3D Glasses Included: ‘The Glass Web’ Reviewed
by Rachel Bellwoar
Don (John Forsythe) didn’t kill Paula (Kathleen Hughes) – he just had an affair with her but, after finding her dead, Don knows who the police are going to suspect. Today Jack Arnold is best known for directing sci-fi hits like The Incredible Shrinking Man. He was also known to be a sexual predator according to film scholar Jason A. Ney in his commentary. With The Glass Web, noir isn’t a genre that tends to require 3D effects, and once the initial wonder wears off, that is the question this film raises – why make this one in 3D?
To its credit, The Glass Web really is 3D. The whole film is about showcasing depth of field and creating layers to every scene, not just a select few. The 3D Film Archive did an incredible job with the restoration. Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray offers a few different ways to watch it. Unless you have a 3D TV and player, the 3D version won’t play but the version you want to click on is called “anaglyphic.” In layman’s terms, that’s the version you can watch with classic red and blue 3D glasses. Selfishly I wish Kino Lorber had included two pairs with this release but they do include one.
The sequences that really show off the 3D effects are the opening which is set in a TV studio and a sequence later on in the movie when a terrified Don is mindlessly walking around and, because he’s not watching where he’s going, there are a lot of close calls. The wild part is it sounds like both of those scenes almost didn’t make it in (or at least the TV studio one was going to be 2D).
At different points Ney hands the commentary over to Mike Ballew (who’s working on a book called Close Enough to Touch: 3D Comes to Hollywood) and the 3D Film Archive’s Greg Kintz, and according to Bellow, the film’s co-screenwriter, Robert Blees, claimed that sequence where Don almost gets himself killed was a last minute addition in order to take advantage of the 3D. Also in the commentary is audio from an interview with Hughes. Ney brings up that Hughes (at the time of recording) was the last surviving member from the production. Unfortunately that’s no longer the case – Hughes passed away in May at age 96.
Besides Forsythe, the other big cast member is Edward G. Robinson. Don’s a writer for a true crime live show called (unoriginally) Crime of the Week and Robinson’s Henry is the researcher who’s a stickler for getting the details right on all of the crimes they cover. He’s also an art collector (according to Ney, Robinson was a collector in real life and that could explain that character detail – Robinson also famously played an artist in Scarlet Street).
The Glass Web is a perfectly pleasant way to spend (not even) an hour and a half. It’s not necessarily a film that sticks in the brain long after watching it but watching a 3D film is a nice change of pace overall (even if The Glass Web didn’t really need to be 3D – not even the murder benefits from the technology).
The Glass Web is available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.
