Cinerama Holiday

Cinerama is a format in which movies are filmed using three cameras, then displayed on a curved screen using three projectors. It does a great job of making you feel like you're in the action. Only about 10 movies were filmed in Cinerama, and very few theaters are currently equipped to show them. The only one in the U.S. at present is in Dayton, Ohio, which is where I saw Cinerama Holiday.

This movie is about two couples (they were couples in real life too, and they used their real names), one from St. Louis and one from Switzerland. They each go to the other's country and travel around. That's the plot, such as it is - but seeing the sites in Cinerama is a lot of fun.

There are huge musical stage productions in Paris and Las Vegas, bobsledding, a county fair, skiing, a puppet show (where you can see the audience as well as the show) and a lot of more low-key stuff. It's a lot like being taken on vacation by interesting hosts. If you get the chance to see it, do.

A wonderful look at high technology in filming in the 1950s. Looking much like the wide screen formats of today, the three camera and stereo sound effects must have been a wonder to those audiences looking a scenes around the world with the huge movie screen curving around there head.

The film has been recently restored and is available through Flicker Alley on a combo DVD-bluray edition. It is a remarkable job that has been achieved. Moreover the Smilebox format used enables the viewer to have the original curved screen impression and if you have the chance as I do to view it on a home cinema system with a large screen (2.40m width as far as I'm concerned) sitting at a distance which enables you just to have the screen width in your field sight, you then get the full sensation you had in Cinerama theaters when the movie was first presented. Of course the subject and the way things are presented have aged a lot but it is also a reminder of what Paris looked like in the early 50s and being a Parisian , it brings a nostalgic reminiscence of that time when I saw Cinerama for the first time in Paris.