Roger Ebert, 3-D, and the Strain of Talkies

Celebrated film critic and dabbling Luddite Roger Ebert is at it again:

I received a letter that ends, as far as I am concerned, the discussion about 3D. It doesn't work with our brains and it never will.

The notion that we are asked to pay a premium to witness an inferior and inherently brain-confusing image is outrageous. The case is closed.

Well, I sure am glad that one's off the table. You may remember the last debate that Ebert helpfully settled for us in a blog post titled "Video games can never be art." (He eventually backed off.) Now, with Nintendo 3DS poised to bring 3-D movies to the mass market, the gaming crowd is all riled up again over this latest piece.

It should be pretty obvious that I am hardly opposed to strongly-worded controversial opinion pieces in the abstract. But this is just a new wrinkle on an old, old argument that doesn't hold up.

Ebert's letter-writer is Walter Murch, a film editor and sound designer with a panoply of credits and accolades. Murch writes of the things that make 3-D inferior to 2-D film – the image is darker and smaller, it's hard for the eyes to converge on the image, etc.

I'm hardly about to jump into the technical discussion here, as I'm sure that experts in 3-D visuals will be happy to engage Murch on these points. But here, according to Murch, is the net effect of all of these shortcomings:

3D films remind the audience that they are in a certain "perspective" relationship to the image. ... Whereas if the film story has really gripped an audience they are "in" the picture in a kind of dreamlike "spaceless" space. So a good story will give you more dimensionality than you can ever cope with.

Ah yes, the unquantifiable "dreamlike state." This is what a friend once said to me when he was arguing for the superiority of black-and-white film. This is the same thing as when vinyl enthusiasts say the sound is "warmer."

It's the old comfortable shoe argument against new technology.

Might not Murch have a point about 3-D putting an undue strain on viewers? Perhaps. But what did the critics of the time say about other major technological innovations in moviemaking, things we would never give up today?

Here are the editors of Photoplay magazine in 1929, as quoted in the 1999 book The Talkies: America's Transition to Sound (emphasis ours):

[The] public is not so sure that they will continue to be satisfied with full length, all-dialogue entertainment. Nine out of ten say they would rather have a first rate silent picture than a second rate talking picture. They complain of the mediocre photography and static quality of the acting in the talking versions, and are sensible of the greater sense exertion and brain effort demanded by them. ... There are many who say they will not attend any more full length talking pictures because of the added strain, but there are many more who name several short subjects they have enjoyed hugely.

Hmm, so spoken dialogue in movies was thought to impose an undue strain on the brains of the audience? The parallel goes further: Other sources quoted in the book said that audiences "regretted the loss of the 'soothing' or almost hypnotic state induced by watching silent movies."

So you see, talkies will never work. Case closed.

Photo: nlnnet/Flickr