70 mm Grandeur film
70 mm Grandeur film, also called Fox Grandeur or Grandeur 70, is a 70 mm widescreen film format developed by William Fox through his Fox Film and Fox-Case corporations and used commercially on a small but successful scale in 1929–30.
History
In 1925, with the advent of television on the horizon, William Fox of the Fox Film Studio empire envisioned a "grand" cinema experience to keep the public coming to the movie theaters. As such, he soon put full efforts behind enhancing the silent 35 mm film showings by the addition of sound to be coupled to a wider than 35mm end product, with the hoped for result being a grand and lifelike experience for the viewers. This wide screen vision of William Fox soon resulted in his creating a partnership with Theodore Case and his assistant, Earl Sponable, pioneers of Sound on Film, with the partnership to be named the Fox-Case Corporation. The result was, first, the advent of Movietone Sound, then soon combined with the 70 mm "Grandeur" wide screen camera, with the Grandeur film process becoming the first theatrically successful wide screen film process when Fox Film Studio's released their epic made-for-Grandeur film, The Big Trail, in October 1930.
The 70mm Fox Grandeur cameras were manufactured by
A small number of shorts and features were produced in 70mm wide Fox Grandeur in 1929, while Fox Studios prepared for their big release of a film specifically created to be shot in 70 mm widescreen. The 1929 shorts and features included several issues of
Song 'o My Heart was double-shot in both conventional 35 mm and Fox Grandeur, with all action and singing performed separately for the two processes. Production began in November 1929, and the 35mm version debuted on March 11, 1930, in New York. The Grandeur version, however, shipped from the labs on March 17, 1930, was never released and may no longer survive, according to film historian Miles Kreuger.[1]
Filming of The Big Trail, which began in April 1930, was shot simultaneously in Grandeur and conventional
.The Fox Grandeur process was first and foremost of a small number of widescreen processes which were developed by the major Hollywood studios alongside sound in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Although the format proved to be successful, due to the Great Depression that began with the fall of Wall Street in October 1929, the Grandeur format then proved financially unviable for an industry still struggling to invest in the switch to talking pictures.
Unlike the later
See also
- List of film formats
- List of 70 mm films
- Super Panavision 70
- Super Technirama 70
- Ultra Panavision 70
- Widescreen
References
- ^ [1], where Kreuger lays out an interesting history of early sound film recording techniques, and the audio advantages of Fox Grandeur.
- ^ Silver, Charles (August 10, 2010). "Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail". Museum of Modern Art. New York City. Retrieved March 1, 2018.
- ISBN 9780520258662.
- ^ Lobban, Grant "Preserving Wide Film History", , Journal of the BKSTS, 67:4, April 1985
- John Belton, Widescreen Cinema (Cambridge, MA: ISBN 0-674-95261-8