بزرگ‌تر و بهتر!

CHAPTER SEVEN

Bigger and better!

In the 1950s, people stopped going to the cinema two or three times a week, and stayed at home to watch TV instead.

The cinema queues got shorter, and the film companies realized that they had to fight back. They tried to do this by making films that looked as different as possible from TV.

TV in the 1950s was in black-and- white, and the pictures were shown on very small screens. So the cinema produced Cinemascope, which made it possible to show films on a much wider screen than ever before, and, of course, in colour. And ‘big screens’ meant ‘big’ films that looked good on a wide screen. Films like The Robe (1953) and Ben Hur (1959).

Then came 3-D, where the pictures seemed to jump off the screen at the audience.

Warner Brothers had a success with House of Wax in 1953, and there were nearly twenty more 3-D films shown in cinemas that year. Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1954) was popular. But the people in the audience had to wear special coloured glasses to see the effects of 3-D, and they soon became bored with having to do this. And so the studios stopped making 3-D films.

Cinerama films were popular for a short time, but it needed three projectors and a bigger screen again to show them. People had to move their heads from side to side to see what was happening at both ends of the screen! But Cinerama films were very expensive to make, and it was difficult to put the very big screens into most cinemas.

The studios continued their fight with TV, but television was becoming more and more popular. Then, in 1955, RKO studios needed money quickly to stay alive, and they sold their films to television. Other studios soon began to do the same and old films became popular on TV.

But although the ‘golden age’ of the cinema was finished, films continued to be made. And there were some big successes - like the James Bond films From Russia with Love (1963), and Goldfinger (1964). There were popular family films starring Julie Andrews - Mary Poppins (1965) and The Sound of Music (1965). Then the 1970s brought The Godfather (1972), Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977) and Superman (1979). In the 1980s, young people hurried to see E.T The Extra- Terrestrial (1982), Ghosthusters (1984), Back to the Future (1985) and Batman (1989).

And in the 1990s came Stephen Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) with its wonderful special effects and exciting story. You can see the video of Jurassic Park at home on your own television. But the special effects are much more frightening on a big screen in a dark cinema.