![]() The deep and rich depictions of these colors made possible by VistaVision are both gorgeous and terrifying to behold. Throughout the film, he uses specific colors to underscore certain moods-from the blue for James Stewart’s guilt over the death in the opening scene that he feels responsible for, to the green that comes to represent Kim Novak, the focus of the eventual obsession that threatens to destroy him, to the bright reds that turn up from time to time to serve as unheeded warnings. Of those films, “Vertigo” remains his most impressive use of the format for how it allowed him to use color as a way of further evoking the emotional and psychological journey that he put both his characters and his audience through. One director who made especially good use of it was Alfred Hitchcock, who utilized the process on “To Catch a Thief” (1955), “The Trouble with Harry” (1955), “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1956), “ Vertigo” (1958) and “North by Northwest” (1959). One of the most famous of these formats was VistaVision, a version developed by Paramount Pictures that positioned the film in the camera horizontally in order to achieve a finer-grade image.Īdvancements in the development of film stocks rendered the format obsolete after only seven years (a version of it would be revived in the late 1970s and employed for shooting visual effects sequences in such films as the original “ Star Wars” trilogy, ” Tron” (1982) and “ Who Framed Roger Rabbit” ) but during that period, it was employed on such classics as “White Christmas” (1954), “The Ten Commandments” (1956) and “One-Eyed Jacks” (1961). ![]() After the successful releases of such Todd-AO titles as “South Pacific” (1955) and “ Around the World in 80 Days” (1956), other companies began developing their own super-widescreen processes. He came up with what came to be known as Todd-AO. In the wake of Cinerama, a process that required a giant curved screen and three 35mm projectors working in perfect synchronization, impresario Michael Todd was determined to create a similar process that would utilize only one projector. One amusement was widescreen photography that could give films an epic feel far removed from the small, square TV tubes of the time. In the 1950s, with television threatening to overtake the entire film industry, Hollywood was trying to lure audiences back into theaters with things that they could not get on the tube. Although a few films were made in the format-most notably 1930’s “The Big Trail” (a Raoul Walsh Western that featured John Wayne in one of his most significant early roles)-but it was soon abandoned when theater owners, who were then in the process of reconfiguring for sound, showed little interest in dealing with a new projection format as well. In the late 1920s, Fox experimented with a process that they dubbed Fox Grandeur. From the earliest days of the cinema, there were experiments with this kind of widescreen presentation. This means that as the wider film unspools, more light goes through the projector gate and as a result, what appears on the screen has nearly four times the clarity of normal 35mm film-the colors are deeper, richer and the image as a whole displays a stunning sharpness. (Films that are playing in the festival will be highlighted in bold.)įor those wondering what the big deal is, 70mm is a film gauge that is twice as wide as conventional 35mm film (actually, the picture information takes up 65mm of the frame with the remaining 5mm going to four magnetic strips containing six tracks of sound). In an era when moviegoers are increasingly content to view films in multiplexes or on their computers or smartphones, this is a rare chance to see a collection of epic visions in the most sensorially overwhelming manner possible-the kind of cinematic experience that can make someone fall in love with the cinema all over again. Running February 19 thru March 10, along with a separate shorts program of short films and trailers, the Music Box will be showing 14 features-some of them in prints from their original theatrical runs-that run the gamut from Oscar-winning classics to cult oddities to contemporary uses of the format. ![]() Therefore, to give that replacement screen a proper send-off before it is taken down, the theater will be presenting “70mm Film Festival: The Ultimate Edition, ” the third iteration of a program of 70mm films that began back in 2013 as a way of exhibiting some of Hollywood’s most spectacular visions in the manner in which they were meant to be seen. ![]()
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