Much of the financial news of late from the Hollywood studios focuses on the revenue gushers generated by recently released 3D movies, such as “Avatar,” “Alice in Wonderland” and “How to Train Your Dragon.” But the latest cycle of 3-D movies rely on what is really quite an old technology.
No, we’re not talking about such 1950’s 3D classics as “Bwana Devil.”
Think older, much older: It turns out our grandparents enjoyed 3D movies, turned out by the major Hollywood studios… in the 1930s. Only then it was called S3D.
Maybe the third time is the charm. Or maybe not: Before plunging into regulatory or investment schemes that assume 3D is the future, consider that it may just be the past. Twice.
For this bit of movie technology history we are indebted to the authoritative show business newspaper Variety, which retrieved from its dusty pre-Internet archives an article from January of 1953, which reported on what some of us remember as the birth of 3D movies (and were we ever terrified by “House of Wax”) but it was actually was the *revival* of 3D movies.
And all of the same questions that we have today about 3D were there 57 years ago:
– Will 3D spread? Harry Warner (of Warner Bros): “everything will be in 3D in two years.” (Paging Jeffrey Katzenberg!)
– Will we have 3D without glasses, what we now call autostereo? “Already demonstrated in Europe.” (We all have that now, right?)
– What will happen if we still have to use special glasses for 3D? A movie theater chain VP: if we don’t get rid of the glasses, the future will be “large screens and ‘directional’ sound.” (Today’s that’s called Imax, with immersive sound)
Which raises the big question, from the 1930s to the 1050s, a question James Cameron (“Avatar”) keeps raising today:
– Can a mediocre movie become a hit if it’s in 3D?
Yes, history does repeat itself, and once again history provides the answer:
That 1953 Variety article was on the same page as a story describing the casting of a new movie that would star Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift and, in his first movie role, Frank Sinatra. Though it would only be filmed in 2D — “flats,” in the parlance of 3D-drenched Hollywood execs — that movie went on to become a classic. You may have heard of it: It was titled “From Here to Eternity.”
“From Here to Eternity” was a giant hit and Oscar winner, and it is repeated regularly (into eternity?) on television.
Has anyone seen “Bwana Devil” lately?
Read the Variety article here.