The Glories of CinemaScope

It’s not clear whether it does this summer, but size certainly mattered in the 1950s, when the movies found a way of successfully competing with the small screen by going wider.

Thanks to Fox’s Darryl Zanuck, CinemaScope became the most popular of the wide-screen formats. Starting Friday through Aug. 15, LACMA pays tribute to the diverse creativity of this process in “20th Century Fox and the Golden Age of CinemaScope.” In the CinemaScope process the image is compressed when shot then later uncompressed when projected.

The 30-film series features such ‘Scope staples as “The Robe” (1953, screening Saturday in a brand-new print), the format’s first release, full of biblical angst; “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955, screening July 17), the James Dean classic full of teenage angst; “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (1954, screening July 18), the Ethel Merman musical full of, well, Ethel Merman; “An Affair to Remember” (1957, screening July 31), the widest and slowest of the chick flicks, with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr falling in love on a luxury liner; and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1959, screening July 25), the Jules Verne sci-fi classic whose descent into the bowels of the planet is still creepy fun.

Then there are three black-and-white ‘Scope classics, all social dramas about real people, told with black-and-white morality: “Compulsion” (1959, screening Aug. 7), based on the notorious Leopold and Loeb murder trial, starring Orson Welles; “Man of a Thousand Faces” (1957, also screening Aug. 7), with James Cagney using all of his frenzied physicality to portray the tortured Lon Chaney; and “The Diary of Anne Frank” (1959, screening July 25 as part of a Saturday matinee series).

The series also includes several rare treats from the vault of collector Ken Kramer. “Lady and the Tramp” (1955, screening July 11 as a matinee), Disney’s one and only animated use of ‘Scope, reveals not only communal intimacy but also the delicate color palette of Technicolor dye transfer. This is the first public screening of the canine love story--the object of an intense discussion in this summer’s “Last Days of Disco”--in a decade.

Good prints of “The King and I” (1956, screening Aug. 1) are also difficult to come by. The Rodgers & Hammerstein hit uses the format as well as any musical. Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr inhabit the frame with a sensual force often at odds with the graceful beauty of the exotic locale. The sad collision course with history makes their love story all the more moving.

Nobody handled ‘Scope melodrama as assuredly as Otto Preminger (represented here by three very different films). The strangest and most fascinating is “Bonjour Tristesse” (1958, screening July 17 in a restored print). Jean Seberg, who could be James Dean’s soul mate, plays a tortured teenager recounting a summer of fun and tragedy on the Riviera with David Niven as her casual father and Kerr as his intense mistress. The Riviera scenes, representing the past, are photographed in saturated primary colors, while the Paris scenes, representing the present, are photographed in somber black-and-white.

As in all Preminger films, there is no separating characters from their environment. But with ‘Scope, Preminger has more space to dramatize the counterpoint between the physical and the psychological. On the Riviera, there are so many diversions to avoid intimacy and commitment; in Paris, there is no place to run from the past.

Sam Fuller was another director comfortable with ‘Scope. In “House of Bamboo” (1955, screening July 24), Robert Stack infiltrates a gang of ex-GIs run by the psychotic Robert Ryan, who has corrupted the Japanese code of honor. Ryan’s a sad yet compelling figure whose prejudice is influenced by love, not hate. There’s little room for love in the westerns of Anthony Mann. He fills the landscape with hate. “Man of the West” (1958, also screening July 24), nearly everyone’s cult favorite, contains themes of Shakespearean proportion. Lee J. Cobb makes a nasty psychotic gang leader, but it’s hard to believe Gary Cooper was ever an evil outlaw.

In “Garden of Evil” (1954, screening Friday in dye transfer), it’s hard to believe Cooper could be seduced by Susan Hayward into rescuing her husband, who’s trapped in a Mexican gold mine. Maybe he’s just along for the ride. Director Henry Hathaway is a little too laid-back here and doesn’t make use of the wide screen until the climax, when Cooper’s friendship with Richard Widmark suddenly gets interesting.

Also part of the series is a free seminar Saturday evening, presented in association with the American Society of Cinematographers. Devoted to the legendary cinematographers who excelled in ‘Scope (Leon Shamroy, Milton Krasner, Ernest Haller, Lucian Ballard), “Shooting for Wide Screen” revisits the era with a distinguished panel of contemporary cinematographers: Dean Cundey (“Apollo 13”), Victor J. Kemper (“Dog Day Afternoon”) and John Hora (“‘Gremlins”).