Bradford Widescreen Weekend 2024

We are so conditioned to watching old movies on tiny screens it comes as something of a primal shock to see them in all their original glory. Most festivals lean towards the arthouse end of the cinema business so it’s all the more delightful to find an event that without apology concentrates on the mainstream. Widescreen Weekend takes place at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, England, and mostly in its Pictureville Cinema, the only venue in the country equipped to show Cinerama pictures in the original three-strip version which requires three projectors.

And while most other film festivals attract general movie lovers, this one appears to appeal in large part to those who have had something to do with the movie-making business or its technical side. Speakers might include, for example, Cinerama restoration specialist Dave Strohmaier or Kevin Brownlow, editor turned director, and among the audience you might find people like Keith Stevens from Australia, a former operations executive with Village Roadshow there, but who started out as a projectionist and regaled me with tales of projecting The Sound of Music (1965) in its original roadshow run.

There’s a limited number of movies that were made, mostly in the 1960s, either in Cinerama or 70mm, so the event has expanded to take in the earlier Cinemascope and the other versions of widescreen technology on which Hollywood depended as the marketing hook to bring back audiences from the all-encompassing maw of television in the 1950s. Later films whose directors understood the cinematic impact of 70mm are also added to the mix.

You are transported back to a time when screens were just enormous – this one is 51ft wide – and were curtained, and those curtains would not open (to the sides) until in typical roadshow fashion, a lengthy musical Overture, highlighting aspects of the movie’s music, had run its course. There is something quite sumptuous about sitting in a movie theatre staring at huge red curtains and waiting for the house lights to dim and the music to begin.

Roughly half-way through the movie itself, the curtains would close for an intermission, and before the picture restarted there would be more music, what was termed the Entr’Acte. Some DVDS of roadshows contain both Overture and Entr’Acte but there is a lightyear of difference between hearing them in your lounge and being exposed to them in a picture house built to bring out their best sound.

This is a homage not just to old movies but the old way of seeing a movie.

In previous years the programs have included Ice Station Zebra (1968), West Side Story (1961), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Ryan’s Daughter (1970), Khartoum (1965), a pair from William Wyler that could not have been more diverse – Ben-Hur (1959) and Funny Girl (1968) – This Is Cinerama (1952), and Carol Reed’s  The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). Throw in a healthy helping of 1950s Cinemascope and Vistavision features and more contemporary pictures which embraced 70mm and you have the makings of an always satisfying weekend.

So one of the highlights is to see old favorites. This year we are being treated to the three-strip version of How the West Was Won (1962), your feet tapping immediately at the sound of the driving Alfred Newman score, David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago (1965), which was blown up from 35mm to 70mm for roadshow, one of the original Cinerama travelogs Seven Wonders of the World (1956) and Stanley Donen musical Funny Face (1957) in Vistavision. For many the highlight will be a showing of the forgotten La Fayette (1962) in 70mm, at the time the most expensive French movie ever made.

There’s a Hitchcock strand including the 70mm version of Vertigo (1958), Cleopatra (1962) in 70mm, John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1961).

The event takes place in two cinemas so there’s up to six movies a day. This year’s edition begins today and ends on Monday. I’ll be there. If you’re going and are a subscriber to my blog feel free to say hello.