Now is the time (to put on your glasses): 3-D film exhibition in Britain, 1951–55 Author(s): Keith M. Johnston Source: Film History, Vol. 23, No. 1, Art, Industry, Technology (January 2011), pp. 93-103 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/filmhistory.23.1.93 . Accessed: 15/06/2011 09:04 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=iupress. 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While this article is not demonstrated how desperate exhibitors of the claimingto directlycompare 1951–55 with thepresent early 1950s were for something new … . By day, the recurrence of debates around studio impo- mid-1954 it was clear that with all the expense sition of (unwanted) technology, increased seat involved with special attachments to projec- prices, exhibition upgrading, and Polaroid glasses, tors and glasses issued to patrons, the added shows that the broad sweep of the existing film history revenues from 3-D never proved worth the narrative of the 1950s needs to be replaced by a more investment.” Douglas Gomery (1992)1 nuanced understanding of the 1950s 3-D experience. Listing those features that recur in historical hree-dimensional film rarely gets the coverage and modern discussions of 3-D serves to highlight within film history offered to other, more suc- one of the unknown areas of 3-D film history: the Tcessful, technologies of the 1950s. What aca- experience of 3-D exhibition rather than the story of demic coverage there is of 1950s 3-D tends to film production. In order to expand and complicate stay within the boundaries mapped out by Douglas the existing academic and popular discourse around Gomery, defining the 1953–54 period as a brief, 3-D, this article will move away from an American contentious, and expensive technological cul-de- filmmaking focus to investigate British 3-D exhibition sac, especially when compared to the concurrent practices, and reveal a further untold chapter of expansion of other processes, from Eastmancolor to 1950s 3-D film history. Although excellent work has VistaVision.2 Sandwiched between the U.S. release been done on exhibitor practices, the study of exhi- of wider screen technologies Cinerama and Cine- bition has tended to be the study of audiences and maScope, 3-D films (“depthies” or “deepies”) such “the concrete experience of moviegoing”, of what as Bwana Devil (1952), House of Wax (1953) and It cultural and social knowledge can be revealed by Came from Outer Space (1953) tend to be seen as a cautionary tale around cinematic novelty and tech- nological gimmickry. Yet 3-D (by no means a new Keith M. Johnston Lecturer in Film & Television Stud- technology in the 1950s) has proved resilient to such ies at the University of East Anglia. His current research critical setbacks, with international contributions be- focuses on the interplay of technology, aesthetics and industry in British film of the 1940s and 50s, particularly ing made to the three-dimensional canon in every around colour, widescreen and 3D. The first piece of decade since, culminating in the current digital 3-D this research, “Ealing’s Colour Aesthetic: Saraband for expansion. Atatimewhen3-Disonceagainresurgent Dead Lovers” appeared inthe Journal of British Cinema and controversial, returning to the first commercial and Television in Spring 2010. His first work on 3D was published in Coming Soon: Film Trailers and the Selling period of 3-D production, distribution and exhibition of Hollywood Technology (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, helps us to understand the historical roots of current 2009). Correspondence to: [email protected] FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 1, 2011 – p. 93 94 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 1 (2011) Keith M. Johnston the effect of new processes on aspects of produc- tion, such as British cinematographers experiencing “acute difficulties ... when coming to terms with American technical innovations such as Eastman- color, CinemaScope and VistaVision”.5 3-D is, again, absent from this list of “American” technologies and, indeed, does not feature in any of Harper and Por- ter’s discussions of British film in the 1950s. As this article will demonstrate, stereoscopic films were an important part of the decade’s film history, have a strong claim towards being a “British” technology, and need to be understood as part of the British film industry’s attempts to exploit and expand their tech- nological knowledge. Rather than see the job of the film historian as recreating “the consciousness of those who made the films”, this article sees film history as a broader discipline that can look beyond production and con- sider those who showed the films.6 It is more inter- ested in the question of how cinemas responded, how individual exhibitors (or exhibition chains) re- garded 3-D, and whether the British reaction to 3-D tells a different story to the traditional American nar- rative. Given that British 3-D production, distribution and exhibition began in 1951, almost two years be- fore the release of Bwana Devil and the American transition to stereoscopic production, it is clear that the British story complicates traditional assumptions around 3-D’s place in film history. In order to explore this lost (or unknown) history of 1950s 3-D exhibition and reception, this article will move away from film analysis and instead consider the news, commentary Fig. 1. The placement of cinemas, or local and regional memo- and discourse that surrounded 3-D in the period Telekinema was a ries of cinemas.3 This article takes a different ap- 1951–55. site to promote proach, as it is more interested in uncovering traces To focus on exhibition specifically, the article British cinema of the “concrete experience” of the people running will study the British trade paper Kinematograph technology, as such cinemas, particularly those British exhibitors Weekly. With a wide circulation in the trade, Kine shown in this advertisement for who decided to convert to 3-D projection in the time Weekly (to use its abbreviated title) regularly reported British period 1951–55. on exhibition trade bodies such as the Cinema- Thompson- This move necessarily engages with recent tograph Exhibitors Association, contained news and Houston work on 1950s British cinema that has attempted to reviews aimed at individual “showmen”, and publish- projectors and reclaim the decade from critical assumptions that ed regular features on how exhibitors promoted and sound see it as “a largely unknown country ... [critically] exploited films at their cinemas. It is true that this equipment. neglected... [and] widely perceived as being a dull resource can only offer a partial history of British 3-D Kinematograph 4 Weekly (31 May period”. Although this article would fit within that exhibition, filtered through the ideological prism of its 1951): 37. project, it also challenges the elisions made within writers and editors, but it represents a site where the new narrative of the 1950s that is being con- news, opinions and the words of individual exhibition structed. While the British film industry was in a groups came together to create a compelling dis- period of transition, both financially and culturally, course around 3-D. From British novelty and experi- recent work remains focused on feature film produc- mentation to an uncertain embrace of American tion. The discussion of new technology is limited to commercialism, this focus on Kine Weekly allows the FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 1, 2011 – p. 94 Now is the time (to put on your glasses) FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 1 (2011) 95 article to move beyond simple (and U.S. dominated) reports of 3-D’s failure, and think about the specific problems faced by British 3-D exhibition. 1951–52: creating a British 3-D network “[T]he British contributions to stereo-vision movies have too long been overlooked.”7 “Two years later [in 1953] stereoscopy, or 3D, was to become a hysterical gimmick in the commercial cinema, before being abandoned. But at the Festival Exhibition packed audi- ences saw the system demonstrated in excel- lent working conditions.”8 The 1951 Festival of Britain was an attempt to display Britain as a leader in science, technology and the arts, “celebrating the nation’s past achievements..