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https://www.twilighttimemovies.com/gun-fury-3d-2d-blu-ray/

Kudos to Twilight Time for their 3D Blu-ray releases. I got my copy of GUN FURY yesterday. I at once stuck it in the Blu-ray player, fired up my Optoma 3D projector and watched it on the big screen.

Superbly directed by veteran Raoul Walsh (who had played John Wilkes Booth in D. W. Griffith’s 1915 motion picture THE BIRTH OF A NATION) the film is a tour de force in where to place a camera.

GUN FURY is a terrific film whether we see it in 2D or 3D.

“Even without 3-D Columbia’s Gun Fury would be a superior western”–Variety.

“A hard-driving affair smacking of authenticity and well thought out construction.”–The Hollywood Reporter.

To say they don’t make them this good anymore is an understatement.

Throughout the film I was delighted by Walsh’s use of foreground space (“Z” space).

Every second of this picture I know I am watching a 3D movie. This adds to the impact tremendously.

It is a big no no in contemporary 3D motion pictures to make use of foreground space as the theory is to do so takes us, the audience, out of the picture. We get depth but little in the way of foreground effects.

It seems the audience for 3D films is dropping off which is a shame as the medium is, despite the naysayers, an exciting one which when it is used excitingly really adds to the entertainment value of the motion picture viewing experience.

It seems some companies are no longer offering 3D on home television sets. This is unfortunate as it shows lack of vision on their part. 3D is clearly here to stay. Those same companies are going to wish they had not so early written off the medium when James Cameron’s sequels to AVATAR (2009) come out.

Walsh could not see 3D as, like Andre de Toth (HOUSE OF WAX–1953) he had only one eye. Like De Toth, however, Walsh understood film. He was one of the masters. Every frame of GUN FURY demonstrates ably what can be done with 3D in the hands of a person who knows how to use it.

It once was that movies were seen in 5,000 seat cinemas. It once was that over 65% of the public went to the movies on a regular basis. It once was that ministers in churches regularly preached sermons damning the movies.

Today our movies have become sermons. We are too often told that seeing a picture will make us a better person. The movies have become paragons of good taste. Said Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso, “It is good taste not bad taste which is the enemy.” I am solidly with them.

This is not what we went to the movies for.

We go to the movies to have fun. Film makers work best when they take strength in the idea that what they are creating is entertainment.

GUN FURY 3D (1953) is rock solid entertainment. Rock Hudson is great in it. Phil Carey is appropriately slimy as the villain. Donna Reed earns her pay as the heroine (at one point she gets dragged through the mud behind Carey’s horse).

If you don’t have a 3D TV this film will make you wish you had one.

As a film maker Raoul Walsh was on a par with Rembrandt in painting. He may only have had one eye but he saw more with one eye than most do with two. On top of that he knew how to make movies.

–Reg Hartt 2017-09-27.

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Gun-Fury-3D-Blu-ray/181988/

Raoul Walsh’s career went back to the birth of the movies. As an artist he was on a par with Rembrandt. He may have had only one eye he sure knew how to use it. GUN FURY 3D breaks all the rules of contemporary 3D film making. That is what rules are for.

 

 

 

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