This was actually the first Cinerama film at the Cinerama Festival that I saw. Being an original print, in fact the very last known of its kind, the color was somewhat pink throughout most of this picture. Despite the discoloration, I actually enjoyed this most of all the films I saw during the week (SFP, Windjammer & This is Cinerama). I even caught a glimpse of some reds, greens and yellows in the Royal Parade in Katmandu. To me, this represented the closest vision of the true goal of a Cinerama film - to thrill, educate and captivate. I had such fun I left the theater feeling like I had actually visited the places we went in the film. This film had it all - had it been released in summer of '57 it could have been a blockbuster!
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A mostly delightful collection of cinerama visit to exotic places, highlighted for me by the jeep ride through the Himalayas (given an interesting pronunciation that I'd never heard by narrator Lowell Thomas) in the country of Nepal that is quite rugged and dangerous. The aerial shots leading to the range are at such a strange angle that I didn't really see much from that perception, but happily changed when they got to the ground. The rugged road is a nice journey that the viewer can take from a much more comfortable spot, and once the destination is reached (the end of the road), the viewer gets to join a bunch of Nepalese children for a day of school. It made me think of the musical version of "Lost Horizon", and I expected either Liv Ullman or Bobby Van to come out and sing a lesson to these adorable kids.
But that doesn't happen. There's instead songs of varying themes from unseen baritone Robert Merrill, not all that good, his voice a bit shrill with the songs chosen. A royal wedding in the local big city gets barraged with anti-communist propaganda by Thomas, a rather eye rolling moment that only briefly disturbs the narrative. The third part is a bit of American propaganda as it deals with Air Force drills only of interest to students in military history. I found that this was a good place to start spinning my wings and move onto something else. Probably impressive on a big screen but without a plot, boring on video. Last quarter not quite paradise with Thomas's preachy narration definitely agenda driven. -
cynthiahost15 November 2014I finally got to see this Cinerama Classic in great shape.On blue ray and DVD Combo.Both disc are excellent.In this episode Lowell Thomas informs,this time in small color screen,that he and the Cinerama crew are going to explore the Himalayas as well as a royal celebration of possibly the late Durbar in Nepal of a king coronation , since Asia was getting modern.He invited his secretary to with him too.Right in the airplane the Cinerama crew meet two military men air force. Sergent,played by James Parker,who died in this film drowned from an accident on the boat in the Induce as well as a an air force Major ,played by poet and personal friend of Lowell Thomas ,Christoper Young.They are being carried by a military carrier.Then one of the assistance looks out of the plane windows to see what going on ,then Lowell looks out and Boom!,the screen get huge as the curtains open up and the sound becomes stereo and Lowell narrates.Thousands of solder jumping off airplanes and parachuting in a wonder decorations on the sky fill the whole curb screen in this 1950's American patriotic ,military, propaganda travelogue .This movie would offend demo publican and pseudo liberal conservatives ,since they want to deny bad things in the past.This is when the whole plane carrier ,in side, becomes very spacious itself,thanks to the very small lens. Robert Merrill,when he was really young, sings some of the Song in the back drop of the film with Dimitri Tiomkin music and Chorus,which is excellent in it's stereo.The songs are ,The happy Land of Hunza.The Kashmir Street scene,Search for Paradise ,Shalimar,which shows a beautiful garden in the east as Gary sings in the back drop.The most exciting scene is when you see this big huge Cinerama camera in a sound blimp on an inflatable boat ready to ride the induce .Although my screen was small ,in a huge Cinerama screen it would be very affective .I read that Cinerama had water squirts all over the theater for that sequence for the affects and everyone was given a rain coat.That's when the accident happen, in the Induce .Lowell Thomas and the crew participated in the coronation of the king in Nepal.The visit included the representative of the Chinese communist as well as the founder of the Mayo Clinic to.The Cinerama camera is put on one of the elephants for the affect.As the elephant ride was over,the crew went back to America and focus on the Air force and it's new planes .This started to remind me of A Nazi propaganda war movie ,but, this was the 1950's.There's a fake set up of an alleged laboratory to test the sound barrier as the plane our being tested .One of the test cause the glass to shatter on the windows of the phony laboratory .Near the end Dimitri Tiomkins music was the best with the chorus as it swells up as the planes go forward into space .Good entertaining Cinerama classic .11/15/14
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This was the fourth (out of five) Cinerama travelogues and the final one hosted by Lowell Thomas. It is by far the worst. It has the weakest premise of the five and is most boring. The problems are many. Most of the film is shot on hazy days (after all, the locations are all hot and humid), making the film seem pale and washed out. The focus is far from crisp on all shots. There is very little of beauty, either natural or man-made, as the first half takes us on an exploration of Himalayan foothills, all gray and barren, broken only by a brief hiatus among the greenery of Hunza. The second half briefly stops off at the Shalimar Gardens, then laboriously chronicles a coronation in Nepal, Katmandu, which goes on for half an hour, a quarter of the running time. The buildings are hundreds of years old, look quite medieval, and the poor are everywhere. Very squalid and run down, dry and hot.
There is some beautiful footage in the second act in the Shalimar Gardens and River Boat sequences, but this gives us only fifteen minutes of the two hour running time. The last quarter hour is a tribute to the Air Force with plane maneuvers photographed from the air.
Thomas' narration is as always puerile and condescending, as if he were talking to fifth graders. He is able to get in many jibes at the Red China Communist delegation that attends the coronation, thus providing anti-Communist propaganda.
It is one great crashing bore. The usual physical beauty of locations world over that are part of the other Cinerama productions is completely absent in this film.
The score by Tiomkin with four songs badly written and badly sung by Robert Merrill is a complete embarrassment. One of the worst musical scores ever written.
If you are collecting the eight Cinerama films, you must of course have this, but be warned that it is the least entertaining, the most boring, and the most visually empty of the eight.