Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: How The West Was Won...Reissue

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Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 09-15-2003, 11:13 PM:

While in Hollywood, the wife and I went to see "How The West Was Won" at the Cinerama Theater, 8PM Sunday the 14th.

At this point you should drop what ever you are doing and run down to your local airport and hop on a jet to LA to see this film.

This was a brand new print. No scratches. No fading. The original 3 projector Cinerama system WITH 7 channel full coat mag sound.

Wow!

This presentation brought tears to my eyes...several times. A nice introduction was made by the manager (I guess). The projectionists and hardware/software wranglers were named (all 5 of them).
It was a wonderful magical evening. It is a beautiful clean well managed theater. You guys should be proud of yourselves.

PS
It had reserved seating, too.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-16-2003, 12:30 AM:

It is good to know the original three strip projection equipment from the long defunct Cinerama Theatre in Honolulu is once again being used at Pacific's Arch light Cinerama Dome Theatre in Los Angeles. I visited a good friend who was working in the booth at the Cinerama theatre here a few months before the theatre closed and I was surprised to see the original three strip projection equipment was still there. When I asked my friend Alan Sakaida at Consolidated what was going to be done with the equipment, he told me that they were all going to be shipped to LA and installed at the dome after they were fully refurbished. It is good to know the fond memories I have for Honolulu's Cinerama Theatres still lives in Los Angeles. [Smile]

-Claude

Posted by Don Furr (Member # 1469) on 09-16-2003, 05:26 AM:

Greg is right!! If you live anywhere close you owe it to yourself to see this incredible new print. What a great show!
We saw it at the first screening last Friday at noon. It included a lengthly tour of the booth.
DON'T MISS IT.

Posted by Peter Kerchinsky (Member # 1098) on 09-16-2003, 03:35 PM:

Greg
I had the same WOW! feeling when we ran that print at the Cinerama here in Seattle.
Seeing HTWWW and This is Cinerama on that giant screen gave me goosebumps. I was fortunate to also be in the Able booth for three days running those films. It was, to say the least, quite an experience. By the way we had 4 projectionists along with Dave S. at each showing.

Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 09-16-2003, 05:51 PM:

How did I miss that? Didn't know it played Seattle. When?

Posted by Torsten Jasper (Member # 1860) on 09-16-2003, 10:33 PM:

Envy! [Frown]

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 09-17-2003, 09:58 AM:

Several years ago, I traveled to Dayton Ohio to see a well-worn print of HTWWW that John Harvey was still showing at the New Neon. I'd love to see the new print that Crest National Labs made:

http://www.cineramaadventure.com/crestindex.htm

http://millimeter.com/ar/video_cinerama_drama/

Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 09-17-2003, 01:23 PM:

I just got back from LA where I drove 1,000 miles just to see this film.

The photography was spectacular. I got a tour of the booth. I ran in to some film-techers in the courtyard of the Arclight cinemas. The print was flawless. But the movie was bad 1960s hoooey.

Having seen a couple of Cinerama films these past two years I can understand why the format died. Like I have said all along, its the story dammit.

All in all I am very pleased that the print was restored and that I had a chance to see it.

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 09-18-2003, 03:13 PM:

quote:
Having seen a couple of Cinerama films these past two years I can understand why the format died. Like I have said all along, its the story dammit.

HTWWW was probably the only Cinerama film with a decent plot, as lame as it was. The whole thing was based on a series of articles in Life magazine.

But the format died because it was too expensive to operate and when they kept impairing the format to reduce the cost of presentation, it was no different than any other 70mm format, so it became unnecessary.

Personally, I think most IMAX films are no better than most of the Cinerama films. They're both superb technologically, but DMR prints aside, are used mostly for travelogues and films of interest to a museum audience.

I haven't seen the restoration of HTWWW, but I do remember being blown away by the original, which I saw twice at the Loews Cinerama (Capitol) in NYC. I remember being especially impressed by a scene in which a character is standing in front of a window with a bar or music hall behind the window. The sound of the diffused music must have been sent to a different channel than the dialog taking place in front the window, and it all sounded incredibly real.

I saw It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World at the Warner Cinerama on Broadway in NYC and 2001 at the Boston Cinerama. I could swear that both of them played in mono. I remember being disappointed at both presentations.

Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 09-18-2003, 06:48 PM:

I saw the new print at the Dome this past weekend and dragged my partner cross country to see it....we both like 1960's hooey if the acting talent is above the material. This movie and This is Cinerama are the reason for wanting to work in this business when I first saw them 40 years ago. [thumbsup]

Posted by Peter Kerchinsky (Member # 1098) on 09-19-2003, 02:50 PM:

Greg
The Seattle Cinerama played a Cinerama festival Feb. 28th through March 6th last.
We ram HTWWW, This is Cinerama (both new prints) Windjammer and Search For Paradise (both old faded prints)
The only one I did not see was Search For Paradise. There's a photo in the pictures section showing what Windjammer looked like.
We are hoping to do it again soon as there was talk of showing some Cinerama there yearly.

Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 09-19-2003, 03:02 PM:

Ya know I heard that was happening but I thought they had just borrowed that old print and were running it again. Sorry I missed it

Posted by Rich Greenhalgh (Member # 1393) on 09-19-2003, 03:03 PM:

Last night we took a break from the 3-D Festival to HTWWW again at the Cinerama Dome. Over the past 40 years I have seen this film 6 times in 4 different venues. It still looks great. When I saw the new Crest print at the Dome in December at the SMPTE screening I was impressed. David Strohmaier and his crew have really gotten projecting this down to a science. The alignment and image stability have been much improved since then. After 35 showings here and in Seattle, the print still looks like new. After the film some of us visited the booth. They have a nice exhibit in the lobby as well. I have included several photos.

If you have not seen this yet, don’t miss it!

Rich Greenhalgh
Pasadena, California

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-19-2003, 05:35 PM:

For those of you who have been fortunate to see the film at the Dome and the Cinerama in Seattle, how large was the crowd? Cities like Los Angeles and even Seattle can support events like this. If anything like this was to happen in Honolulu, only a handful would show up because most people here do not care about 'films done right' and that is the reason all of our wonderful theatres like our Cinerama, Waikiki IMAX and the Waikiki I, #II & III no longer exists.

-Claude

Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 09-19-2003, 06:40 PM:

When I bought the seats, I originally wanted the noon show, thinking that it would be the least attended. The computer had all of the prime seats sold (center section) same with the 4 oclock showing. The 8 oclock had perfect seats dead center about 1/3 of the way down but they were the last two in the "sweet" spot. However at show time, a lot of seats were not filled. Guess people bought them but did not attend

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 09-20-2003, 12:32 PM:

I attended the 12 noon show on Saturday, but I had ordered tickets when they first went online in July. I sat in the floor section, last full row, which I found to be perfect.

I first saw HTWWW as a little kid in the general release CinemaScope version, and rememer liking it (a house my dad lived in as a kid is in the final segment of the film, shot in Oatman, Az). I saw it again while in junior high school at the bottom half of a double feature (Gone with the Wind, WHEW!) Plus numerous times on TV. So I was glad to finally see it in its original presentation.

This is a spectacle, and like many of the era, concentrates on spectacle over drama. But that is precisely what Cinerama was for. And this film gives it to you in spades. Beautiful cinematography (and rather sophisticated lighting for the process) add immeasurably to the experience. Throw in the beautiful Alfred Newman score and some very heartfelt performances and you have a film filled with major entertainment value. It was refreshing to see a style of filmmaking that has seemingly vanished from Hollywood. A true lack of cynicism in the storytelling. (Even the post-ending, that celebrated the construction of L.A. freeways as the ultimate cumulation of western expansion, lacked irony).

As far as story goes, this film had far more than you find in most studio drek shoveled out today.

Technical notes: I'm not fully sure why it takes five operators for this presentation at this theatre. I would think the master technician could probably run both the center projector and mag dubber (without additional operators for both).

The camera operators/DP did a creative job of finding ways of hiding dividing lines for the most part. HOWEVER, with projection jitter at different rates and directions, it gave the effect of three panels containing different settings, like a multi-media presentation. Still, it was a fascinating look at a decades old technology that still rendered an ultra-sharp image superior to what we see in theatres today.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-20-2003, 03:56 PM:

"HOW THE WEST WAS WON" was NEVER shown in CinemaScope because it was never shot in a 35mm anamorphic process. It was only photographed in the three strip process and some sequences in 65mm Ultra Panavision. What you saw was a 'scope' print made from the original three strip presentation. MGM could have used the term CinemaScope in advertising but only if they paid 20th Century Fox for the rights to use it. I also saw the 35mm version in scope after seeing the original Cinerama presentation and found the 35mm theatrical presentation a big let down. What was shown in the 35mm version was only the right half of the image of the left panel, the left half of the right panel and the full centre panel. The 35mm image looked like it was shot off the screen during a special three strip Cinerama presentation using a Panavision anarmorphic lens instead of printing from the original negatives or a interpositive because of the visibility of the image separation lines on the screen. The current DVD of "HOW THE WEST WAS WON" was made from the 35mm source and looks just as bad. What is even worse is the use of Dolby Pro Logic instead of 5.1 from the film's awesome seven tracks of sound.

-Claude

Posted by Ron Yost (Member # 1850) on 09-20-2003, 06:41 PM:

Paul, a guess here .. union rules, possibly?? Featherbedding, in RR terms. [Big Grin]

Ron Yost

Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 09-20-2003, 06:58 PM:

When Cinerama was in full speed in the 1950's you had carbon arc, less precise interlock controls, large reels, audio levels, visual levels to keep five guys busy. [beer]

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 09-20-2003, 07:09 PM:

quote:
"HOW THE WEST WAS WON" was NEVER shown in CinemaScope because it was never shot in a 35mm anamorphic process.

Now let's not get all nitpicky, Claude. It WAS shown in many theatres with CinemaScope lenses on a CinemaScope screen, regardless of whether the CinemaScope name was liscensed or not. To this day, anamorphic Panavision films are called "scope", and that word does derive from the original CinemaScope. And I certainly didn't make the claim that it was SHOT in scope.

quote:
The 35mm image looked like it was shot off the screen during a special three strip Cinerama presentation using a Panavision anarmorphic lens instead of printing from the original negatives or a interpositive because of the visibility of the image separation lines on the screen.

Looks can be deceiving. An optical printer was used to individually photograph each strip to a single strip of 70mm film. Then the reduction 35mm prints were made.

quote:
When Cinerama was in full speed in the 1950's you had carbon arc, less precise interlock controls, large reels, audio levels, visual levels to keep five guys busy.

Oh, I can fully appreciate why it took 5 operators originally to run the show. But doesn't Bradford, England's museum theatre run everything with just two operators today?

Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 09-20-2003, 07:50 PM:

Trivia....
I'm always looking where the action isn't when I see a movie more than once, trying to catch the odd left in blooper. HTWWW had a rather humorous one.

During the big train fight sequence at the end, if you look way off to the upper left of the left panel, you can see (in a couple of scenes) one of those huge metal high voltage powerline holders. The kind that brings the power from a big dam to a power station. They look like big metal robots to me. Anyway there they were.
It was the only blooper I saw

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 09-20-2003, 08:21 PM:

Well, I noticed in the far right lower corner during the epilog what looked like part of the helicopter used for the shot.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 09-22-2003, 01:42 PM:

Kelmar's Andy Marglin was a "Console Operator" for Cinerama in NYC during the 1950's. Lots of stories to tell.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 09-25-2003, 11:17 AM:

After watching HTWWW, I can understand why Cinerama died. The movie was pretty good, but those damn seam lines were unforgiving. Of course it didn't help that the center print had a black scratch along the right edge - right on the edge seam. Any jitter that exists in one projector magnifies the jitter in the projector next to it, which also doesn't help. The film makers did the best they could to hide the seams by placing trees and lamp posts and what not over the seams every chance they had, but it was still annoying.

The color balancing didn't match on any two of the prints, so a nice wide shot had dirt that was three different colors. I understand that this was a brand new print though, which leads me to believe that the colors probably never matched exactly.

The soundtrack was nice, but it didn't have the punch that a magnetic track should have had. In fact, It Came From Outer Space (a computer file made from a magnetic track and played in sync with the two projectors) at the 3D show sounded better, so the age of the material shouldn't have been at issue, but maybe in this case it was.

Now, all of this is directed against the Cinerama process, and the film itself technically. The PRESENTATION (with the exception of the scratches) at the Dome was awesome. The dramatic curtain opening, the overture, the intermission music, and the lights fading down half way, then fading down again... all of that is to be applauded. The projectionists I'm sure did the best they could with what they had. But Cinerama itself just looked very awkward. I think I'd rather see films in Panavision Super 70 or some other wide screen anamorphic 70mm process.

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 09-25-2003, 06:16 PM:

quote:
Of course it didn't help that the center print had a black scratch along the right edge - right on the edge seam.

Did you see this at the Dome? The day I saw it there was no scratch, but I'm not too surprised. I saw new prints of the 35mm print of SPIDERMAN and 70mm print of the newly struck LOA in this theatre just a few days after opening, and they both had black scratches running down the right hand of the frame. Different projectors of course, but they use the same platter for all three center booth machines (Century Cinereama, kinoton FP-75, FP-50).

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 09-25-2003, 09:06 PM:

quote:
The soundtrack was nice, but it didn't have the punch that a magnetic track should have had. In fact, It Came From Outer Space (a computer file made from a magnetic track and played in sync with the two projectors) at the 3D show sounded better, so the age of the material shouldn't have been at issue, but maybe in this case it was.

It must have been, because when I saw this film as a kid at the Loews Cinerama (Capitol) in NYC, the sound was absolutely spectacular. I've posted before about a scene in which (as I recollect it), characters are talking in front of a glass window. Behind the window was either a music hall or a saloon with music playing. The diffused music must have been sent to a different channel than the dialog and the effect, as I remember it, sounded uncannily real. The only other film of that era which had sound as good was the roadshow presentation of West Side Story (at the Rivoli).

I wouldn't be surprised if, in an effort to reduce hiss (not that I remember any), they rolled off the high end when making the new print.

As for the lines between the strips of film, I remember them certainly being obvious, but they still never really bothered me. The single-strip Cinerama presentations were actually far less effective. Given the trade-off, I'd take the lines.

But I don't think that's why Cinerama failed. I think it failed because most of the films weren't very compelling and the fact that the cameras, especially the 3-strip, were so bulky, limited the kinds of films directors could make. You certainly could never make an "intimate" film in Cinerama. And that's aside from the cost issues of presenting Cinerama. Especially after they moved away from the 3-strip process, Cinerama wasn't any better than Todd-AO and other 70mm presentation formats and many more theaters could play a standard 70mm film.

I think in many respects, IMAX is like Cinerama. In fact, is the IMAX DMR process really all that different than Super Panavision or corrected Ultra-Panavision films played on a Cinerama screen?

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 09-25-2003, 11:18 PM:

quote:
Did you see this at the Dome?

Yep. And the center print is definitely scratched along the right edge, which is a real shame. It wasn't a bad scratch as far as scratches go, but it was just bad enough to emphasize the join line. It was also on BOTH part 1 and part 2, which was pretty wierd.

quote:
I wouldn't be surprised if, in an effort to reduce hiss (not that I remember any), they rolled off the high end when making the new print.

I thought about that, and I didn't notice much hiss. I was actually starting to think it was a generational thing. I believe Jeff mentioned that the track used for ICFOS was made from a master. Maybe HTWWW was a few generations from the master, and a little old. It could be that that's all they had. I don't know enough about it though, so I'm just speculating. It's not that it sounded bad, I guess I just expected more from a seven channel magnetic track.

And I agree that the three strip Cinerama format was very difficult to work with and had lots of technical and storytelling limitations, and that those things certainly helped lead to its demise.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 09-27-2003, 04:30 AM:

I also caught this show last week. It was very impressive. Of course, the seams are very distracting, and there are other quality problems. But the point is that when Cinerama happened (not this movie though as it is a later release), people had never seen anything remotely like it and the effect must have been absoluteley overwhelming. And it did trigger all the other widescreen formats.
It is nice that there is the opportunity to see this revived once in a while.

Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 10-08-2003, 08:13 PM:

To bad about the scratch. It wasn't there when we saw it

Posted by Darren Briggs (Member # 1071) on 10-09-2003, 07:40 AM:

Well scratching a 70mm print of LOA and a cinerama print, i would think they should stop running the stuff untill they find out whats going on. Scratching any print is un-acceptable and shouldnt happen if care is taken, let alone a rare 70mm print and a very rare Cinerama print! Shoot the technicans that cant set up a platter not to scratch film!

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 10-18-2003, 12:27 PM:

Dang! I was just in Hollywood a couple weeks ago! How long's this going to be playing?