3-D predated movies, but has only recently caught up. Photograph by Miles Aldridge.
Did you enjoy “Rottweiler”? How about “Bwana Devil” or “Black Lolita”? Maybe you preferred “International Stewardesses,” although you might know it under the more thoughtful title of “Supersonic Supergirls.” You will not need reminding that these are among the crowning achievements of three-dimensional cinema: its “Grand Illusion,” its “Psycho,” its “8½.” There are people who track down rare 3-D screenings of “Comin’ at Ya!” and “The Disco Dolls in Hot Skin” the way regular buffs flock to a new print of “The Searchers” or dream of the lost, unbutchered portions of von Stroheim’s “Greed.” For those who have kept faith with 3-D, and have withstood the taunts of skeptics over the decades, no illusion has been grander, or harder to attain.
“Bwana Devil,” set in Africa but filmed in Malibu, is a case in point. As one scours the histories of the medium, this is the title that swells with revolutionary significance. Think of it as “The Birth of a Nation” with an added z-axis. It was shot with a dual-camera rig, with two cameras facing weirdly lens to lens, and a pair of mirrors between them; light from the scene would be reflected via the mirrors, angled at forty-five degrees, into each lens. The resulting full-length feature, screened through twin projectors, viewable with 3-D spectacles, and released on November 26, 1952, initiated a short but golden period of 3-D, “with more than fifty stereoscopic films released between 1952 and 1955.” So says Ray Zone, one of the foremost experts in the field, and certainly the most exquisitely named. Was he given the name at birth, and thus obliged to enter a suitable area of study, or did a fascination with 3-D lead him to assume this nom d’image?
In a series of interviews with leading practitioners of 3-D, Zone spoke to Arch Oboler, the director of “Bwana Devil,” more than thirty years after the film’s release. Like most of his peers, Oboler seemed excited to be dredging up the past, but not half as excited as he was by the glories yet to come:
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/03/08/100308crat_atlarge_lane#ixzz0hTdEj8Ws
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