History of Cinema Part 1 (From the Magic Lantern to 70mm) reviews
Review by on 24 Sep 2010
Possibly the best-kept secret of the Festival, Bill Lawrence's two-part 'History of the Cinema' concentrated upon aspects of the exhibition of the moving image, beginning with the pre-celluloid diorama of the 1830's travelling showman and dashing through some of the key technical developments of the subsequent 180-odd years to finish with a flourish with the current, possibly misguided, resurgent industry infatuation with 3D. We were guided on our journey by Bill's encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject, narrated with a winning humour and illustrated with clips and extracts from significant cinematic milestones.
The theme of the evening was set with the diorama extract taken from Bill Douglas' 1987 film 'Comrades', then the story wound back (or jumped on!) to 1895 to begin the history of the projected moving image, starting with the Lumiere brothers first short film of workers leaving their factory, then moving on to Melies' 1904 'The Impossible Voyage' which, in a hand-tinted 20-minute fantasy, illustrated how far the medium advanced in those intervening 10 years.
The journey continued, stopping next in 1916 to show the jaw-dropping Babylon set from D. W. Griffith's 'Intolerance', then skipping on to a gorgeous bit of Technicolor swash-buckling from Errol Flynn's 1938 'The Adventures of Robin Hood', before arriving at the introduction of wide-screen processes in the 1950s.
Cinerama was the most spectacular of the industry's attempts to wow post-war audiences and lure them away from their television sets and back into the movie theatres. An extract from the promotional 'This is Cinerama' demonstrated the technology with the apparently obligatory roller-coaster sequence, but it was the clip from 1962's 'How The West Was Won', presented in a format that simulates the effect of the process's ultra-wide curved screen, that really gave us a flavour of the impact that the high-definition, all-enveloping Cinerama image must have had on contemporary audiences.
A taste of the 70mm experience drew Part One of the History to its close. The masterful sequence from David Lean's 1962 'Lawrence of Arabia', in which the director cuts from a close-up of the blowing-out of a flaring match to the aching beauty of the rim of the rising sun slowly edging above the desert horizon, illustrated the visual power of the medium, although the projected DVD image itself could not match its clarity or effect - but the next extract corrected that deficiency.
The most unlikely of subjects, 'A Year Along the Abandoned Road' was a breathtaking time-lapse 70mm tour-de-force, strangely equivalent to Cinerama's roller-coaster sequence in its physical impact. The Abandoned Road in question encircled a Norwegian Fjord and through the technique of shooting a few frames and advancing the camera a few feet along the road every day for a year, we experienced a vertiginous journey through space and time, smoothly and seamlessly compressing the four seasons into just 12 minutes.
The theme of the evening was set with the diorama extract taken from Bill Douglas' 1987 film 'Comrades', then the story wound back (or jumped on!) to 1895 to begin the history of the projected moving image, starting with the Lumiere brothers first short film of workers leaving their factory, then moving on to Melies' 1904 'The Impossible Voyage' which, in a hand-tinted 20-minute fantasy, illustrated how far the medium advanced in those intervening 10 years.
The journey continued, stopping next in 1916 to show the jaw-dropping Babylon set from D. W. Griffith's 'Intolerance', then skipping on to a gorgeous bit of Technicolor swash-buckling from Errol Flynn's 1938 'The Adventures of Robin Hood', before arriving at the introduction of wide-screen processes in the 1950s.
Cinerama was the most spectacular of the industry's attempts to wow post-war audiences and lure them away from their television sets and back into the movie theatres. An extract from the promotional 'This is Cinerama' demonstrated the technology with the apparently obligatory roller-coaster sequence, but it was the clip from 1962's 'How The West Was Won', presented in a format that simulates the effect of the process's ultra-wide curved screen, that really gave us a flavour of the impact that the high-definition, all-enveloping Cinerama image must have had on contemporary audiences.
A taste of the 70mm experience drew Part One of the History to its close. The masterful sequence from David Lean's 1962 'Lawrence of Arabia', in which the director cuts from a close-up of the blowing-out of a flaring match to the aching beauty of the rim of the rising sun slowly edging above the desert horizon, illustrated the visual power of the medium, although the projected DVD image itself could not match its clarity or effect - but the next extract corrected that deficiency.
The most unlikely of subjects, 'A Year Along the Abandoned Road' was a breathtaking time-lapse 70mm tour-de-force, strangely equivalent to Cinerama's roller-coaster sequence in its physical impact. The Abandoned Road in question encircled a Norwegian Fjord and through the technique of shooting a few frames and advancing the camera a few feet along the road every day for a year, we experienced a vertiginous journey through space and time, smoothly and seamlessly compressing the four seasons into just 12 minutes.
Film details
History of Cinema Part 1 (From the Magic Lantern to 70mm)
UK, 2000.
75 mins. English
Back to the film page
