3-D Movies: Coming Back At Ya'!

David Edelstein Looks In-Depth At The '50s Film Fad Reborn For A New Generation

(CBS)  3-D movies, like "Creature from the Black Lagoon," were a novelty during the 1950s, best viewed through old-fashioned 3-D glasses. Well, now a new summer movie is heralding a 3-D comeback, as David Edelstein is happy to show us:

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Before I talk about "Journey to the Center of the Earth," I would like to apologize.

I can't replicate, oh flat-screen-TV viewer, any 3-D effects (although I could make like John Candy's Dr. Tongue on "SCTV").

3-D and TV always had a barbed relationship: Hollywood needed such gimmickry in the Fifties to get people out of their Barcaloungers.

There was a circusy, "Step right up!" quality, captured by posters for "Bwana Devil" and Life magazine's photo of its audience.

That technology required two cameras side-by-side and two strips of film. The resulting image was a blur without colored glasses (and often a blur with them - I bet aspirin sales soared).

They were fairly disreputable movies.

The big hit was 1953's "House of Wax." It was made by a one-eyed director, Andre De Toth, who couldn't perceive depth, with Vincent Price skulking around and corpses falling into the camera.

There was one masterwork: "Dial M For Murder," which you rarely see in its 3-D form. Beyond the shocks, Alfred Hitchcock used depth of field and hard edges of furniture to create a vivid sense of entrapment.

The '80s saw a mini-3-D revival - terrible movies, although "Spacehunter" might have worked if it hadn't been a muddy jumble.

In "Friday the 13th Part 3," Jason sent body parts your way - the magic of movies!

(Left: "Bwana Devil" promised "A lion in your lap! A lover in your arms!")

"Jaws 3-D" was the most pathetic.

Today, digital imagery is sharper, so even so-so 3-D films are happenings. Unlike my ten-year-old daughter, I'm not wowed by Miley Cyrus's song stylings, but "Hannah Montana in Concert" worked! Tweens want to identify with Hannah; 3-D put them on stage with her.

As a piece of storytelling, "Journey to the Center of the Earth" is a clunkerama, but the 3-D rocks.

Morose scientist Brendan Fraser, his nephew, and his blue-eyed Icelandic guide rollercoaster down a mineshaft … fall into a chasm … and fight off carnivorous fish.

With the glasses on, the image is darkish; the underground oceans look fakey-fakey. But who cares, when the background is back and the foreground so fore it seems to tickle your nostril hairs?

Hollywood has finally evolved (or devolved) to the point where 3-D makes artistic sense. So much imagery is computer-generated that today's blockbusters seem to take place inside computers.

So it's nice when they can usher us inside, too.

[jschufm]

But who cares if it looks fakey-fakey? Give me a break! If you can''t take the time (or spend the money) to do it "right", then why are you bothering to waste my time? Or my movie dollar?!!! If the technology really is as bad as this article purports it to be, this fad won''t last 10 minutes!

[sinemagirl]

Very good story, but once again it perpetuates the myth that the 3-D films of the 1950''s required the use of red and blue glasses. Not one of the fifty or so 3-D features of the era required colored glasses. They all used a form of the "Polaroid" system, with polarized filters over the projector lenses, and similar gray looking glasses for the viewers. For a more complete airing of the subject:

http://centraltheater.blogspot.com/2007/03/whos-trashing-3-d-or-3-d-whats-it-to-me.html

In fact, the use of polarizing materials for 3-D movies hasn''t changed much since an exhibit at the 1939 New York World''s Fair. Everything old is new again.