the adult audience that appreciated a movie like “Lawrence of Arabia” in 70mm. Rather than classifying cinema as an artistic entertainment medium, they re-defined it as medium for social commentary and activism. Many contemporary directors like Spike Lee still define the medium in these terms.
I’m kind of caught in the middle. I do find movies like “Easy Rider” interesting as a time capsule of an era. It actually had pretty good photography for a counter-culture movie, most of which were very primitive in the technical specs. However, I don’t like the impact it had on exhibition or the moviegoing experience.
I wish there was some sort of compromise made at the time to keep most pictures mainstream and an occasional release off the beaten track but that’s not how it played out. Within a few years following the demise of the production code, there were more restricted pictures than general release movies. There was no way theaters like the Rivoli could survive when the principal product of the industry either restricted too many potential viewers or allienated whole segments of the population. That was the trade off that proponents of New Hollywood resent when you mention it. The conventional wisdom that New Hollywood ‘saved’ the industry or freed cinema from it’s former restraits only applies if you don’t care about the exhibition side of the medium. From an exhibitor’s perspective, New Hollywood was a disaster since they lost their general audience.
I’ve discovered that many people who give accolades to the contemporary style of cinematography have never seen a movie in Cinerama, 70mm or Technicolor. In most cases they don’t know what they’re missing so there’s no reason they should believe us when we describe how superior the release copies, cinematography and theater showmanship was thirty years ago.
On many other sites, I’ve been called every name under the sun for daring to suggest that current films are not as well
photographed as those of the past or that New Hollywood or what ever group constitutes the contemporary film industry lack the artistic sensibilities, taste and talent of “Old Hollywood”.
On my own features, I do try to simulate the classic style of cinematography to the best of my ability within my low budgets. I had some success in “Space Avenger” since I made dye transfer prints at the Chinese Technicolor lab in 1989. More recently, I replicated the ‘film noir’ look in B&W in “Unsavory Characters” in 2001. It was like pulling teeth to get the cameramen to light in the old style. They don’t like spending so much time ‘painting with light’ as Freddie Young described it.
Robert,
Get there early and make sure you get a sweet spot seat. For the fun of it, take a walk around the theater before it’s over so you can see how grotesquely distorted the image looks from the side asiles or from the back the cinema. That was always the problem with both Cinerama and Todd-AO. It only looked really good in a few rows of the theater.
I saw the Dayton print of “This is Cinerama” which was in Technicolor so the panel joins matched fairly well. I don’t know what the new LPP print looks like. I imagine it must show some negative wear and differential fading between the panels. You will see the panel joins in most of the travelogue. They’re pretty well hidden in most of “How the West Was Won” in comparison.
Most people don’t know that “This is Cinerama was one of the first movies to use Eastmancolor negatives. The first use of them was in Super Cinecolor. However in that case they were only utilized for principal photography. Afterwards, they were separted into three B&W records (similar to the Technicolor 3 strip method) to make the Super Cinecolor dual emulsion release prints.
Although both Kodak and Ansco developed their color negative/color positive processes circa 1951, no one used them for features. Why? There was a flaw in the process. They didn’t have duplicating stock to make optical effects like fades, dissolves and transitions. Obviously, this was problem for features.
They got around this in Super Cinecolor since the original color negatives were not used to make prints. When they filtered them and separated them into 3 B&W records, they incorporated the opticals into those records. In other words, the B&W records had the opticals but the not color original. For Cinerama, they actually
made the fade ins and fade outs (there were no dissolves) as the prints were being struck. The film was edited in short sections of about 5 minutes each. All three records were contained on the same reel. For example, the rollercoaster had panels A, B and C assembled onto the negative roll. Technicolor devised a printer to fade in each panel as it was being struck on Eastmancolor stock.
Then Reel 1 part "B” section had all three panels of the dancers.
Reel 1 part “C” section had all three panels of Niagra Falls and so on. The reason they did it this way is so the color timing would be reasonably consistent between the three panels for each section. After printing, the Cinerama print was assembled in a synchronizer.
There were many splices in each reel because each 5 or 6 minute section was printed separately. Even with this technique, the panels didn’t always match. The original prints of all of the 3 strip Cinerama films were printed in Eastmancolor in the fifties even though Technicolor did the lab work. All of these prints had faced. However, in 1962, Technicolor adopted it’s optical printers to derive matrices from the three negatives so the two narrative features were printed in the dye transfer process which didn’t fade and had better quality control. I suspect that the compilation film released last, “The Best of Cinerama” was also printed in the dye transfer process but I cannot confirm it since no copy has survived.
The Dayton prints were 1962 dye transfer prints of “This is Cinerama” and “How the West Was Won”. In general they looked great except for some Eastmancolor replacement footage used to fill missing frames of the travelogue.
In 1953, Kodak developed a less than satifactory method to make opticals in Eastmancolor. The shot in question would be filmed with their color negative. Then they would make B&W separations of that image, incorporate the optical effect and reprint them on the same negative stock. The end result was an incredibly grainy and contrasty optical effect. It did allow the production of feature films in Eastmancolor although you could always see the image degredation in the opticals. It looked so bad that they only used this method for the actual frames containing the effect. For example, a shot would be camera negative for a person walking away, then the same shot would be continued in grainy dupey optical effect. After the dissolve it would cut back to camera negative. It was pretty distracting and created a visual ‘pop’ on screen which you can see in all of the early CinemaScope features. Later, Kodak developed Interpositive/Internegative stock for opticals which was slightly better but still rather grainy with poor resolution.
Why didn’t Technicolor prints in scope or flat derived from Eastmancolor negatives show these artifacts? The reason was that Kalmus developed a method of “A and B” rolling the color camera negative and putting it through the printer twice (actually six times for the three matrices). That way they could incorporate the fades, dissolves and even superimpositions directly off the camera negative. In other words, the original camera negative of “Spartacus” did not have any opticals. They were made directly from the A and B roll negatives while the 70mm or dye transfer print was being made. In the early sixties, Technicolor devised a different method for first generation opticals known as ‘auto select’ printing. Rather than A & B roll the camera negative for two passes through the printer, the entire shot was included on the cut camera negative sometimes up through the slate or flash frame.
When a dissolve was needed, the printer was rigged to fade out the first shot on the roll, they automatically rewind and fade in the next shot of the same roll for the dissolve. The same applied to other effects like fades. When “Lawrence of Arabia” was restored, every optical had to be remade. The advantage was that the entire release print contained the same generation regardless of whether it was regular action or an optical effect. Thus Technicolor large format prints as well as dye transfer prints looked far superior to prints from other labs like De Luxe which never had these capabilities and always contained the grainy looking opticals.
One of the reasons that “2001” looks so good is that most of the effects were made directly onto the camera negative in multiple passes. Quite different from combining multiple elements and reprinting them on duplicate stock. In other words, Kubrick would
mark the beginning of a take on the actual negative (possibly a hole punch) then shoot his miniature against a blue screen. The the same camera negative would be rewound inside the camera in a dark room back to the start mark. Next, the other elements would be filmed like planets and then another pass would add the stars and so on. This went on for years with small rolls of film adding elements over a long period of time. It was primitive and hand rigged but quite effective a technique since you saw first generation optical effects on screen with razor sharp depth of field which added to the illusion of being in space.
For “Star Wars” Lucas used optical effects combining different separate elements and reprinting them on improved internegative stock. The reason they tended to look good was that he photographed them in large format VistaVision. This added sharpness and improved the resolution. They would not have looked as good had he filmed them in 35mm Panavision. Even so, they were not as razor sharp or impressive as the camera negative effects in “2001” filmed in 65mm.
However, the 70mm blow up print shown at Loews Astor Plaza did look good back in 1977. What helped was that the special effects were cut quickly and not lingered on like the “2001” effects. Combined with the innovative use of stereo sound, they were quite effective although if you looked at some of them a frame at a time you would see artifacts like off registration engines on the backs of the ships and so on. In any event, Lucas made them work within the context of the narrative.
I can’t say I’m impressed at all with CGE space effects. To me they look completely artificial compared to those filmed in 65mm or Vistavision in the sixties and seventies. They lack dimensionality
of filming with miniatures and tend to have that ‘flat’ computerized look. When you have a motion controlled camera moving past a miniature properly lit, it gives that optical distortion of any movement passing a lens which it part of what makes it look real.
Computer generated effects lack that optical distortion inherant with shooting through a lens although the distortion is part of what tricks the eye into thinking it’s real and giving the object a sense of dimension and roundness. CGE effects out putted to film also generate a ‘thin’ negative which effects the resolution and alters the grain structure of the image. However, audiences don’t seem to mind the look of CGE effects which have replaced optical effects.
Regarding the “2001” cuts, a number of articles stated that Kubrick had the trims in his vault in England but this has not been confirmed. What is interesting is the change in reviews after the director cut the film. The early reviews were pretty bad. The post cut reviews were much better. The movie as it exists now is probably by favorite film of all time with “Lawrence of Arabia” a close second. I’d like to see the extra footage but I’m not sure it should be incorporated back into the movie.
I’m not sure to what extent Kubrick was involved with film preservation. He donated his standard cut 35mm Technicolor anamorphic print of “Spartacus” (182 min.) to MOMA. “Dr. Strangelove” negative was heavily damaged from over printing by Columbia although it had recently been ‘restored’. I plan on screening one of the restored prints to see if they replicate the contrast ratio and gray scale of the originals. I do know that Dick
May stated they had made two sets of 65mm B&W separations from the original negative of the film which is the only method to preserve pre1-1983 ‘quick fade’ Eastmancolor negatives. The new 35mm print looked great so either the camera negative is still in good shape or they made new elements from the seps.
It’s interesting to note that while many directors retain creative control over their pictures, very few get involved with the actual preservation or restoration of their movies. In many cases, it’s outsiders who restore them as it the case of Bob Harris who restored Kubrick’s “Spartacus” and Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia”. While the directors supported the efforts after the fact, they did not initiate the projects. Lean did not even have a reference print of “Lawrence of Arabia”. They borrowed my Technicolor copy to use as a timing reference for the restoration.
Since I am so aware of the problems of film preservation and restoration, I maintain my own negatives in a private vault and
won’t let distributors near them. I supply internegatives or digital masters for the deals to retain my cut and quality control.
Robert,
Cinerama as a process was designed to generate the illusion of
peripheral vision. The concept was to make the audience feel as if
they were ‘inside the picture’. The same year it was introduced (1952), a competed process premiered which was 3-D. Rather than put the audience in the picture, the picture seemed to emerge out of the screen, especially with ‘off screen effects’ (i.e. the paddle ball man in “House of Wax”).
The way the three projector process gave the peripheral illusion was as follows:
Principal photography was photographed with 3 35mm cameras that used a 27mm prime lens. It was determined that 27mm replicated the human eye’s focal length, at least in respect to distance. The cameras were in a “U” formation so that they not only photographed was was in front of them but also the sides. To project these three images, the projectors replicated the formation and exhibted them on a deeply curved screen. “Giggilos” were in the projectors to merge and blur the join lines. Louvered screens were used so the left and right panel didn’t reflect the images onto the opposite side of the screen. The effect worked in that when you had a sweet spot seat
(in the middle of the theater), the screen wrapped around you and you could see down the center and sides of a street or in a location.
When the camera moved or was on a helicopter (i.e. the America tour or rollercoaster in “This is Cinerama”) you definately felt you were inside the image. However, the join lines were always noticeable.
In “How the West Was Won”, the cinematographers went out of their way to hide them so they were less noticeable in trees or building edges but it was a distracting way to film a movie. Rather then getting the most dramatic composition, you spent most of your time
trying to hide join lines.
The man who made Cinerama a viable entity was Michael Todd. While the process had been trade screened for many industry personnel, no one saw it’s potentional except for Todd who was really an outsider from Broadway. The first thing he did was to tell
the creators to put the rollercoaster up front and shoot in color.
Todd and his son became part of the company with Lowell Thomas and
shot the first half of “This is Cinerama”. Others shot the second half. It premiered and was an enormous hit. Todd proposed to his
partners to modify the process and get rid of the multiple projectors, join lines and make ‘everything come out of one hole’.
His partners rejected the idea since they were making money with the process ‘as is’.
Todd hired Dr. Brien O'Brien to create the “Todd-AO” process.
70mm had been tried in 1929 but didn’t catch on, primarily because of the difficulties in converting to sound and because the image was not that impressive in mono sound and B&W. Todd-AO was also a deeply
curved screen process that generated a similar peripheral illusion
to Cinerama at times. A series of prime lenses were developed that
had a very wide field of view. Technically, only the ‘bug eye’ lens
photographed what was in front of the camera as well as the sides.
It was used extensively for the travelogue sequences in Todd’s “Around the World in 80 Days”. It was an interesting lens and gave the illusion you were being sucked into the screen, a bit different than Cinerama. It did have some distortion but then so did Cinerama’s three panel projection. Fortunately, the other lenses used for medium shots and close ups did not distort but didn’t generate the peripheral illusion either. Basically, Todd AO
gave the peripheral illusion intermittently depending on what was required for the scene. It was not as wide as the original Cinerama although it was determined that in a ‘sweet spot’ seat, having the image go beyond your vision was unecessary. So from eyeball to eyeball you still got the impression you were inside the picture.
The other factor for this illusion was depth of field, namely, foreground to background sharpness. In standard Hollywood features,
close ups and medium shots had a shallow depth of field. The background was soft. In both Cinerama and Todd-AO, the lenses had an expanded depth of field so in most cases the foreground and background were always sharp rather than soft. This was integral to the peripheral illusion.
Todd died in a plane crash in 1958 and his process was purchased by Fox which dumped their CinemaScope 55 and made future blockbuster features in Todd’s 70mm process. However, they abandoned the bug eyed lens and it wasn’t used again. How did the new 70mm prints look? In general they attempted to retain the sharp depth of field
on a deeply curved screen which did generate somewhat of a peripheral
illusion but was not as effective as the Cinerama’s three lens version of the original bug eyed lens. I guess they felt it worked well enough and presentations were impressive so audiences would not miss the actual illusion of being ‘inside the picture’.
The Panavision company created superior anamorphic lenses in 1957
which eventually replaced the heavily distorted CinemaScope lenses which created a very wide image but had shallow depth of field and a great deal of distortion. For “Raintree County” and “Ben Hur” they also added a 25% anamorphic squeeze to the 70mm process and dubbed it MGM Camera 65 and later Ultra-Panavision. Basically they replicated the aspect ratio of the original 3 panel Cinerama process
on 70mm film. However, they in now way simulated the peripheral illusion. The image was wide and sharp but just looked like an upgraded scope picture. The presentations were impressive but the peripheral illusion was gone. In 1963, Cinerama dumped the three panel process and went with this system for “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”. The quality was as good as “Ben Hur” shown flat on a wide screen but was not really “Cinerama” in terms of the original impact. Later, Cinerama abandoned the Ultra-Panavision process and
played standard spherical 70mm (pretty much identical to Fox’s application of Todd-AO) until it’s demise in 1972. Things became more confusing when Cinerama started releasing regular flat 1.85
features in the early seventies that weren’t even in widescreen.
“2001” was filmed in 65mm and the effects had a razor sharp depth of field. When projected on a curved screen, they did make you feel as if you were in outer space. It wasn’t really the Cinerama peripheral illusion but it worked for what it was. One of the things that Kubrick did to make these effects so convincing was to have constant movement on screen. The camera would pan past planets and space stations as the ship flew by. The movement helped generated the illusion of ‘being in the picture’. In contrast, similar effects in “Star Wars” were locked down and things flew past the frame. Not as effective as having constant movement in the space shots like “2001”. The movement also hid the fact that they
were miniatures or stop motion ships. Kubrick also lit them dramatically to improve the illusion. The key to special effects in space was the lighting of the miniatures and to film them a different speeds but never at 24 frames per second. Also, you moved the camera, not the miniatures so the movement was smoother.
In summary, I don’t think that 70mm Cinerama was ‘inferior’ to three panel Cinerama. They were both great presentations but had different impacts. Three panel gave a realistic illusion of peripheral vision but had the flaw of panel joins and headache of keeping three projectors and a magnetic sound reproducer in synch.
Single strip Cinerama gave a razor sharp widescreen image that surpassed CinemaScope and didn’t have the distortion of the Bausch and Lomb lenses used in that process. It generated a ‘you are there’ effect at times but less of a ‘you are inside the picture’ peripheral illusion. All these processes had tradeoffs. None was perfect.
One of the main advantages of all of the fifties and sixties processes was that all prints were struck directly off the camera negative. This was as good as you could get quality wise. This was also the case for standard flat and scope 35mm features in either Technicolor or Eastmancolor. Everyone saw first generation sharpness and resolution. While the quality was topnotch in theaters, striking so many release copies off the original wore out the negative. In 1968, Kodak introduced CRI (Color Reversal Intermediate). Fox was the first studio to use it, then others adopted it too. While negative wear was alleviated, a great deal of quality was lost (resolution, graininess) when making release copies from a second generation element. Later, CRI’s were abandoned and prints were made from internegatives derived from an interpositive.
Today all release copies are three generations removed fromt he camera negative also a small number of EK copies are struck for Hollywood screenings. Prints derived from CRI’s and IN’s look horrid when shown on the enormous Cinerama type screens. The image breaks up into blobs of grain floating around the enormous screen.
They look passable in small screen multi-plexes. Thus, even if the
enormous curved screens still existed throughout the country, contemporary films would not look good on them. The current style of cinematography is completely different that that utilized in the pre-1970 era. Rather than extensively lighting the image to generate saturated colors, rich fleshtones and a sharp depth of field, many cameramen underexpose the negative today with very little light, de-saturated colors and fleshtones and a shallow depth of field. The latest Oscar winner, “Million Dollar Baby” was shot in this fashion. Very de-saturated, murky and dark. It would not be appropriate for large screen presentation in Cinerama but will look presentable on DVD since they’ll derive the video master from
pre-print material. The high speed general release prints looked terrible in my opinion although I have a friend who saw a camera negative copy in Hollywood and he said it looked ‘okay’.
I guess the dramatic difference in cinematography during the studio era vs. the “New Hollywood” era (post-1968) is a whole discussion in itself. Personally, I really hate the way most post-1970 films look but my frame of reference tends to be movies like “2001” and “Lawrence of Arabia” which I find aethetically
breathtaking and spectacular. I can’t say I found the camerawork
or imagery in “Million Dollar Baby” aethetically pleasan to sit through not withstanding the fine acting. I’m sure there are supporters (or appologists) for the contemporary style of cinematography but this much is certain. It is not appropriate for large screen (or curved screen) exhibition…
If anyone still has any flyers/schedules from this theater from 1975-1977, I’d love to have copies. Specifically, I’ll like flyers that advertise “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” and “Lawrence of Arabia” screenings. In return I still have many schedules from the Thalia and Regency I could copy along with vintage Village Voice newspapers
that have movie ads from the era.
Please email me at:
I still have many of the Regency flyers (schedules) from the seventies and eighties framed on display in my screening room.
Among the many memorable festivals was the Fox retrospective. New prints of many CinemaScope prints were shown. Since most were originally De Luxe color (and had completely faded by then), seeing new prints was a treat. Most had pretty good color with the exception of “The King and I” (greenish) and “The Robe” (very grainy and dupey). The print of “There’s no Business Like Show Business”
looked sensational.
At one time, either Rowley or one of his staff went through various exchanges to piece together an excellent Technicolor print of “Around the World in 80 Days”.
The only time I saw a really bad print there was “King Solomon’s Mines”. It wasn’t a Technicolor copy but an old faded Eastmancolor print. They gave me a pass to see another show.
The scheduling was always innovative. There were retrospectives of Bette Davis, Comedies, Hitchcock and others. One of the great thrills of the seventies was opening the Village Voice and circling all the movies worth attending in the various repertory houses and devising a schedule so I could see as many as possible between classes at NYU. When I was short on cash, I would walk from 8th Street to Lincoln Center to see a screening at this theater.
I attended repertory screenings at Cinema Village throughout the seventies. Although it had a relatively small screen compared to the Elgin Cinema and Regency, they did play some great titles.
The biggest surprise was a showing of “The Wild Bunch”. The Pekinpah classic had played most of the revival cinemas in the standard cut 135 minute version. Then to my surprise and un-announced, Cinema Village played an uncut 2 hour and 25 minute version with all of the missing flashbacks. I had heard about the deleted scenes but it was the first time I’d seen them. The print was mint in Technicolor, possibly a studio vault print that the theater was unaware they were getting. Anyway, it was a great show. It’s always a thrill to see ‘lost’ footage (for the era anyway) for the first time.
It would appear that the “Oklahoma!” Todd AO print I saw in 1982 played Cinema I rather than the Baronet or Coronet. They didn't
advertise or promote it properly. I saw it twice and both screenings were nearly empty. The studio scenes looked sensational.
Some of the exterior opening scenes had washed out skies due to fading or improper timing since the new CinemaScope prints struck at
the same time also had de-saturated skies. I had seen original Technicolor prints of the film and know the skies were a deep blue.
It was not a liquid gate 70mm
print so the opticals were quite scratchy including the opening fade into the corn field. Overall though, it was quite a show.
Rudy,
I’m interested in some technical information about Bleecker Street Cinema, if you’d be so kind…
What kind of projectors did you use? When I booked “Space Avenger” there back in 1991, the theater only had one Simplex projector with a 6000 foot capacity. The house lights were left off as they changed reels for the second half of the movie. I know this is after your involvement with the cinema but I was wondering if that was one of the original projectors you used.
I assume you went reel to reel rather than platters. The only rep house that used platters was The Hollywood Twin and they used to trash the prints as a result. I was at a screening when they trashed a near mint Technicolor print of “Thunderball” at Hollywood 2.
Did you use carbon arc or Xenon illumination? I believe the Elgin Cinema used carbon arc and the other rep houses Xenon but I'm
not sure.
What was the typical booking deal? The basic rental price of the prints in the sixties and seventies? I know Zlatkin and Gould shut down the Elgin due to the increase in print rentals in 1977 (among
other reasons).
How difficult was it to get good prints from the exchanges? I know the prints at the Regency were often brand new (i.e. Fox festival). The Carnegie Hall occasionally got studio vault prints for it’s festivals (Brando and Hitchcock, “Cheyenne Autumn”). I recall most of the prints at Bleecker Street looked quite good. Other rep houses played worn prints, especially Cinema Village. Did you have to make friends with a specific person at the exchange or were some better at quality control than others (i.e. Kino, MGM/UA)? I do recall speaking to some people there at the theater in the seventies and they told me they were having a tough time getting a long print of “Spartacus”. Universal kept sending them prints of the heavily cut 1967 re-issue.
I believe that “2001” started as a hard ticket show in NYC during it’s initial run then they changed it to allow people to see it without reserved tickets. The hard ticket policy was gradually abandoned over the next few years, not over night. I did see “Oliver” in a reserved seat Roadshow engagement somewhere in Florida in 1968. I don’t recall whether it was in 70mm or 35mm mag stereo.
I’m well aware of the ratios of Cinerama films over the years. It’s possible however that they made a special rectified print of “2001” that played around or even for a single theater. They made custom rectified prints of “Oklahoma!” among other titles. Perhaps it was just an optical illusion though based on the screen masking or lens they used at the Rivoli in 1976 and 1978 although since Vincent recalls the wider image I suspect there was some difference in the presentations.
Technicolor was capable of making all sorts of unsual prints in custom made ratios. “Around the World in 80 Days” 35mm magnetic stereo prints had the entire silent academy ratio with picture but with a 1.75 x 1 squeeze so that when it was unsqueezed it replicated the 70mm 2.21 x 1 ratio. You needed one of those Tushinsky variable squeeze anamorphic lenses to show it. The 35mm optical mono Technicolor prints had the standard 2 x 1 squeeze and 2.35 x 1 slightly cropped ratio. “Ben Hur” 35mm Technicolor prints had the standard 2 x 1 anamorphic squeeze but contained a slight ‘letterboxing’ (black borders) on top and bottom of the frame to simulate the 70mm MGM Camera 65 2.76 x 1 ratio. The 1969 release prints in 70mm were spherical cropped 2.21 x 1 and the 35mm Metrocolor prints 2.35 x 1 without the black borders. So, Technicolor could custom make any kind of print you wanted in 35mm and 70mm.
By the way, “2001” was the film that changed the “Roadshow” presentations. Prior to that movie, all Roadshows were hard ticket.
That meant you needed to buy your ticket and numbered seat in advance. “2001” was popular with young people who prefered to wander into the theater at whatever the next screening was rather than reserve their seat. It was such a success that theaters decided to alter their Roadshow policies. Incrementally then
retained the exclusive area showing for the film with the higher
ticket price and superior presentation in 70mm and stereophonic sound but abandoned the reserved seat policy. You could go see the film whenever you wanted.
Roadshows continued through the eighties although the window shortened to only a week or so before the same movie went into general release. At least many movies were released in 70mm.
When digital sound was introduced in the nineties, distributors
dumped the 70mm process which was the last nail in the coffin of
showmanship. The last new feature to be shown in 70mm was “Titanic"
which played the recently closed "Loews Astor Plaza” in 1997. There have been occasional classic films reprinted in the format like “2001” and “Lawrence of Arabia”. Otherwise, it’s another superior format abandoned by the film industry. The same year that “Titanic” was released, the Technicolor dye transfer process was resurrected. Classics like “Rear Window” and “The Wizard of Oz” were reprinted in “Glorious Technicolor” along with some new films like “Toy Story II”, “Pearl Harbor” and “Bulworth”. It was shut down again in 2001.
Today, unless you attend a screening in Hollywood, you’ll be seeing a garbage high speed print struck from an internegative three generations removed from the camera negative. Due to the static charge in the estar stock, it’s likely that dust will be printed into the release copy which has poor contrast and inferior resolution.
In comparison, most prints were struck directly from the camera negative in 70mm, or in 35mm Eastmancolor and 35mm Technicolor through 1968. That’s among the reasons that films looked so spectacular in the large screen theaters like “The Rivoli” or movie palaces like “Radio City Music Hall”. The sub-standard high speed prints cranked out at 2000 feet per minute made on features today would not look good on a 40 foot or 80 foot wide screen common in the fifties and sixties. In contrast, release prints were made at a very slow printing speed in the fifties. 45 feet per minute which allowed for a good exposure on the release print and contrast changes. High speed prints are made on a ‘one lite’ setting and look it. One of the reasons that even blow up 70mm prints looked good is that there were no high speed printers. All 70mm copies were made at a slow printing speed. In addition, many were camera negative blow ups. For example, “Camelot” 70mm prints were optically enlarged directly from the 35mm Panavision negative. A first generation blow up. I saw it at the Warner Cinerama in 1978 (“Broadway Comes to Broadway” festival) and it almost looked like a 70mm original.
Vincent,
So I’m not the only one who noticed this. It might have been a 1968 ‘rectified’ print then in 1976. What this means is that they
slightly cropped the movie and spread it out with a differential squeeze from the center to the edges. A special lens would incrementally unsqueeze it so it looked normal when projected but was very wide. Technicolor was certainly capaple of doing this.
They had done it with “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” which is why the extra faded scenes they found from the Roadshow look strange on Laserdisc and DVD. “2001” actually utilized two labs. Both Technicolor and Metrocolor are listed in the credits. Alas, if either print that was shown at the Rivoli still exist for examination, they would be totally faded by now. Despite the superior sharpness of 70mm, it was chemically unstable like all Eastmancolor prints made prior to 1983 (the year Kodak introduced ‘low fade’ Eastmancolor stock).
The new prints of “2001” in 70mm and 35mm look quite good. It’s one of the most ‘protected’ films that exists. Not one but two sets of B&W 65mm separations were made on the movie by MGM.
Did anyone here see the original “Roadshow” in 1968 shown at the Strand in Cinerama that was 20 minutes longer? Kubrick cut the film after a few days and no one has seen the 162 minute version since.
Allegedly, the cuts exist at his house in England.
Another film that only played uncut at The Rivoli was “The Sand Pebbles”. It was 13 minutes longer than the version played every where else. There’s a website on the film that has B&W copies of the cut scenes in French. I wish Fox would restore it to the original running time.
“Gone with the Wind” played in the heavily cropped 70mm version there in the seventies. They blew up the center of the 1.33 35mm image making wide shots into medium shots, medium shots into close ups and close ups with the actors missing their heads and chins.
The even changed the title design.
Vincent,
My guess is that the 76 showing was an original 1968 print that Kubrick supervised since it had the “Cinerama” logo. The 1978 print
was a new one made by MGM and not supervised by Kubrick so the contrast and saturation was not as good. It had the “70mm” title card at the end. Either that or the 78 was from an internegative and the 76 was from the camera negative which accounts for the image quality difference.
Perhaps it was my imagination but I do recall the 76 print being wider than the 1978 print. I know that the aspect ratio for 70mm had been standardized at 2.21 x 1 after 1966 (when they used the Ultra-Panavision anamorphic 70mm ratio of 2.76 x 1). Do you recall it being wider too? It might have been a specially made rectified print to fill out the ratio of the earlier Cinerama width. Maybe it’s just my imagination but I had a sweet spot seat both times and I do seem to recall the image being narrower in 1976.