A Technician's Dream? The Critical Reception of 3-D Films in Britain

Abstract

Recent debates about the role of 3-D within cinema (and other media) have contained the traces of a largely anti-stereoscopic agenda that can be traced back to critical responses to 3-D in the 1950s. This article considers how British film reviews from the 1950s and 1980s established potent terms of discussion around the 3-D technology, its potential aesthetic development, and the role of stereoscopy within cinema. Exploring the parameters that the original reviewers set in place concerning the 3-D aesthetic, notably claims around realism, novelty, and gimmickry, the article argues that the language and terms of 1950s British film reviewers have worked to set an agenda that resonates through both the 1980s 3-D revival and modern day digital 3-D. Given those elements have defined the anti-stereoscopic agenda that has developed over the last six decades, this article will explore the foundations of that agenda through analysis of the main arguments and opinions expressed by British film critics in the 1950s, and the return (and re-emphasis) of those opinions in the 1980s 3-D revival. These moments of 'agenda-setting' in popular criticism will be shown to have defined 3-D as a novelty technology, not a source of art or creativity, a language that continues to recur in the modern period. 4 The focus on a technological subject is a departure from those reception studies that focus on specific films, genres or directors, allowing the article to consider the role of British film reviewers, cultural critics and industry commentators in creating and reinforcing a particular agenda around 3-D technology. 5 To paraphrase Barbara Klinger, the value in analysing film reviews (and 3 reviewers) lies in establishing how language is mobilised to define and contain film technology in the wider culture; producing rhetoric that helps 'to establish the terms of discussion and debate.' 6 Moving from a specific film to a film technology, however, creates unique problems for the analysis of historical discourse, as such technologies have often been often overlooked in favour of more traditional tenets of film reviews such as 'plot and character, or regarded as a vulgar necessity in critical debates about motion picture art and popular culture, 7 The rare times when technology has been heralded, the focus has been on the possible enhancements it can offer to realism or audience immersion. 8 As this article will demonstrate, critical responses to the introduction and resurgence of 3-D have moved between these different camps, as

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