A Lost Dimension

Marcin Giżycki

Abstract

Mirrors, contrary to popular belief, do not always faithfully reflect reality. They can deceive us, which illusionists and visitors to rooms with distorting mirrors at a fun fair know full well. Deceptive mirrors are a common motif in the cinema, which was well demonstrated by Bergman in The Magician, or Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai. The first film in which distorting mirrors were used to show a world made out of rubber was La Folie du Docteur Tube (1915) by Abel Gance. The film tells the story of a scientist who experiments with various substances in his laboratory. Finally he obtains a white powder, which makes things and persons sprinkled with it change shape in a funny, and sometimes grotesque way. The author argues that for some time now, we have been living in the mad world of doctor Tube. But what is surprising, nobody seems to mind. The advent of the HD television with an aspect ratio of 16:9, together with the continued existence of the old format of 4:3, means that in many homes, but also at film festivals, programs and films are displayed in a wrong way - elongated or compressed, like in a distorting mirror. Moreover it seems that most members of the audience do not notice this.