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Aspect Ratio Documentation (3 Viewers)

Robert Crawford

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Yorkshire said:
Yes Bob, we know that. It's not in dispute that this is what the article said.

Look Bob, no one is criticising your research or saying it's wrong. well done for finding those documents and articles - excellent stuff. I'm sure they are correct, in as far as they go.

What's being said is that the facts - what the directors of the time have told Criterion to do with the aspect ratio of their films - appear to show that the recommendation was ignored, certainly be 100% of the British directors who've had their films released on Criterion who composed for non-anamorphic widescreen during the late '50s and '60s.

Steve W
In fairness to all, if that's your point then don't reference Bob's posts so he feels the need to defend himself against you.
 

Yorkshire

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Robert Crawford said:
In fairness to all, if that's your point then don't reference Bob's posts so he feels the need to defend himself against you.
Very puzzled. Bob doesn't need to defend himself at all. He's said himself that new evidence is being discovered all the time.

All I'm doing is adding more evidence to the mix, whilst respectfully noting where we were before it emerged.

Steve W
 

Yorkshire

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Moe Dickstein said:
Also you need to reference the inserts on those criterions to tell you who supervised the transfers, not always the director...
They're director approved, Moe.

Are you saying the directors approved the wrong ratio?

On all of them?

Purely by coincidence?

Steve W
 

Robert Crawford

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Yorkshire said:
Very puzzled. Bob doesn't need to defend himself at all. He's said himself that new evidence is being discovered all the time.

All I'm doing is adding more evidence to the mix, whilst respectfully noting where we were before it emerged.

Steve W
Did you not write the following?
I think what I mean to say is this. Up to this point, if anyone came to this thread and asked what ratio a non-scope British film from that era should be, the answer up to now has been a pretty emphatic "that would have been 1.75:1" (see posts 2548, 2561, 2652, 2673, and 2820), sometimes treating anyone who disagrees with complete contempt. That's quite different to 'only a recommendation, not an edict'.
If I was Bob, I would feel the need to defend myself as you reference his posts and then added an additional comment about his posts.
 

EddieLarkin

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Sidney Lumet "approved" Criterion's transfers of his films, at 1.66:1.

Yet they are both irrefutably 1.85:1, and only ever ended up wrong because of the whole MGM/UA 1.66:1 nonsense.

How in depth is this approval process? Is it much more than sending directors a copy and getting a thumbs up from them, at least in some cases?

If Criterion buy the UA 1.66:1 crap, why give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the British cinema/1.66:1 stuff as well?

And if Sidney Lumet (at the time in his 80s, 50 years after the fact) can still get it wrong, or allow it without argument, or just plain didn't remember, why give credence to other director approved transfers done under similar circumstances?
 

Yorkshire

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EddieLarkin said:
Sidney Lumet "approved" Criterion's transfers of his films, at 1.66:1.

Yet they are both irrefutably 1.85:1, and only ever ended up wrong because of the whole MGM/UA 1.66:1 nonsense.

How in depth is this approval process? Is it much more than sending directors a copy and getting a thumbs up from them, at least in some cases?

If Criterion buy the UA 1.66:1 crap, why give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the British cinema/1.66:1 stuff as well?

And if Sidney Lumet (at the time in his 80s, 50 years after the fact) can still get it wrong, or allow it without argument, or just plain didn't remember, why give credence to other director approved transfers done under similar circumstances?
Eddie, if you're saying that directors may make errors and are not infallible, then yes I agree.

But I'm sure you'd concede that the same is true of things like the article quoted.

Push comes to shove, are you going to accept the article as gospel and completely dismiss what the directors have approved?

Or completely dismiss the article and believe the directors? Not the 's' - you'd have to believe every one of these unrelated directors made exactly the same error.

For me, I'm keeping an open mind. But will you not agree that we can no longer say of any film of the era "It would be 1.75:1" ?

For me, given the evidence currently on the table, if I had a British film from that time with no further evidence than what we have, I'd go 1.66:1. For three reasons - (a) if it was supposed to be 1.75:1, you still have that within the 1.66:1 frame, (b) the 1.75:1 recommendation said 'tolerable to 1.66:1' anyway, but there's no evidence that anyone shooting for 1.66:1 would do the opposite, and (c ) whilst neither can be taken as gospel, on balance I'll trust the word of the directors about their own work more than an article in a trade magazine.

Steve W
 

haineshisway

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I'm guessing that Sidney Lumet watched a bit of the transfer, liked it and approved it - I would doubt he even KNEW it was 1.66 on his TV. And I'm equally sure there are other cases where directors simply looked at a bit of a transfer and gave permission to sign. I'm equally sure that some of these director approved editions were done in the era of 4.3 TVs, like the Kubricks.

But I can tell you that anytime after about 1956, if I went to see a non-anamorphic film in the United States of America it was projected in 1.85. The filmmakers knew that it would be projected in that ratio and therefore one can logically assume that they framed their film for that ratio (or their director of photography did). As I've said repeatedly, by 1957 there were at most only a handful of theaters that could show other ratios by that time, save for scope and 1.85. All these foreign films that played my local art house theater were shown in 1.85. Every UA film that's been released in 1.66 on home video was shown in 1.85. I wasn't in England back then so I don't know what the Brits were showing, but I've seen enough British films in 1.75, 1.85 and 1.66 to know that most of them look absolutely correct at 1.75.
 

EddieLarkin

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I don't take it as gospel and never have. What I would really like to see is a lot of clippings from the British equivalents of Variety/Box Office. I would not be at all surprised to see a lot of "1.75:1".
 

FoxyMulder

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Blowing Wild was shown today on Film4, it was shown 4/3, i note it was shot in 1953, the film itself is okay, it stars Gary Cooper, Anthony Quinn and Barbara Stanwyck, i am wondering if this would have been shot just before they started shooting widescreen or whether it was shot widescreen, my guess is it's a 1.37:1 production.
 

Robert Crawford

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FoxyMulder said:
Blowing Wild was shown today on Film4, it was shown 4/3, i note it was shot in 1953, the film itself is okay, it stars Gary Cooper, Anthony Quinn and Barbara Stanwyck, i am wondering if this would have been shot just before they started shooting widescreen or whether it was shot widescreen, my guess is it's a 1.37:1 production.
They started shooting Blowing Wild in early Feb, 1953 and ended production that early April. Yes, it was a 1.37 production.
 

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"Approved by the director" [color=rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-size:13px;text-align:left;][əˈpruːv[/color]əl] n : To wheel out a retired 78 years old out of the border of his pool in his pension Hollywood home, wheel him in, plaster him with champagne and petit fours (or beer and cucumber sandwiches, depending on the budget), show him 10 minutes of a film he directed 50 years ago and get him to nod on "the format" and the new color timing, which he will remember precisely out of the 75 features he directed over a period of 35 years for several different major studios.

Do not show him documentation that the obsessive fan who spent life studying his work can provide. He knows better. He is the bloody director!

Actually, and I met a few of them, directors in their late years, are smart enough to trust whoever is a fan working on the project that have shown knowledge of their work in the past, than their memory. Usually, if a "director approved" old film format is not the correct format, it's someone else's fault, rarely the director.
 

Yorkshire

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haineshisway said:
I'm guessing that Sidney Lumet watched a bit of the transfer, liked it and approved it - I would doubt he even KNEW it was 1.66 on his TV. And I'm equally sure there are other cases where directors simply looked at a bit of a transfer and gave permission to sign. I'm equally sure that some of these director approved editions were done in the era of 4.3 TVs, like the Kubricks.

But I can tell you that anytime after about 1956, if I went to see a non-anamorphic film in the United States of America it was projected in 1.85. The filmmakers knew that it would be projected in that ratio and therefore one can logically assume that they framed their film for that ratio (or their director of photography did). As I've said repeatedly, by 1957 there were at most only a handful of theaters that could show other ratios by that time, save for scope and 1.85. All these foreign films that played my local art house theater were shown in 1.85. Every UA film that's been released in 1.66 on home video was shown in 1.85. I wasn't in England back then so I don't know what the Brits were showing, but I've seen enough British films in 1.75, 1.85 and 1.66 to know that most of them look absolutely correct at 1.75.
Hi Bruce.

We've been told several times that personal opinions on how a film looks are not valid arguments - sorry about that, it's not my point of view, but something that's been drummed into us a lot at this thread.

Yes, I'm sure that most non-anamorphic widescreen films were shown in the US at 1.85:1, even when that wasn't their intended ratio. I don't think that's ever been open to dispute.

Steve W
 

Yorkshire

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HDvision said:
"Approved by the director" [əˈpruːvəl] n : To wheel out a retired 78 years old out of the border of his pool in his pension Hollywood home, wheel him in, plaster him with champagne and petit fours (or beer and cucumber sandwiches, depending on the budget), show him 10 minutes of a film he directed 50 years ago and get him to nod on "the format" and the new color timing, which he will remember precisely out of the 75 features he directed over a period of 35 years for several different major studios.

Do not show him documentation that the obsessive fan who spent life studying his work can provide. He knows better. He is the bloody director!

Actually, and I met a few of them, directors in their late years, are smart enough to trust whoever is a fan working on the project that have shown knowledge of their work in the past, than their memory. Usually, if a "director approved" old film format is not the correct format, it's someone else's fault, rarely the director.
David, we get a lot of posts like this at this thread.

I hope you don't mind me asking, but can you just clarify your position.

Without the jibes at old people's memories, etc, etc, can you just come out and state your position.

Put simply, are you saying you'd trust that article from 1955 over the memories of those directors (listed above as having approved Criterion transfers)?

I'll be 100% clear. I can't say that I trust the directors 100%. But given that these 4 appear to have come to the same conclusion quite independently of each other, I'll err on their side over an article which appeared in 1955 about a recommendation which definitely ran out some time, but we have no idea when. On balance I'll go with the directors, but that's not saying I trust them as 100% gospel.

Because that'd still a point not covered. Today I can tell you (as will any British member of these forums) almost all British non-'scope widescreen films are 1.85:1. So we know that a change definitely happened between 1955 and 2013, but we have no documentation as to when. It could have been 1975. It could have been January 1956. That makes it incredibly difficult to make any judgement in favour of 1.75:1.

Steve W
 

Moe Dickstein

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Steve, All I am saying is that not every Criterion is director approved, and I have 600 of them on my shelf to go check.Godard doesn't approve his films and he is alive. Some directors are gone and can't.Criterion also gets ratios wrong, like Summertime.I'm just saying you can't say that because criterion does something one way that its any sort of argument for what you're trying to assert. It seems that for a long time any British film by them was done at 1.66 to one and that in the cases where the director looked at it he wasn't measuring the screen with a ruler to check between 1.66 and 1.75I don't have any doubt that the later 50s and beyond films would have been 1.75 in the theater in the UK and 1.85 in the US unless we have specific information to the contrary
 

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Unless the Director was also a DP, I've generally taken Criterion's "Director Approved" seals as just so much Marketing sizzle. I can easily imagine many of those approval conversations going something like this:
Criterion: "We plan to add your classic film Fill-in-the-Blank to the Criterion Collection. We've researched this title thoroughly for the past and believe we've found the best possible element and transfer from it. After so many indifferent-to-poor presentations of this film over the years, we'd really like to release our edition with a "Director-Approved' seal. If you're interested, we've sent you a copy for review."
Filmmaker: "Yes, it arrived just this morning and my wife and I have had a peek at it. It's been so long ago though, and I've made so many films since...not sure if I can remember precisely what it was supposed to look like back then with the film stocks available...but this transfer looks rather lovely! Wife liked what she saw of it too. I'm just so flattered and grateful that anyone is taking a serious interest in one of my old movies. So of course, I approve!"
Just file under: 'Sidebar Thoughts'. Carry on...
 

Bob Furmanek

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Jerry Lewis is one who remembers.

His solo films are hard-matted 1.66 and his on-set video assist monitors are masked to 1.85.

We've been friends for over 30 years so a few months ago, I called and asked him what was the definite correct ratio.

It's 1.85:1.

The prints are hard-matted at 1.66:1 simply for protection. Not every theater around the world was running 1.85.

Now, if some ill-informed telecine engineer/producer got the IP for THE LADIES' MAN, they might assume that 1.66:1 is correct based on the hard-matte on the film.

I hope that I've made my point...
 

Mark-P

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Bob Furmanek said:

On October 6, 1955, the Ideal Kinema reported: "Every projectionist will welcome the decision (reported in KINE last week) that the British Film Producers' Association has approved its technical committee's proposals for standardization on aspect ratios.

This is a matter in which the British industry, most commendably, has given a lead to the world, including the United States. The decision to standardise at a ratio of 1.75 to 1, tolerable for both 1.65 to 1 and 1.85 to 1, means that, very soon, the man in the box should be able to relax from the tiresome necessity of re-racking to prevent either topping or tailing his picture.
The new standard, of course, does not apply to processes such as CinemaScope and VistaVision."​
LOL! Only the British would give a slight like that to the USA, as if some people might not consider the United States to be part of the world!
 

Yorkshire

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Moe Dickstein said:
Steve,All I am saying is that not every Criterion is director approved, and I have 600 of them on my shelf to go check.
Moe, I know they're not. And you don't have to check the discs - all the information is on their website.

The point is that the ones that ARE approved are all 1.66:1.

Steve W
 

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