Re: 3D Movies

[P3D Marvin Jones <72657.3276@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Is a film really released in "anaglyph" or "polarized"?  Could it 
> be that two films are released and filters are put on projectors 
> according to what the theater owner wishes/can project?

Physically, anaglyph and polaroid movies are quite different. It's not possible
for the whim of a theater manager to dictate a choice. ALL of the features in
the '50s were released ONLY in polaroid--a two-strip system that involved
interlocked projectors and polarizing plates in front of the lenses. This wasn't
as complex a system as it might sound. Many theaters could interlock their
projectors already; those that couldn't simply needed to change the projectors'
motors (and rental motors were available for just this purpose). More cumbersome
for many theaters was the 6000 foot reels that 3D movies were distributed on
(all other films were distributed on 2000 reels at the time), but again this was
a minor conversion. Even the tiniest theater in the most backwater community
(such as Shelbyville Indiana, where I saw virtually all of the 3D movies
first-run) could easily accommodate them. Anaglyph movies, on the other hand,
are a single-strip process which are projected exactly like any other movie--no
special filters and no interlocked motors. They are simply a red image and a
blue image printed on a single strip of film. The same effect could NOT be
achieved by projecting an anaglyph pair through red and blue filters (in the
unlikely case that anyone would actually want to!). An anaglyph image consists
of a red-and-white image and a blue-and-white image. Projecting a polaroid film
through filters would result in a black-and-red image and a black-and-blue
image, which would not "read" properly through anaglyph glasses because neither
lens would filter out the black element of either image.

As I have said before, anaglyph glasses were common in the early '50s because of
all the anaglyph comics, magazines, cereal box promotions, etc. (in fact they
were far more common than polaroid glasses, which were usually collected from
exiting audiences by the theaters), but they were NOT used for theatrical
movies! People who THINK they remember seeing movies this way either are
confusing the much later anaglyph reissues of Black Lagoon and Outer Space (or
are remembering the occasional anomaly like The Mask), or they are being
brainwashed by the fact that red-and-blue glasses are such a popular icon that
even knowledgable people like Roger Ebert can "remember" with presumed honesty
that movie audiences in the '50s wore them.



------------------------------