Cinerama Adventure

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A little over two years ago I saw a documentary called Cinerama Adventure at the Hollywood Theatre here in Portland. It was part of that theater's 80th anniversary celebration and I originally reviewed it HERE. I'll reprint the bulk of that information again, subtracting the info about the event...


CINERAMA ADVENTURE (2002 - David Strohmaier)

This is a good and thorough documentary recounting the history and worldwide phenomenon of Cinerama in the '50s and early '60s. The three-projector, curved & louvered screen and seven-channel stereophonic sound of Cinerama was a technical marvel and revolutionized the entire industry. It gave birth to Cinemascope, Todd-AO, 70mm and every other widescreen process up to and including today's IMAX (which for all its grandeur still doesn't replicate the feeling of Cinerama). There are only two functioning Cinerama screens left in America: the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles and the Seattle Cinerama. The L.A. theater tries to schedule at least one week's worth of Cinerama programming annually, but the Seattle operation hasn't had a screening in a few years (though they still have the equipment and capability). There may be fewer Cinerama screens left than Drive-Ins, but in its day Cinerama was extraordinarily popular.



This film starts with the pioneers who dreamed it up and put it into practice, which at its core hoped to replicate depth and field of vision by curving the screen and incorporating the peripheral. The main technical wizard was the amazing inventor Fred Waller, who was working on the idea for the mainstream in the '30s but got sidetracked by WWII. He and his multi-camera Viterama invention that premiered at the 1939 Worlds Fair were contracted by the military and an impressive five-camera system with a hemispherical screen was developed as an effective flight simulator for wartime gunners. It was a genius system and the Army credits the training and scoring system with probably saving thousands of lives during the War. After the War it was declassified and Waller went back to bringing it to the public. Early tests were shown to the Studio heads who were all impressed by the effect, but deemed it too expensive to implement. Hazard Reeves was the genius on the sound side, and multi-track sound was incorporated. Lowell Thomas, who was the on-screen face and voice of Cinerama, was the man who really brought it all together and got the idea marketed and running. Legendary figures Mike Todd and Marion C. Cooper were also key to the early success of Cinerama. When it premiered in New York City in 1952 it was a bonafide phenomenon. When the Studios saw the reaction of the public coupled with their ever-declining receipts at the hand of television's ever-exploding popularity, they immediately got to work on their own widescreen projects - though none of them used the complicated and unique multi-camera specialized screen that Cinerama boasted.



The original Cinerama productions, from This Is Cinerama on through the rest of the 1950s, were travelogues. There was no plot, no special effects, but full of dazzling sequences filmed literally all over the world. The rugged and adventurous crews that took this unwieldy triple camera box to the ends of the earth were an interesting bunch, including legendary Hollywood pilot Paul Mantz. The aerial photography in particular was some of the most spectacular footage in the Cinerama travelogues. The story of deciding to fly inside the crater of an active volcano in Africa and almost not getting out alive is typical of the death-defying feats that lead to breathtaking images, and during a sequence in India a crewmember was actually killed when the raft capsized in dangerous water.



Eventually the longstanding phenomenon lead to two narrative Studio productions being shot completely in the process: The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962) and How the West Was Won (1962) with an all-star cast. Despite the boxoffice success of West in particular, it was clear that shooting in Cinerama was too unwieldy, expensive and even dangerous. The near-fatal accident that crippled stuntman Bob Morgan and the technical problems it caused for the directors and actors meant Cinerama was finished. The travelogues had been exhausted in the previous decade and no longer held the same kind of wonder, so the process just stopped being used. But the love of the widescreen continued, and though movies like It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), Grand Prix (1966) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) were sold in roadshow productions as "Cinerama", they were really just 70mm from a single projector onto a curved (but shortened from the original ratio) screen. Beautiful, to be sure, but not the actual Cinerama experience.

For about a decade Cinerama was the innovation in cinema, and the legacy as well as the fascinating group of geniuses and mavericks who brought it to life are all given their proper due and awe in Cinerama Adventure. The documentarians also invented a process they call "smilebox" that comes perhaps the closest we'll ever get to replicating Cinerama onto a flat screen.

It's a fascinating story, especially for cinema nerds, and well told in Cinerama Adventure.

GRADE: A-




The reason I resurrect this review in its own thread is that Cinerama Adventure is now available on R1 DVD. It doesn't come in its own packaging but is included as the entire third disc of the new, remastered three-disc special edition of How the West Was Won. It's also just been released on Blu-Ray (which has a "smilebox" presentation of HTWWW) and also in the ultimate collector's boxed set. Now that it's more widely available, I hope some of you track it down.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra



Cinerama Adventure also has its own website, HERE. And if my review isn't enough to excite you about the flick, I'll reprint some words from Martin Scorsese on the site ....

I'll never forget what it was like to see the Cinerama process for the first time as a kid. We wanted wider screens, and thanks to This Is Cinerama, we came to expect a moment like the famous roller coaster sequence in every single film – a moment where vision merged with pure physical sensation. It's hard to overestimate the importance of Cinerama – it set the standard for everything that came after. The widening of the screen was a turning point in the history of movies – that glorious shape, introduced to us for the first time through Cinerama, created a sense of excitement that I still feel today. It altered the historical course of movies as dramatically as the introduction of sound.

This enjoyable film brings it all back. First of all, it tells the story of Cinerama itself, how it was developed, and how the films were made under the most treacherous conditions – in some cases at the cost of human lives. Cinerama Adventure also gives you a sense of what this wonderful technology was like, how it felt to walk into a theater, sit down and see those remarkable, three-paneled images.

Martin Scorsese
December 6, 2004


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Thanks Holds, I'll tell my Pops to be on the lookout for this. He's pretty good about snagging interesting little flicks like this when they come through his store.

I've lived my whole life in the Seattle area and for whatever reason have have only set foot inside the Cinerama one time. It was a memorable experience however as my father took me to see Woodstock. I can't imagine there are to many movies out there that are more perfectly suited to play on a screen like that one than Woodstock.

Thankfully several years ago, Paul Allen's, Vulcan group bought up and renovated the Cinerama before this little Seattle Icon went the way of the doh-doh bird and disappeared forever. And hopefully as long as Paul is in town it will always remain one of the last working Cinerama's in the world. The guy has more money than Davey Crocket and has been going there since the 60's apparently so I'd say the chances are better than average that it will stay open for a long time to come.
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Nice thread, Holden. Not long ago I saw Cinerama Adventure on Turner Classic Movies. I wish I had seen it at the cinema. It was very entertaining and informative.

I was pleased to actually see How the West Was Won in the "smilebox" edition on TCM after so many years of seeing it crammed onto a small screen with the lines dividing the sections of the film and being really obtrusive.

I wish The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm would get a restoration. I hear the existing prints are too damaged to repair but I find that hard to believe. I've seen it in widescreen on TCM and it didn't look bad at all, so I'm thinking they could do something with what they've got.

HtWWW is one of my favorite Westerns so I really need to buy the "smilebox" special edition. Again, thanks for this thread, Holden. Good subject!
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All good people are asleep and dreaming.
It's really nice that one of the richest men in the world, Paul Allen, is a film buff in your hometown.

Seattle Cinerama was renovated again in 2014. They removed seats. Put in larger, more comfortable ones with wider spacing. Of course state of the art technology.

Just got back from a film today...

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All good people are asleep and dreaming.
Seattle Cinerama had a Fan Film Series September 4 through 17. Fans picked over 40 films.

I saw four. The Wizard Of Oz, Spirited Away, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, and Blade Runner.



All the films were presented using a Christie 6P laser projector. The pictures were flawless.


This machine is the death of film.
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All good people are asleep and dreaming.
Hollywood stars lament closure of Cinerama Dome, home to film premieres



Never been there, but sad all the same.

I'm sure it will be rescued by the film industry.