FILM SCREENINGS

Robinson Crusoe

1947. USSR. Directed by Aleksandr Andriyevsky. With Pavel Kadochnikov, Yuri Lyubimov. Robinson Crusoe is widely considered the first feature-length 3-D film. It ran exclusively in a Moscow cinema from 1947 to 1949 and was an enormous success. Sergei Eiseinstein, who thrilled to the possibilities of 3-D cinema, wrote in 1947 that, “it is as naïve to doubt that the stereoscopic film is the tomorrow of cinema as it is to doubt that tomorrow will come… All we have seen on the screen so far is merely lonely Robinsonades. Is it not symbolic that the best among these is precisely the screen version of the story of Robinson Crusoe?” A duplicated positive print of the film has been transferred to a digital 3-D format, preserving the nearly square aspect ratio and the original Russian soundtrack. Although there is some Russian dialogue, the story is so well known as not to require subtitles, which would mar the 3-D experience. 74 min.