Warner Bros.' Last Stereoscopic Stand

On Warner’s stereoscopic systems in the 1950s, and some new 3-D restorations premiered at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026. – EK

In the 1950s 3-D arrived with the loud bang announcing an immersive cinema — Natural Vision, Paravision, Metrovision, and other “visions” — that would supposedly end “flat” filmmaking, but went out with the faint hiss of a flat tire. It kept being revived, except that each time nobody could sustain it for more than a couple of years, the last revival coming in the early 2010s. In the meantime, while it seems destined never to become a true cinematic mainstay, the classics of 3-D cinema continue to enjoy a cult following whenever they can be screened in their original dual-35mm format or in digitally reproduced 3-D DCPs.

This programme (below) looks at some of the lesser-remembered 3-D output of Warner Bros that produced the most universally popular early 3-D films, House of Wax (1953). Warner soon developed its own stereoscopic system, WarnerVision – engineered by Albert W. Tondreau, Mike McGreal, and Fred Gage – with which the terrific western Hondo (1953) was shot. (I was lucky enough to see a double-projector screening of this at the Film on Film Festival at BFI Southbank, and I must say I prefer it to digital reproductions of the 3-D system.)

Warner was also responsible for producing some of the more artistic and less gimmicky 3-D films, such as Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder, released in 1954, just as the format was rapidly falling out of fashion by the end of the year. The two main directors represented here, Andre De Toth and Roy Del Ruth, not only have their names rhyme, but also their cinematic sensibility: unabashed shockers displaying a keen understanding of sets and movement.

Highlights from Il Cinema Ritrovato XL (Part II)

Mudar de Vida

My favourite things: Personal recommendations and favourite discoveries from among the more than 500 films awaiting you at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026. Part one here. – EK

11

Anémic cinéma

Dir: Marcel Duchamp | France, 1926

The only film directed by Marcel Duchamp – the early Dadaist, later Surrealist, and, much later, solitary painter and chess player – this classic of the weird consists of two alternating sets of images: one of rotating and interlocking geometric forms, amounting to a kind of cinematic pop art avant la lettre; the other of words and sentences inscribed on spinning discs. The film offers an opportunity to confront one of cinema’s most fundamental questions: what are space and time in film? The restored 35mm print may contain the answer.