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In France, only a few years later, Abel Gance introduced in 1927 a three dimensional effect in
his extraordinary long running masterpiece, Napoléon. It had been meant for the famous final
tryptich scene, which presented three parallel views of the same moment side by side to create
a panoramic effect (named Polyvision): “La partie centrale du triptyque c´est de la prose et les
deux parties latérales sont de la poésie, le tout s´appelant du cinéma”, Gance said (“The central
part of the tryptich is the prose, the lateral ones are the poetry, and the whole of it is called
cinema”).

Incidentally, Henri Chrétien, the astronomer who in 1926 came up with a panoramic lens
(hypergonar) which would become CinemaScope, had attended the Napoléon première at the
Paris Opera on April 7, 1927, after which he went on occasional filmaking to demonstrate how
his lens could provide and improve the widescreen.
Gance, besides filming with separate cameras to achieve the effect, also shot the scene using
one more camera with an early color and dual-strip anaglyphic stereoscopic process, to be
viewed with red and green spectacles. But in the end he dismissed the roll after seeing the
rushes, so the audience would not be overwhelmed by too many special effects together. That
footage has not been recovered to date, but considering that Gance´s final cut was 9 hours long,
and the many restorations carried by different researchers, it could well be somewhere in
France.

The following is an excerpt from Kevin Brownlow´s book, The Parade´s Gone By (1968):
“So determined was he (Gance) to out do himself, and everybody else, with the climax of
Napoléon, that he filmed it not only in Polyvision (side-to-side), but in 3D and color as well”.

Below: Filming a scene with multiple cameras

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