ABSTRACT
THE FIRST CINERAMA FEATURE, THIS IS CINERAMA (1952), begins with a roller coaster ride. Filmed with the Cinerama camera mounted on the front of an actual Coney Island roller coaster, the sequence effectively lilts the audience out of their seats in the movie theater and plunges them headlong into the thrill-packed world of the amusement park. The opening credits of The Robe (1953), the first CinemaScope film, appear over an enormous red velvet theater curtain, which slowly parts to reveal an ever-expanding wide-screen vista of ancient Rome. Here, the customary space of the movie theater, symbolized by the curtain, opens up, breaking down the narrow confines of the standard motion picture screen. The almost-square image of earlier cinema gives way to the panoramic space of spectacle, into which the audience is slowly drawn.
