‘The Diamond Wizard’: The curious case of Britain’s first 3D movie
Until James Cameron‘s Avatar arrived and convinced every major studio that their latest release needed a rushed 3D post-conversion, donning spectacles to increase immersion in cinema had settled back into its status as an occasional gimmick.
The first boom period came during the 1950s, a time when audiences turned up in their droves to experience films in another dimension, but the first-ever British feature made specifically for 3D presents one of the artform’s most curious cases in isolation.
Adapted from the novel Rich is the Treasure, 1954’s The Diamond Wizard traces the adventures of Dennis O’Keefe’s treasury agent Joe Dennison, who descends upon London to continue tracking a criminal gang who’ve recently heisted freshly-minted American dollars. With Philip Friend’s Scotland Yard agent Inspector McClaren in tow, they attempt to infiltrate the organisation and end up thwarting a ring producing fake diamonds.
A noir crime thriller doesn’t seem ideally suited to 3D, but The Diamond Wizard has nonetheless been enshrined in history as the United Kingdom’s maiden foray. That’s a piece of history that can never be taken away, but things take a turn for the strange on account of the fact it only appears to have ever been screened once in the format, which didn’t come until half a century after its release.
According to the British Film Institute, the only recorded screening of The Diamond Wizard in 3D happened in September 2006, with the original print having been lost. As a result, it’s become almost impossible to see the film in the manner it was intended to be seen, adding an unlikely footnote to its trailblazing status.
Although it began its theatrical run in April 1954 in Britain before making its Stateside bow in July, there are no accounts from the time of The Diamond Wizard actually ever being shown in 3D on the big screen. That’s not to say it didn’t happen at all, but if it did, either nobody who was there decided to make a note of it, or anybody who did doesn’t remember being there.
There are even disagreements over who directed it, too, with the local release crediting Montgomery Tully as the man behind the camera, while America opted to list star O’Keefe as the person responsible for calling the shots from behind the camera. The Diamond Wizard was shot on a specially commissioned and constructed camera rig dubbed as the Spacemaster, but any 3D copies appear to have been lost to the sands of time.
The regular old 2D version is readily available for viewing consumption, but beyond being restored in 3D and made available on Blu-ray in 2022, an original print of The Diamond Wizard in its original and unaltered form has been so difficult to track down that it’s started to take on a mythical status.
