MOVIE REVOLUTION PROMISED

Evening Star, Issue 20996, 9 January 1932, Page 9

MOVIE REVOLUTION PROMISED

"A THIRD DIMENSION" . [From Oue Coreesponrent.] SAN FRANCISCO, December 9. With a year that has revealed a f ermine advance in talking pictures rawing rapidly to a close, yet another marvel is promised, for, according to dispatches from Hollywood, a demonstration has been made before eight of the loading producers, each of whom was pledged to secrecy, of an invention that will revolutionise the talking picture just as completely and disconcertingly as the talking picture revolutionised the silent film._ According to one of these eight producers, the invention achieves something never before accomplished—the projection of figures “ in the round —in other words, a third dimension of depth added to the screen. The people in the photograph, he asserts, “ appeared to possess all the substance of living actors and actresses, and looked almost like flesh and blood.” The device by which this is accomplished dispenses entirely with the white screen as we know it in every film theatre, and by the use of various lenses of different sizes it materialises figures in the round out of light alone, so that they seem to be occupying a normal theatre stage instead of merely being figures upon a screen, as at present. Judging from the sensation this remarkable innovation has caused in Hollywood, the film business is in for another tremendous upheaval, for the new system will involve another expensive replacement of projection apparatus, and may, indeed, require the remodelling of the theatres in addition. It will assuredly cause those who have been endeavoring to develop the art of the film with a projected stage in the flat to recast their ideas and to proceed along an entirely new line of experiment and imagination. To what extent this invention would affect the art of acting for the screen is not yet clear, but there is nothing improbable in the suggestion that it might easily revolutionise that art also, and that artists found_ playing for pictures in three dimensions will approximate more closely to those who act for the stage of the spoken drama and the living artist in the flesh. _ It seems certain that the _ situation created will compel a partial, if not an entire, reorientation of the legitimate theatre and its present technique. There has been a feeling in the air for some time that the talking pictures were due for some stimulus, and this may prove the factor essential to provide that. The film industry is in a disturbed condition owing to the financial depression and tremendously heavy losses, and a new novelty may be what is required to give it a fillip and set it jyjofl its feet again.