MovieChat Forums > How the West Was Won (1963) Discussion > No close ups - must have driven the "How...

No close ups - must have driven the "How The West.." directors crazy....

posted 10 years ago by moviethrush
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As was pointed out in the excellent Cinerama documentary that's included in the Blu-Ray, the inability of the camera to do close-ups of the actors was a major drawback for the directors of "How The West Was Won"...this, of course, never bothered the directors of the Cinerama travelogues, but the close-up is a major tool in a feature film director's paintbox for accentuating the emotion of a scene and provoking audience response...which is why almost all of the dialogue scenes in the film, seem flat and uninvolving to me.Only Robert Preston, in his sad, bittersweet unsuccessful courtship of Debbie Reynolds,made an impact by the sheer force of his personality..but I'd also include Richard Widmark as the irascible, heartless railroad boss.

A few other odd random things: James Stewart merely shows up as a covered up corpse in the Civil War sequence...always looked strange that this major actor wouldn't have an actual appearance in this sequence...either footage was shot and never used, or maybe Stewart just wasn't available when they started shooting the Civil War section....

George Peppard's return to his farm after the civil war. He and his brother exchange a
...mild, barely-there handshake? After all the tragedy and loss...no embrace, no hug?

[–] arbilab 10 years ago

You couldn't pan or tilt either. The horizon would fisheye distractingly. Similar with Todd-AO.

HTW3 contained the death knell for 3-strip Cinerama. The riverboat sequence was shot in Super Panavision 70. The 3-S camera was too cumbersome, the audience would gag on the bobbing/bowing horizons, and it was proof of concept for Panavision-- designed specifically to circumvent the limitations of AO and 3S.

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[–] Andrew_S_Hatton 9 years ago

George Peppard's return to his farm after the civil war. He and his brother exchange a
...mild, barely-there handshake? After all the tragedy and loss...no embrace, no hug?

Young brothers - hug - in 1962 - come-on - we didn't begin touchy feely until the summer of love - flower power and all that jazz in 1967 -

The sixties did not really begin for hardly anyone until the Beatles got going in 1962/3 but for many of us - we did not really appreciate things might be changing - in Europe - until we had the student riots in 1968 - by then we could tell that the student age generation - were rejecting the stiff upper lip - speak when your spoken to - look up to your elders & betters - that those who had survived the war took for granted.

In 1968, in London - I started working for a New York bank, who were part of the financial revolution of the latter half of the sixties in Europe - I had been working for a British Bank for the previous three years where there were strict codes of dress and etiquette and a definite clear hierarchy. Imagine my shock - when I was expected to call my head of department by his GIVEN name (he was a he - no thought of she bosses in 1968) and we did not talk about GIVEN names only CHRISTIAN names - despite there being many non Christians - calling a boss by his personal name was one thing - but hugging - men - even brothers - DEFINITELY not - maybe it would have been common place in 1860s USA - but I doubt it & it had definitely gone out of fashion by the 1960s among British blokes!