3-D RARITIES II

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March 30, 2020

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Last week I received a copy of the latest release from THE 3-D FILM ARCHIVE, 3-D RARITIES II.

It is released by FLICKER ALLEY: https://www.flickeralley.com/classic-movies-2/#!/3-D-Rarities-Volume-II/p/170617337/category=20414531

It is wonderful.

It is also really good news in a moment when we are all asked to stay at home. Thankfully we still have the mail and AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/3-D-Rarities-Blu-ray-Cesar-Romero/dp/B0849W6GLC .

We begin with A DAY IN THE COUNTRY (1953):

“Jeff (Joseph) is often identified with classic 3-D cinema, especially after purchasing the collection of Bob Furmanek of the 3-D Film Archive (which included a number of one-of-a-kind 35mm dual-system 3-D) prints from the early 195os) and essentially doubling its size. “I was never a 3-D nut,” Jeff admits candidly. “To me, the appeal of it was the ‘orphan aspect’— just like trailers, nobody was taking care of it.” His favorite 3-D discovery involves a mysterious short titled A Day in the Country from 1953 that was released by entrepreneur Robert L. Lippert in the brief period between the first 3-D feature release in the United States, Bwana Devil, and House of Wax. “Nobody had seen A Day in the Country in fifty-plus years, it was a lost film, This guy on the East Coast reads me a list: ‘I’ve got this and this and this and A Day in the Country. . .‘ I said, ‘Back up; what did you say?’ He said, ‘A Day in the Country—and it’s in 3-D.’ He wanted five hundred dollars, which was insanely expensive, but I agreed.” Jeff sent him the money for the short—and the man promptly disappeared. A year went by with no news from him. Jeff even enlisted a private detective to find him, with no results. Finally, Jeff managed to get the elusive dealer on the phone. He admitted he no longer had A Day in the Country; the print had been sitting in the back of his truck when it was towed. But Jeff refused to give up: “So I tracked down the towing company and gave her the long spiel on the phone. She said, ‘Let me look that up. . . well, we still have that truck here.’ I said, ‘Would you go look for it?’ She says, ‘Okay.’ She puts the phone down for five minutes and comes back: ‘I have this reel of film, and it says A Day in the Country on it.” Incredibly, the reel had been sitting forgotten in the back of the dealer’s impounded pickup truck for over a year, but Jeff got his hands on it and, with the help of 3-D expert Dan Symmes, managed to extract usable 3-D images. After examining the film, Jeff realized the release date of 1953 was misleading. “What we found out is that in 1941 a guy named Jack Rieger, a minor B-producer of mostly boxing shorts, produced this little 3-D short called Stereo Laffs on his own, with his own camera. And nothing happened with it. And then in i95 he sold it to Lippert, and that’s why it looks like the late 1930s,” he says of the short, which he screened during the 2006 WORLD 3-D FILM EXPO at The Egyptian.”–pgs. 194-195, A THOUSAND CUTS, Dennis Bartok and Jeff Joseph.

It’s a miracle of fortuitousness that we are able to see this and it’s a gem.

“A DAY IN THE COUNTRY” was rescued from oblivion.

Next up is THE BLACK SWAN (1951)

“Here’s an excerpt from SWAN LAKE, recorded for the Festival of Britain using an experimental three-d system that works perfectly… indeed, it works slightly better than the sound, which sounds a bit thin in the middle registers, despite the technology for recording sound being considerably older. I guess the technology for that has continued to improve; raising my standards to what would have been an insane level of snobbery in 1951. So let it go.

“How’s the dancing? Well, I’m very fond of movie dancing and Broadway musicals, but ballet has usually been too arcane and ritualized for my taste, although I’ve been to occasionally ballet and modern dance recitals. I am, however, very impressed by the dancers, who perform with a snap and precision unlike anything I’ve ever seen. So my attention was fully engaged and this is a remarkable movie on many levels.”–https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9035892/

What 3-D does that 2-D cannot do is it brings a density, an emotional weight. Because the figures on screen exist in dimensional space we can feel them while 2-D leaves us flat. Nowhere is this experience more true than in watching dance which is all about emotional weight. This film is thrilling.

Next up is a program of 3-D photographs narrated by Hillary Hess. These were taken with THE STEREO REALIST 3-D CAMERA. They are lots of fun. This took me back to the moment I first discovered 3-D slides and a stereo-viewer on my uncle’s farm in New Brunswick.

This is followed by GAMES IN DEPTH from The Polaroid Company, the trailer for a 70mm 3-D film, FRANKENSTEIN’S BLOODY TERROR, and a feature I had never heard of but which I now want to see (as I do FRANKENSTEIN’S BLOODY TERROR in 3-D), THE 3-D MOVIE.

3-D RARITIES I has a wonderful program of short films. There is no feature.

There is a feature film on 3-D RARITIES II and what a feature!

It is “EL CORAZON Y LA ESPADA,” the first 3-D feature film produced in Mexico. This stars Cesar Romero whom most of us know and love as THE JOKER from TV’S THE BATMAN. With Romero is Katy Jurado. More here: https://filmforum.org/film/el-corazon-y-la-espada-in-3-d

After all of this I was thrilled to see a program of 3-D photographs made by the great comic star of the silent era, Harold Lloyd narrated by Lloyd’s granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd.