“This is CINERAMA!” The first Cinerama spectacular was launched very much like Merian C. Cooper’s King Kong, with Cooper joining another mighty showman of the century (Mike Todd) in cueing Lowell Thomas to make the big announcement before the curtain parted to reveal the giant wrap-around Cinerama screen. Although Lowell says it isn’t a travelogue, exactly, it of course is. About 70% of the picture are locked-down shots of various visual splendors from America and Europe, and aerial shots taken from the nose of Paul Mantz’s B-25 bomber as it makes runs over various major cities and national landmarks, diving into the Grand Canyon.
The you-are-there audience participation gimmick was the big appeal. The Cinerama system enveloped a large part of the viewer’s peripheral vision, putting the viewer in the pilot’s seat, or the front row of La Scala in Italy. The showmen that risked their fortunes on the format knew it would work because they’d seen Fred Waller’s gunnery training system from back in WW2, that used similar (the same?) technology. The kicker that starts off the original This Is Cinerama is what’s been remembered so well for 65 years — a simple POV shot from the first car of a roller coaster. In original Cinerama, the you-are-there effect was a sensation, augmented by multiple channels of stereophonic audio.
This original travelogue jumps from location to location with simple artwork cards, and narration that’s mostly good natured hype. We hop from Venice to Madrid, from Edinburgh Castle to various venues for choirs and opera companies. One shot in a church was originally a test item filmed in B&W.
Athough the Cinerama folk soon found ways to expand on the format’s filmic vocabulary, most of the first half of This is Cinerama are static shots of buildings and performances. The camera holds stock still while toreadors battle bulls and dancers spin and gyrate. In 1952 it was more than enough to see the miracle format work; nowadays many of the shots seem less than optimal, with the subject matter remote from the camera.
This is because of the extreme wide angle of the 3-panel setup. Even when the camera is planted at the very edge of the stage, the performers seem half a world away. ‘Objects are closer than they appear’ really applies to Cinerama, which practically saw behind itself. When we see an airplane view graze some mountaintop, the truth is that pilot Mantz is much closer to these objects than is apparent. In most cases the camera could have been much closer to the subject matter, we’re told.
In the second half of the show the crew and directors begin to innovate, to test the limits of what Cinerama can do. The long sequence in the Florida nature park sees many more camera setups that tell a minimal story: the showman in charge of the beautiful water skiing models rushes them from Antebellum dresses with hoop skirts (teasing one girl that loses control of a shoulder strap) into the water for acrobatic stunts. Speedboats zoom through narrow bayou passages and slide over sandbars, in a preview of the crazy stunts that would follow twenty years later in the James Bond film Live and Let Die. The famous image shows a row of six smiling skiiers spread across the screen for our delight. It’s one of the (dare I say it?) iconic visuals of the Eisenhower decade — happy young folk well fed and free from fear of war, expending their carefree lives on glittering, healthy outdoor extreme sports.
In later installments Cinerama would become the entertainment arm for the State Department, as Cinerama theaters sprung up in interesting places around the world, and toured cultural exhibitions meant to sell the third world on superior American products (and superior American democracy). The Russian picture Soy Cuba inadvertently reveals the presence of a Cinerama Theater in downtown Havana! But This is Cinerama is free of the anti-Communist sarcasm that marred one or two of the later narration scripts.
The large selection of historical extras explain most of the crazy Cinerama technology — this is the most unwieldy film format ever invented. The extras also chart the impressive restoration process, that in these full go-back-to-the-source projects, had to understand the original technology inside and out.
One of the new extras is an hourlong docu on the composers of the Cinerama films.
My personal experience with Cinerama was limited. At age eight or nine I saw South Seas Adventure in the Cinerama Theater in Honolulu, and was blown away by the image. Then we took a bus from San Bernardino to The Warner Theater on Hollywood Blvd. to see How the West Was Won, which was quite an experience. But at college Clark Dugger and I raced to Beverly Hills to see a 1971 revival of This Is Cinerama, only to find that it was a 65mm re-composite, projected on a flat screen, that was a pale shadow of the original experience. Everybody felt cheated.
The Smilebox format, distorting the three panels into a simulation of the original wrap-around alignment. It has its drawbacks — the middle panel can seem a big removed — but does straighten out a lot of screwy perspectives, reminding us of the deeply curved screen that was part of every 3-panel, 3-projector Cinerama exhibition setup.
Windjammer: The Voyage of the Christian Radich
1958 / 142 min.
Cinematography: Joseph C. Brun, Gayne Rescher
Film Editor: Peter Ratkevich
New York montage sequence: Weegee (Arthur Fellig)
Original Music: Morton Gould
Written by James L. Shute, from the book by Captain Alan Villiers
Produced by Louis De Rochemont III, Louis De Rochemont
Directed by Bill Colleran, Louis De Rochemont III
Why anybody would want to compete with the ungainly Cinerama process is hard to explain — the Russians had an excuse in terms of keeping up with the West, but National Theaters launched its competing system Cinemiracle in 1958, with this part-Norwegian production put together by the famed newsreel legend Louis De Rochemont. Some say that Cinemiracle was superior to Cinerama but the format was so similar that the companies soon merged. The one Cinemiracle production Windjammer: The Voyage of the Christian Radich saw most of its screenings in Cinerama houses.
Because This is Cinerama so shyly uses the format Windjammer seems much more active. It’s also much longer, but has more variety, and its travelogue format is enlivened with the pretense of a story. A group of Norwegian naval cadets set sail in the glorious 200-foot sailing ship Christian Radich, making a circuit around the North Atlantic with stops in Portuguese Madeira, Dutch Curacao, San Juan Puerto Rico, Port-of-Spain Trinidad and finally New York. Fairly flimsy scenes with the young crew members introduce seven songs; in each port the Norwegian boys miraculously find bright and accommodating dates with which to tour the sights.
In comparison to the often wholly confected human interest angles in the Cinerama pictures, Windjammer tells an at least partly true story. The young seaman really did take this trip in 1956, with the cameras grinding away. We’re told (in the disc’s excellent extras) that a second ship rushed ahead now and then to film festivals, etc., that the Christian Radich would otherwise miss. And the cute dog brought along to co-star in shots of the boat’s deck disappeared at the first port of call, requiring a semi- lookalike replacement at the last moment.
But there’s nothing fake about the film’s visual splendors, at least for those likely to be impressed by clear images of grand ships on the high seas. The Norwegian ship looks beautiful cruising through the waves on wind power with all its sails unfurled. We get plenty of variety in shots of men working on deck, even when the sideways tilt is over ten degrees to the port or starboard.
De Rochemont made plans for variety, as the Christian Radich passes scores of other ships at close range — a couple other training ships with the tall sails cruise by, exchanging greetings. American seapower also is represented by an armada of ships and plane fly-overs. We see destroyers, a cruiser and an aircraft carrier, and the Radich also sails in close quarters with a U.S. submarine. Extra fun is had by sub-mounted cameras that stay put as the sub submerges and surfaces.
A couple of underwater sequences are attractive, if a little less convincing. Some of these special scenes are a bit suspicious and may have been adapted from 65mm footage — the idea of strapping the three camera system to the outside of a sub seems one or two tech challenges too far. I didn’t notice when watching, that’s for sure.
We get music and a little dancing at several stops, with a Calypso sequence highlighted: Calypso tunes and limbo stick stunts were all the rage in 1958.
The ship eventually sails to New York City for more tours. Although less pronounced as in Cinerama pictures, the show does have two or three ‘rollecoaster’ POV scenes. They boys roll carts down steep streets in Madeira, and we follow a fire company racing through the streets of New York (where? Brooklyn?).
A most arresting sequence is credited to the famed Weegee, a three panel montage of Times Square lights, marquees and night life. Looking a bit like the same year’s avant-garde movie by Francis Thompson, N.Y., N.Y., the sequence is a dazzling abstract break, using superimpositions, mirrors, kaleidoscopic and prism effects to accompany a jazz soundtrack. Among the jumble of spinning marquees is a glimpse of the marquee for The Helen Morgan Story, which dates the filming as taking place in October of 1957.
Windjammer has a lot of Hollywood input, as the Norwegian kids all sing sappy songs in English. But a little Norwegian flavor slips through in the title design and the names and faces of the captain and crew. It’s not like we get to know them well, but they escape with their dignity intact. In fact, the idea of shipping out on a training cruise like the one pictured sounds like an ideal thing to do — a bold physical challenge not associated with military activity. The Cinemiracle Windjammer was conceived to compete with Cinerama but instead became one of its better examples.
