Cinema: Strictly for the Marbles

(6 of 8)

Meanwhile, the counter-counter-revolutionaries hatched a plot to have their cake, eat it too, and pinch a few of Skouras' box-office cookies into the bargain. Each announced, in portentous succession, that after years of arduous research it had developed at last its own wide-screen system—with "stereophonic sound." Paramount came out with Paravision, to be shown on a screen 1.66 times as wide as it is high (as compared with 1.33 to 1 for the traditional screen and 2.66 to 1 for CinemaScope). Metro sedately favored 1.75 to 1, and Universal went to 1.85 to 1.

What Next? Actually, the momentous innovations involved nothing but the use of a wide-angle lens in the same old cameras, and a new screen for such theaters as cared to go to the expense. No prosceniums would have to be torn down, no costly lenses bought. Best of all, the backlog would be safe. Almost all the old pictures could be projected to fill the new, not-so-wide screens. True, about 25% would be lost from the top or bottom of the picture, but as Metro's Dore Schary sanely said. "All you lose is air, anyway." For a few actors' heads the public would probably not argue the point. The first of the "retreads" to be shown on wide screen, Paramount's Shane and Universal's Thunder Bay, have done a huge business.

By the middle of last month, in short, the wide-screen revolution was looking more and more like an inventory sale; the three-dimensional revolution had still not proven itself to be anything more than a freak show; and Hollywood was in confusion, with production at a standstill.

Which way would the movies go? Fox was sticking with CinemaScope, and last week Warners announced that they would make 22 pictures in 3-D. Nevertheless, only one thing was sure, and Darryl Zanuck said it: "The small screen is through, through!" It was up to the public to decide what comes next, and last week the theater owners of the U.S. were moving at top speed to give the public an early chance to decide. Thousands of them had signed orders for "all-purpose screens" that can show everything from Cinema-Scope on down.

But the public could hardly make a fair decision until sometime next fall, when it sees The Robe in CinemaScope or some other carefully made picture in 3-D. Meanwhile,there were many more fascinating things than screens to be considered.

"Mediocrity Magnified." CinemaScope will abolish, at one stroke, the art of the film as it has been practiced since that memorable day in 1907 when Rescued from an Eagle's Nest was released and people hurried in by the dozens to watch a baleful old bird, unmistakably stuffed, clutch a helpless infant in its claws and fly away to eat it up. Gone is the viewer's sense of eavesdropping on activities that are, after all, going on in another room. In CinemaScope, the illusion in the other room outflanks the beholder in his theater seat and overwhelms him with a frontal attack of enormous images and sounds. Audiences will be put, especially with the addition of stereophonic sound, somewhat in the position of Tennyson's lancers in the Light Brigade. They will have to ride unreasoning through volley and thunder into any old melodrama Hollywood cares to spread before them.