Mr Kubrick's masterpiece, in retrospect.
2001 at the Sydney Orpheum
Despite including pages in this site that describe in great detail the various formats used for various films over the years (see Tom Brown's "Widescreen Cinema" and the contributions made by Mark Baldock and others in the "Viewpoints #2" page), and having watched 2001 and countless other films in cinemas over the years, I had never seen 2001 in its "natural" unprojected state, nor did I know what a 70mm projector looked like.
That was until another 2001 season a year or two ago in Sydney, courtesy of the Hayden company, which owns the rights to 2001 in Australia and its own flagship "picture palace", the Cremorne Hayden Orpheum. No ordinary cinema, the Orpheum is a restored classic of the traditional art deco style of movie theatre and several light years removed from the semi- industrial multi- cubicle cattle stalls of today.
Hayden responded to an enquiry I made by giving me the run of the projection room while projectionist John Wilson was setting the film up for another showing. Shortly beforehand, Hayden had commissioned a brand new 70mm reprint of 2001 from the master (I believe 3 masters exist, one of them held by Stanley Kubrick himself). Before Sydney, it had only been seen in Melbourne, and those who came had a real treat - this was as good a showing as I had ever seen and heard, visually and aurally magnificent. Hats off to Hayden for finding the $A20,000 that the reprint cost and for their continuing commitment to 2001 (and thanks to John for "finding" me a handful of "snips" from an earlier print!).
Given the publicity that surrounded the special re- release of Star Wars, and the great expense that was taken to restore that film to its original condition and beyond, I was curious to know how the 2001 masters were standing up to the test of time, and was interested to learn that these are still the original masters. The print I viewed was so stunning that there is clearly nothing much wrong with the originals! Which made me wonder quite what happened with Star Wars. From the television special recording its restoration, the original prints looked very sad indeed.
Looking at the pictures below, you can see (top left - apologies to all those who are familiar with this information) that 2001 doesn't come wound on a big spool or two. It all comes in one single reel that lies horizontally on a platter. Yes, that is the whole thing you see (if you look hard, it's all that dark stuff on the lower platter) - I had expected it to take up more volume. You can see John winding the start of the film from the lower platter (actually, the middle one of three) on to the one above. Getting it up those few vertical inches involves a very involved path through a loom across the room, through the projector and back again - you can see part of this in the picture at the top right. All done to minimise any stress on the film as it runs, and ensure it won't kink or do anything drastic half way through.
The second "platter" picture was taken during the intermission. The entire audio- visual content is held on the same film, including the sound- only overture and entr'acte. A new perspective on what the intermission looks like in 2001! John also explained how the audio and visual tracks are "staggered" by several frames, so that when running through the projector the right sounds coincide with the right frames.
The two pictures in the middle show one of the two projectors to the left (in fact, this was not the 2001 projector, this was used to run the smaller- gauge trailers, but the 2001 projector looks the same), and the actual film wound through the projector to the right.
At the bottom, a few general shots of the cinema.
All text and Orpheum photographs: Copyright © 1997, 1998 by Underman