"Ladies and gentlemen: THIS IS CINERAMA." With these words, on
September 30, 1952, the heavy red curtains in New York's Broadway
Theatre opened on a panoramic Technicolor image of the Rockaways
Playland Atom-Smasher Roller Coaster--and moviegoers were abruptly
plunged into a new and revolutionary experience. The cinematic
transformation heralded by this giddy ride was, however, neither as
sudden nor as straightforward as it seemed. "Widescreen Cinema"
leads us through the twists and turns and decades it took for film
to change its shape and, along the way, shows how this fitful
process reflects the vagaries of cultural history.
Widescreen and wide-film processes had existed since the 1890s.
Why, then, John Belton asks, did 35mm film become a standard? Why
did a widescreen revolution fail in the 1920s but succeed in the
1950s? And why did movies shrink again in the 1960s, leaving us
with the small screen multiplexes and mall cinemas that we know
today? The answers, he discovers, have as much to do with popular
notions of leisure time and entertainment as with technology.
Beginning with film's progress from peepshow to projection in 1896
and focusing on crucial stages in film history, such as the advent
of sound, Belton puts widescreen cinema into its proper cultural
context. He shows how Cinerama, CinemaScope, Vista Vision, Todd-AO,
and other widescreen processes marked significant changes in the
conditions of spectatorship after World War 11 -and how the film
industry itself sought to redefine those conditions. The technical,
the economic, the social, the aesthetic -every aspect of the
changes shaping and reshaping film comes under Belton's scrutiny as
he reconstructs the complex history of widescreen cinema and
relates this history to developments in mass-produced leisure-time
entertainment in the twentieth century. Highly readable even at its
most technical, this book illuminates a central episode in the
evolution of cinema and, in doing so, reveals a great deal about
the shifting fit between film and society.
General
Imprint: |
Harvard University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
Harvard Film Studies, 9 |
Release date: |
May 2014 |
First published: |
October 2013 |
Authors: |
John Belton
|
Dimensions: |
279 x 216 x 19mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover - Sewn / Cloth over boards
|
Pages: |
312 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-674-33532-5 |
Categories: |
Books >
Arts & Architecture >
Performing arts >
Films, cinema >
General
|
LSN: |
0-674-33532-5 |
Barcode: |
9780674335325 |
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