Book Review: The Cinemascope Years

Aubrey Solomon’s new book from McFarland publishers is a thorough, fascinating look at the process of Cinemascope and varying discussions of nearly 540 different feature films. 

When television became popular enough to keep people home from movie theaters, ideas like 3-D and other such gimmicks attempted to bring them back out.  Cinemascope was not a gimmick it was an advancement on cinema’s visual presentation.  Beginning in the early 1950s, movies promised to be bigger, wider, more colorful and with more focused depth. This book examines these films in chronological order across several different genres.

How films from different genres use the Cinemascope process is one of the points brought across. Westerns, for instance, especially those shot in color, use the negative space allowed by the widescreen image.  The festive imagery of musicals responds to Cinemascope in another positive way.

Aubrey Solomon’s book lists the films in these different genre categories with annotation, allowing us insight into the use, and the box office success, or failure, for each.

Perhaps the most interesting portion is toward the end of the book, which lists various B movies that were shot in Cinemascope – low budget efforts like Escape From Red Rock and Return of the Fly – that respond successfully to the Widescreen image despite limited budgets.

The Cinemascope Years is sub-titled Films That Revolutionized Moviegoing, 1955-1967, and that is what this book examines quite successfully.  It is highly recommended for public and University libraries, research centers, and all manner of film buffs.  It is one of the finest film reference books this year.

The book can be ordered at this link:  Cinemascope