The 1952 debut of Cinerama made headlines and dazzled audiences, who had never seen movies so big. Ten years later the unwieldy process was on its way to the scrap heap. Now a dedicated band of fanatics is fighting long odds to preserve the last remnants of the panoramic screen format-with the help of Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen

t is one thing to fall in love with movies. Everyone falls in love with movies. Sinking boat plus Leonardo DiCaprio equals tens of millions of rapt and tearful teenage girls who for the rest of their lives will have an unlikely soft spot for James Cameron. Falling in love: that's what movies - still the most seductive medium ever invented - are here for.

It's another thing, a far more rarefied and perhaps a nobler thing, certainly an odder thing, to fall in love with a movie process.