[garyrc]

Originally Posted by Indian Hills Theater

The first few days of filming "The Greatest Story Ever Told" were shot in Cinerama. When they decided to drop the process because of the huge expense, Cinerama died a quick death.
IHT

After those early days of shooting, the rest of the movie was filmed in Ultra (not Super) Panavision 70, with an aspect ratio of 2.75:1 (varied from 70mm theater to 70mm theater, depending on the shape and curvature of the available screen). This was the same process that was used to film a few scenes in How the West Was Won, shots for which the Cinerama three camera set-up was considered too cumbersome.

I saw Greatest Story projected in Ultra Panavision 70 on the original Cinerama screen in San Francisco's first Cinerama theater, the Orpheum. It looked great, considerably better than the Ultra Panavision 70 shots in HTWWW, as seen in the same theater, on the same screen. In HTWWW, the 70mm shots were intercut with three-camera shots that had a bit more film area devoted to the image on the three original negatives, and the 70mm shots looked inferior by contrast. Or, maybe they just did a slightly poorer transfer of the 70 mm to the three strips used in the theater than they did when printing from the three true Cinerama strips used in most of the movie. In the 70mm shots there was a bit of vignetting that I never saw in any other 70mm movie. Also, the phenomonon psychologists of perception call adaptation level may have had something to do with the U.P. 70 shots in HTWWW not looking so good; once we saw the bright and beautiful three camera shots, the U.P. 70 suffered in what amounted to an A-B test. In Greatest Story there was no immediate comparison. Another factor would be that all shots in true Cinerama would be shot with a 145 degree angle of coverage (that's the angle the 3 camera lenses took in), and would benefit from the increased sense of depth that wide angle shooting provides. None of the U.P.70 lenses have that wide a view (although they get pretty wide compared to other processes, except for the original Todd-A0, which had one lens wider than U.P. 70 -- the 128 degree "Bug Eye").

Despite all of the above, I think they did the right thing in filming Greatest Story in Ultra Panavision 70 -- IMO, the join lines inherent in the three-camera system would have been distracting in a film as somber as Greatest Story. The film had many quiet, meditative, contemplative moments, and an introspective score. I think we needed the intimacy of a join-line free image. That having been said, despite a thoughtful performance by Max von Sydow, and beautiful, if idiosyncratic, cinematography, the film didn't work too well, even in 70mm. I'm not sure why. But it was a noble effort. The best comment in this regard is the title given the booklet that comes with the soundtrack CD: Christus Approximus

Originally Posted by ambientcafe

Would've made a couple of nice companion pieces to my lonely copy of 'HTWWW'....was 'Battle of the Bulge', also avail on BD, a true 3-panel Cinerama feature? The BD cover states a 2.76 AR -- from a 'Super-Cinerama' print, I suspect.

I believe that Battle of the Bulge was filmed in 70 mm -- Ultra Panavision 70, again -- but released to theaters that had the patented Cinerama screen, when such theaters were available. If you can't see traces of the join lines or a very slight misalignment in any shot in a film, either they did a fantastic job of hiding them, or it wasn't in three-camera Cinerama. I went to the premiere of Battle of the Bulge in San Francisco, but didn't go inside to see the film, due to a temporary lack of funds. Outside, I met the great sculptor Benny Buffano, who was attending for some reason. Why I don't know. He had sent a body part (part of a finger?) to the President to "help with the war effort" during the previous war.