Psycho In "4-D"

At least I think it is called 4-D.

Whatever this process is, it comes with various new TVs and it is sort of "super HD" which converts motion pictures into...video taped TV shows. Imagine Psycho looking like a TV soap opera, ala "General Hospital" or "Days of Our Lives."

I witnessed 4-D at other people's homes in the past couple of years and I found it just horrible to watch -- at least with movies. I suppose if 4-D can make a football game or a basketball game or a baseball game seem even MORE real("Hey, its like I'm right there!") that's fine, these are live events that often play on tape anyway.

But a MOVIE? To see the work of nuanced cinematographers with their command of light, smoke and shadow reduced to ...a cheap looking video production. Well, its awful.

Still, since I bought a new TV, I've tortured myself with this 4-D for a few days now, given that I bought a TV that REFUSES to show any movie any other way. (Oh, I know there's a film on YouTube with Tom Cruise telling you how to turn 4-D off, but....I had to experiment for awhile.)

To experiment, I've watched most of Psycho, The Godfather, The Sting, and a particularly well photographed favorite Western of mine ("The Professionals") in 4-D and beheld as these fine works turned into things that looked like they were filmed for 24 dollars and 19 cents.

I found that exactly what it feels like we are seeing differs as you watch it: (1) a soap opera on video tape or (2) we are "on the set" watching the actors work, and it looks like nothing but fake acting(without "distancing" cinematography, it feels like we are watching a rehearsal. ) (3) "You are really there, this is really happening." With Psycho, I looked at the Arbogast murder and when he first enters the foyer it didn't feel like a movie at all - it felt like we were accompanying a man into a REAL foyer. (4) 3-D -- you ever wonder what Psycho would look like in 3-D? Watch it in 4-D..Arbogast's process fall puts his body WAY out in front of the process screen.

And this: I watched a scene from "The Professionals" where Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster were walking and talking with the desert hills behind them and a clear blue sky and not only did it feel like we were "really there" -- the men seemed incredibly REAL and as if they were alive NOW (this movie came out in 1966, and both actors have been dead for decades.")

There is something about these "4-D" movies that seems like a sacrilege -- like that colorization fad of the 80's with b/w movies which almost reached Psycho but stopped in time. You can bet that Hitchcock never wanted Psycho to look and play like THIS. And yet...it does.

Other observations:

The "video tape effect" becomes most apparent when either the character moves or the camera moves. In Psycho, when Janet Leigh's head is still as she drives her car, it ALMOST looks like the good old movie we all know and love. But when she moves around the real estate office...video. As for the camera moves, in Psycho, Hitchcock's many sinuous camera moves have a jerky, sudden feel to them in 4-D, as if an amateur was manning the camera.

Modern films have "FULL" 4-D effects -- I guess they were shot on digital to begin with. A movie like Psycho has been "modified digitally" to create the 4-D effect. And yet, on the Psycho DVD, when I ran the old 1960 trailer(Hitchcock as tour guide) and the 1960 promotional film showing people lining up for Psycho in NYC....mercifully, the 4-D effect could not take hold. Well, there was a BIT of the 4-D effect in the trailer, as Hitchcock stood in front of the Psycho house to talk to us, its as if the shot of the house was on a screen behind him and he was a "pop up" figure in front of it.

A friend told me this week, "Even when you turn off the 4-D , it doesn't entirely go away" and so I'm in a quandry. Do I go find an "old" TV to buy? I want my movies back! I did find that watching the TV image through slightly dirty reading eyeglasses defeated the "video" effect somewhat. Is THAT how I must view movies on TV going forward?

Oh, well. The future is here. Whether we want it or not.

And I guess I'd kinda like to see what NXNW and The Birds look like as video-taped TV live dramas...