The Cinema of 3D Attractions
By Antonio Bullon Puckett
The guy sitting next to me at the Film Forum is munching his popcorn way too loud. In my peripheral vision, I notice he’s not closing his mouth when he eats. Gross. How am I expected to get really immersed in “Alfred Hitchcock in 3D” with this guy next to me? Also, those 3D glasses take some getting used to. I got a headache when I first put them on. They’re strangely greasy from previous patrons of the theater. After all this inner complaining I remember: I didn’t come here for a normal moviegoing experience; I came to see a movie in 3D. I’m not here for a deep story, I’m here for cheap thrills. And I certainly don’t need to be engaged with the narrative of Dial M for Murder for me to have a visceral reaction when Grace Kelly literally reaches her hand behind her back, towards the audience, to grab a knife.
It’s convenient that I’m seeing Dial M for Murder in 3D at this exact moment. In two of my classes, we’re looking at film theorist Tom Gunning’s historical analysis of early pre-1907 cinema, what he calls the “Cinema of Attractions”. Gunning says that until 1907, films were aimed at stimulating the senses. Films like those by Lumiere brothers didn’t offer much in the way of narrative, but they did appeal to the people’s excitement towards a new technical apparatus and the sensual possibilities it might offer. These films, Gunning says, belong to the “Cinema of Attractions,” one that is associated with amusement parks, roller-coasters, magic shows, and other popular entertainment that began to flourish in the late nineteenth century. During that era, there were rides at fairgrounds called Hale’s Tour of the World where they would put people in a giant box, project a simple film on one side of the box, and shake the box to simulate a 4D experience of what it would be like to ride a railway or train. With this in mind, what is a 3D film if not a continuation of this earlier trend in film history? Gunning says that the narrative mode took over as the dominant form of cinema in 1907, and has remained the dominant pole ever since. Spectacle is used frequently as a formal device in narrative films, especially in genres like horror and action, but it no longer retains the stylistic dominance that it had in early cinema. Gunning says that the entire history of cinema as an art form has been a “dialectic” between these two poles: spectacle and narrative.
Dial M for Murder in 3D is an interesting case study with regards to this dialectic. On the one hand, the 3D aspect clearly prioritizes spectacle and technical achievement over anything else. It’s not as much of a whodunnit as other Hitchcock narratives, and because of a limited range of settings used, there’s almost none of Hitchcock’s trademark voyeurism. But there’s still something undeniably voyeuristic about the 3D illusion that makes you feel like you are in the apartment building watching the story unfold. Rather than completely eschew the narrative dimension, it feels like the 3D experimentation in Dial M for Murder creates new forms of narrative identification. In many ways, 3D is the logical extension of the sadomasochistic scopophilia (pleasure in viewing) that feminist psychoanalytic film critics such as Laura Mulvey have criticized Hitchcock’s films for. It can create an intensified sense of voyeurism because of the increased depth and characters reaching right towards you, past the confines of the screen. All of this makes you feel like you’re really there - as an invisible, perverse presence - in a way that a 2D image can’t quite emulate. Again, the limited number of settings used dampens the potential of this 3D voyeurism a bit. But you can imagine movies like Rear Window, Vertigo, and even Psycho really benefiting from this 3D effect.
As much as 3D can pull you into a film’s story - through voyeurism - it can also distance you from what you’re watching. You’re wearing these ugly, bulky glasses for about two hours, it’s only natural that you take them off at some point to rest your eyes. But if you do that, the illusion is immediately broken. If you look at the screen without your 3D glasses on, it looks like a jumbled mess. Mulvey’s theory links the sadomasochist male gaze to classical Hollywood narrative and form, which requires constant immersion, and therefore constant identification. Any breaks in the narrative continuity also means a break in the voyeuristic experience. Even though the 3D would seem to be a perfect complement to this ideological immersion, when it’s done poorly or not used enough, it can break continuity and any sense of personal involvement in the story.
In other words, narrative is associated with voyeurism, and 3D with spectacle, yet there is something voyeuristic about the 3D effect itself. As with most dialectics, there is a synthesis between the thesis and antithesis. Which part of Gunning’s dialectic attracted me to this specific screening? I think it was the sheer spectacle of the 3D. Otherwise, I would have stayed at home and watched the film on my laptop, like I’ve done with other Hitchcock classics. In that sense, Dial M for Murder in 3D didn’t win me over on the narrative level, but as an exhibition of technical virtuosity, I thought it was pretty engaging. If a film released seventy years ago can manage to get me out of my apartment and take a train thirty minutes downtown to see it, then the studio’s gamble on 3D in the fifties has retroactively paid off. Dial M for Murder may not be all that attractive on its own as a narrative film, but with the 3D added, it suddenly becomes a cultural artifact worth preserving and revisiting.
But when the 3D effects are left out of the equation, this isn’t Hitchcock at his best, mainly due to the limited setting. It’s an entertaining watch, but nowhere near some of his masterpieces. Dial M for Murder in 3D is ultimately an uneasy synthesis of Gunning’s two discourses; 3D as a stylistic device attracts attention to itself as a spectacle; but it also has narrative use as far as building increased identification with the voyeuristic camera. 3D, which has popped up again in recent years, represents a return of cinema’s repressed: spectacle. With digital cinema, special effects come to the forefront again, and film history comes full circle.
