Reg Hartt announced that he will be showing a 3D version of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance at The Cineforum, in Toronto. His email ]proclaimed that,
The Greatest Spectacle In the History Of Motion Pictures Just Got More So. See for the first time ever in 3D… D. W. Griffith’s INTOLERANCE. Using the same technology employed by Imax Theatres to show 2D movies in 3D I have added more depth to an already great motion picture. This is your chance to see this magnificent film as you never imagined it could be seen.
His reasoning is provided in an article he wrote on The Cineforum website, where he says, in part:
I have bad news for you if you are a film purist and good news, if, like me, you are interested in adding a new dimension to your film going experience.
3D can and should be an exciting process that allows the film maker to take us into new emotional and intellectual landscapes. So far it has not been. …
while back, on Jerry Beck and Amid Amidi’s site, Cartoon Brew, I found someone had converted a 2D Popeye cartoon to 3D.
That caused me to start surfing the web for more information.
The more information I discovered the curiouser I became.
Now I have installed in the Cineforum the same field sequential 3D process used in Imax Theatres,.
This is, in Roger Ebert’s words, “The one 3D process that works.”
As well as acquring movies filmed in 3D I have converted Kid Dracula, Oz Darkside, Metropolis, and The Salvador Dali Film Fest to 3D.
The problem with 3D has not been with the device itself but with the fact that we only got to see it used in movies that, for the most part, did not represent the art of film making at its best.
I am now in the process of converting The Lord of the Rings trilogy, all six Star Wars films, D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, Lawrence of Arabia, The Matrix trilogy and more to 3D.
The neat thing about this is that in each of the films I have done so far the added depth the process brings to the films does take me into the movie precisely as [Andre] De Toth [director of 1952's Bwana Devil, the first 3D feature] saw it would.
Watching Buster Keaton in Cops in 3D is an indescribable joy.
Before voicing an opinion against this see it first.
I’m more than willing to see the results of your 3D conversions. However, unless you can arrange a screening for me in Atlanta or bring me up to Toronto, its seems a moot point for the time being. I do have some curiosity about the process and would probably see some of your results if the opportunity presented itself.
However, what interests me is the rather placid reaction to 3D conversions of older films, especially in comparison to the hysteria that surrounded the colorizing of black and white films by Ted Turner and others a few years back. (An exception is the recent release of colorized versions of films like Things to Come which Ray Harryhausen was involved in; Harryhausen’ has also released color versions of three of his own films: It Came From Beneath the Sea, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and 20 Million Miles to Earth.) And the point of my rhetorical question, “Is Nothing Sacred?,” had more to do with this reaction than anything else.
Incidentally, I must admit I did pay to see the 3D version of The Nightmare Before Christmas and found it rather lackluster. (It was not helped by apparent insertion of various props in the foreground in order to add the sense of depth.) However, with 3D versions of Titantic, Peter Jackson’s King Kong, the Star Wars films on their way, it is something that cannot be ignored.