The current 3-D craze likely won’t last, but if past Hollywood history is any indication, it will emerge again in a different form down the road.
Film Forum spotlights the first “golden age” of 3-D movies in a four-day retrospective beginning Friday, consisting of 1950s musicals, creature features and one Alfred Hitchcock classic.
MGM’s version of the Cole Porter classic “Kiss Me Kate,” a backstage musical inspired by “The Taming of the Shrew,” starts things off on Friday, with additional screenings on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
Horror is well-represented: There’s 3-D icon Vincent Price in “House of Wax” (with its groundbreaking stereophonic sound) and the beloved “Creature from the Black Lagoon” with its eternallyweird Gill Man,alongside a ThreeStooges short.
Toward the end of the ’50s love affair with 3-D came Hitchcock’s “Dial M for Murder,” a noir classic starring Ray Milland and Grace Kelly. The stereoscopic version didn’t do particularly well upon its initial release, but it remains an object of fascination both because it’s the only time the cinematic master worked in the format and because of the ways it evokes the film’s stage play roots.
If you go: Classic 3-D is at Film Forum from Friday through Nov. 3, 209 W. Houston St.
