Customer Reviews

Wide Screen Movies: A History and Filmography of Wide Gauge Filmmaking

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When facts are unknown to the authors, they show no reluctance to invent history based on totally illogical trains of thought. The illustrations are good. For your own safety, don't quote this book to anyone who knows anything about film technology

Loaded with errors and pure invention. No book has ever been so vilified for its total disrespect of its readers. Anyone with either a knowledge of the subject or just a bit of logic will find the whole thing hard to swallow. Look at the pictures but ignore the text.

Wide Screen Movies : A History and Filmography of Wide Gauge Filmmaking by the prolific R.M. Hayes (with Robert E. Carr getting first billing) is without a doubt the finest book we have on the subject. It is comprehensive, detailed-minded, excellent on most primary wide screen technical process...But this is not a book for the casual reader, or any one looking for interesting anecdotes about the history of film making.

Further, although technically obsessive with some processes, particularly Cinerama in all its manifestations, the work becomes a bit diffuse and vague on the interesting history of Todd-AO, a wide screen, single projection system introduced to display Michael Todd's major event film, AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS. Todd-AO went from a film process to a distribution company to a holding company. I may be vague here, but I was hoping to get the full story about this transformation in the book--and I didn't.

Neither will you get a comprehensive history of the experimentation with wide screen and 3D Cinema in Russia. The film NAPOLEON--which introduced a variety of new technologies early in the history of film certainly does not get its due--nor an accurate description of the "hanging blind system" (similar to the original Cinerama) designed for this film which is also reported in other sources to have had true 3D effects when viewed in a limited area of the audience. A short monologue could be written on this film, and filmography is not the center of attention in this fine bibliographic work.

The world of wide screen film is an exciting universe including determined businessmen, unusual corporate histories and strategies, and vivid audience experiences.

For a world so colorful and panoramic, this comprehensive guide is rather dry and lackluster where it could have shined. Further, the work is occasionally confusing and uneven--as if the authors ran out of creative steam along the way. This book better serves as a guide and reference work than an interesting social or cultural history. And the topic cries out for that additional focus.

I recommend the book highly--but beware its limitations as well as the work's strengths. Other reviewers have been more dazzled by the encyclopedic scope and listings of the book, than concerned with the work as an integrated reading experience--which it is not.

A cultural, anecdotal history of panoramic cinema, and "road show" and "event" filmaking remains to be written.

I found this book a vital necessity for any one studying the mechanics of the film industry. I use it often as my most vital reference book.