Dimensions a Trois

"The corn is popping in your face, and it's ... 3-D!" so sayeth the Swedish chef, in one of the Muppet movies. He's manning the popcorn booth at the 3-D movie theater, wearing 3-D glasses, throwing popcorn into the air and letting it fall on his face.

How many times did my sister and I shriek that phrase and throw things in the air as we did, letting them fall on our faces. Raisins, I think. I think we used raisins.



J.R. Eyerman, 1952


I went to my first 3-D movie yesterday. I was tempted, when I sat down, to throw my popcorn in the air and let it fall on my 3-D-glassesed face. I didn't.

The movie was Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, at Film Forum. It was good in 3-D, but it would have been good in 2-D too - the only scene that is truly enhanced in 3-D is the murder scene, when Grace Kelly stabs her attacker with scissors. Otherwise, the 3-Dness is just a novel effect. The movie was filmed in 3-D, but was released in 2-D shortly thereafter; 1950s audiences apparently felt the same way.

Most interesting 3-D tidbit: The finger that dials the "M" in the movie is a huge wooden replica, as is the telephone; 3-D effects, apparently, didn't work well when the filming was close up, as it was with the finger and telephone. So Hitchcock had enormous models built and filmed those instead.

I like the way Hitchcock sees obstacles - a too-small finger, the MPPC code - as challenges to appreciate and solve. I liked being in a theater where I knew everyone was wearing 3-D glasses.

I got to keep my 3-D glasses.

Skip It, Darling

Watched: Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious at Film Forum this afternoon. It's been a while since I stared at Cary Grant on a large screen for a long time.

[deep sigh]

It's been a while, too, since I saw a movie at Film Forum, especially one in the afternoon. There is no crowd like a Film Forum crowd, especially one in the afternoon. Lots of older film buffs, mostly men, sitting alone, their coats spread out over two seats. One older man who invariably falls asleep, not because he's not enraptured, but because he's older, his rhythmic snores interrupting the theater until someone taps him gently. Genuine laughter at all the appropriate parts. Smart laughter.

The movie was so good I feel like eating my fingers. The screenwriter, Ben Hecht ... there wasn't a word of dialogue I didn't want to hold in my mouth for a minute. Every time Devlin told Alicia to "skip it," I wanted to turn around and chew my lip. I'm going to start saying that.

The movie, when it came out in 1946, was criticized for the length of time Grant and Bergman kissed on screen (the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, dubbed the "Hays Code," was still in effect; "Scenes of Passion.") There are two such scenes of embrace, one on a hill in Rio where the two first kiss, and one in the garden of Sebastian's house, when Sebastian is watching them. Neither lasts more than a few seconds.

What the MPPC couldn't censor was the movie's sexiest scene, when Alicia and Devlin are gliding around her apartment, their first dinner together, not kissing at all but melting into each other's necks and faces and brushing lips, even while he's on the telephone hearing his messages, telling the operator distractedly to "read it to me ...."

Hitchcock - um, he knew how to work around a code.

Hi Ho, Caro

R r r reading: The Power Broker, by Robert Caro. 1,000+ pages of Robert Moses biography. It hurts my back to hold it on the subway. I'm waiting for the day (June, 2006?) when I'm past the halfway point and the book stays open, instead of flipping into itself due to its own weight as I read.

It's very good, appreciated despite my beyond-conflicted feelings for Moses and his legacy. I'm learning now about Moses' vision for the mud flats and railroad tracks that coursed along the upper west side of Manhattan pre-World War I: Riverside Park, now a startling reality.

Caro talks about how the west side railroad tracks emerged into Lower Manhattan on Eleventh Avenue, running down the center of the street. And how a cowboy with a red flag would ride in front of the coming freight trains, warning pedestrians and carriages to get off the tracks. All day, I can't get the image of that cowboy out of my head.

Eleventh Avenue was known as Death Avenue until the late 1930s. Not everybody paid attention to the cowboy.




Scene from Life of a Cowboy (1906), directed by Edwin Porter.

In Lieu of Fruitcake

Good holidays to all.