Some stars go over to television others make the most of their forced holidays and come to Europe to act in a co-production over an eighteen-month period, thus avoiding the paying of income tax - which is well worth the corresponding loss of Hollywood salary. But it is not that alarming, and it won't get worse for at least a few months, because television needs a lot of small films that can be quickly made and in which there is work for many people. The situation will probably be more serious for the unemployed technicians and actors. This means, of course, that the technical experiment will be relatively controlled and that Hollywood will probably be able to draw some conclusions as soon as the moviegoing wind starts blowing one way or another. They can probably all afford to indulge in a long period of Malthusianism without being threatened with extinction. None of the American companies, in spite of a film-consumption crisis that has become worse and worse over the last five years, are yet on the verge of bankruptcy.

By investing totally in CinemaScope, Fox is not repeating Warner Brothers’ gamble with talkies. But, again, this confusion and decline have not become panic and hysteria, at least not yet. Clearly, the heyday of Hollywood is over. While some big companies almost completely ceased production only a few months ago, one can see a minor company like Monogram double its annual schedule for the production of B-movies for normal screens. To be sure, great confusion still reigns, and one can see the ‘major companies’ taking the most contradictory measures each one has its own strategy - or claims it has, for it is very often the same strategy under a different name. First, we can observe that this time the crisis is not turning into chaos or panic. Let's start with some interesting facts of a very general nature. The aim of this article, then, is precisely to try to create some order out of all this. At least everybody thinks he knows these things, for the details of the problem are not that simple. Everybody knows, too, that Hollywood is forced to accept the risks of such an endeavor - which totally upsets the norms not only of production, but also of distribution - in view of the acute competition represented by television. Everybody knows by now, even the average moviegoer, that Hollywood is trying to come to terms with one of the most severe economic crises in its history through the introduction of both 3-D, whose avant-garde stereoscopy has already been seen on French screens, and CinemaScope, whose big war machine, The Robe, has already been shown in New York and is soon going to be exhibited in Europe.

Cinescope mask