John Hora, ASC
The Robe (1953)
"For me, one of the most memorable cinema moments was the introduction of CinemaScope. In December of 1953, The Robe came to our local theater in Pasadena. At one point we were waiting outside by the candy counter for an earlier show to finish, and I sneaked in to get a glimpse. I saw this huge, wide image, and heard the marvelous music. I was sold before I even got into the theater.
"Once we got into our seats, we saw the conventional newsreel, and the last item on the newsreel was CinemaScope. They showed you the lenses, and the tests scenes made in Paris that were all squeezed. The newsreel ended, and the voice of Darryl Zanuck came through the darkness, explaining that this was Fox's new program that was going to revolutionize cinema.
"CinemaScope was a whole program. Because of Fox's ongoing engineering efforts — going back to 70mm, which they had introduced in the 1930s — they had superior technology. The package included the optics, the projection lenses, the add-on magnetic sound heads, the high-gain screen, the CinemaScope print stock, and their movies. The films were all to be shot in color, and in a manner somewhat similar to Cinerama, with a large wide shot, not close-ups. All of those films put a lot of grandeur on the screen.
"Then The Robe started, not with the normal Fox fanfare but with the choral music that is the main prelude. Here was this great four-channel sound, with three channels behind the screen and one surround channel. The chorus was in the surround, all around you and up in the sky. It was magical right at that very moment.
"On the screen at that point was the Fox logo, but a brand-new one created specifically for Cine-maScope. Usually the Fox logo is against clouds. In the old versions, the searchlights cross in front of the '20th.' In the version created for CinemaScope, they'd widened out that futuristic city that the '20th' is built on, and no searchlights crossed in front of it — they were off to the side. The background was a red curtain, and all of the main titles played against it. Then the curtain opened, as it would over the proscenium, originally. The film actually started with the opening of the curtain. It was a very theatrical kind of presentation — showmanship is what it was.
"The Robe was done in Beverly Hills, so Jerusalem, Palm Sunday, and all of that stuff is right there in Century City. It's a smaller film, but it has a marvelous antique quality. The art direction and design is terribly convincing. It's like looking at history books with illustrations of Roman ruins and so on. Of course, the cinematography by Leon Shamroy, ASC was superlative. The script was very nicely written, with good dialogue. Richard Burton is actually quite good in the picture, even though he considered it to be one of the worst things he'd done. The music, photography, art direction and dialogue just totally removed you from Pasadena in 1953, and put you back in the first century A.D. — and did so awfully convincingly.
"At the time, I was in junior high school. We were reading Caesar's journals, so we were all tuned up for anything that happened in The Robe, even though it was an awfully heavy story for kids. For us it was like time-travel to this ancient world. We went to see it each weekend while it played, basically for the image. We went to see it for the CinemaScope, to hear the music and see this gigantic wild image.
"At the time I saw The Robe, I was already on the path that would lead me to a life in cinematography. But the film left me with very strong impressions about what the film experience should be. Today's Imax films, which look and sound great, could take a lesson in showmanship from The Robe. To this day, when I am working on a film, I try to remember and re-create that sense of grandeur."
—as told to David Heuring
John Hora's credits as a director of photography include The Howling; Twilight Zone: The Movie (Episode 3); Gremlins; Explorers; Honey, I Blew Up the Kid and Matinee.
© 1999 ASC