Several readers have replied in the wake of my article on the Cooper Theatre and Cinerama that there were more than two feature films made in the Cinerama format, as I noted, besides travelogues and documentaries. They cited such classic films as 2001: A Space Odyssey, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Blue Max and Custer of the West. They’re wrong. Oh, yes, they might have seen those films “in Cinerama” at the Cooper or elsewhere, but they were not Cinerama films.

There were indeed only two feature-length movies filmed in three-strip Cinerama, How the West Was Won and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. The rest were documentaries, travelogues and hodgepodge films such as This Is Cinerama, which had scene after scene of material to demonstrate the immensity of the format, such as a first-person roller-coaster ride. These films were shot using three cameras and shown using three projectors, creating the three-strip Cinerama film I wrote about — one that has created problems for DVD releases.

That doesn’t mean regular films weren’t shown at Cinerama theaters such as the Cooper. But they were faux Cinerama. For example, Custer of the West was filmed in a widescreen 70mm format called Super Technirama (aspect ratio of 2.21:1 instead of Cinerama’s 2.89:1). Such a film was shown at the Cooper using one projector (instead of Cinerama’s three) with a special lens to adapt the image to the huge curved screen. The same goes for the other films, which were made in various one-camera widescreen formats and shown at the Cooper using a single projector with a special adaptive lens.

They weren’t “real” Cinerama, but surely they still looked impressive on the Cooper’s huge screen.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 11:17 am and is filed under DVDs, Techno chatter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.