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20th Century Fox's CinemaScope films (1 Viewer)

Mark B

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[QUOTE="ptb2017fr, post: 4717288] I still don’t understand that. I mean if you’re on the Spanish Steps, hardly anyone else about unlike today, why not film the close ups after the wide shots? So much of the film has the principal actors actually in Rome/QUOTE]

Clean recording of dialogue is one reason this was done.
 

ptb2017fr

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I apologize for nitpicking :) but ..... It was not an "extra" (an outmoded term btw, it's background actor) but the correct term is body double. As a SAG member in good standing and having done body double work as well as stand in work and background work, they are distinctly separate categories and different pay levels.
Nitpick Away. When it comes to editing as an editor, now retired, I can pick the nits as well as anyone :)
 
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ptb2017fr

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[QUOTE="ptb2017fr, post: 4717288] I still don’t understand that. I mean if you’re on the Spanish Steps, hardly anyone else about unlike today, why not film the close ups after the wide shots? So much of the film has the principal actors actually in Rome/QUOTE]

Clean recording of dialogue is one reason this was done.
No excuse. They had looping then, and shoot a two shot dialogue scene then studio for close ups makes no sense to me.
 

Joe Caps

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Daaryl Zanuck was also an expert editor. When the crew returned from Rome, He thought a few scenes were needed to explain come things. Spanich steps was added back in Hollywood. Zanuck also thought the ending was too downbeat and completely changed it using doubles.
The original ending is Clifton Webb adding his coin to the fountain, Knowing that he is dying and NOT returning to Rome.
 

Alan Tully

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It's odd that The Lost World (1960) Blu-ray seems to have been released in many European countries, but not America. It's not a great movie ( & that's putting it lightly), but I have a soft spot for it (I bought the French release before it was released in the UK).
 

ptb2017fr

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Daaryl Zanuck was also an expert editor. When the crew returned from Rome, He thought a few scenes were needed to explain come things. Spanich steps was added back in Hollywood. Zanuck also thought the ending was too downbeat and completely changed it using doubles.
The original ending is Clifton Webb adding his coin to the fountain, Knowing that he is dying and NOT returning to Rome.
I wonder what he said when someone asked about changing the title to two coins in the fountain as only two of the three women had thrown a coin in at the start of the movie! :)
 

Will Krupp

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Well you don’t give Tecnicolor credit if it’s not filmed in Technicolor, and Beneath the 12 Mile Reef proudly gives it a solo credit. It’s not the only one either.

Just to clear up some misconceptions, Fox realized very early in the production of THE ROBE that the three strip camera was incompatible with the CinemaScope process. They quietly switched to an Eastmancolor negative for all three of the initial productions (ROBE, HT MARRY... and 12 MILE REEF) but had Technicolor PROCESS a few (very few) dye transfer prints (which, at that stage and before the matrix stock was improved in late 1954 early 1955, made very soft prints exacerbated by the magnification to CinemaScope proportions) in order to justify a Technicolor credit. Fox was determined to have everything about the new process be deluxe (pardon the pun) and the Technicolor name was king. The vast majority of the release prints (including those in the major markets) were contact printed from the Eastman negative.

It wasn’t filmed in Technicolor, it may have been processed in or had prints by Technicolor but no CinemaScope film was ever filmed in Technicolor. The negative used was Eastman type 5247 with prints by Technicolor. The blu-ray was made from a 4K scan of the negative so what the disc presents is Eastman Color.

As for the Technicolor versus Deluxe Color issue: I agree with Jimbo64 that no Cinemascope film was ever shot in Technicolor. But if the prints were made by Technicolor probably the famed imbition printing process was still in use until the mid 70's (the last film shown in that process was GODFATHER 2) the color would probably had more saturation compared to a Deluxe color print and would have not faded as quickly or as badly. From what I have read though the problem with Cinemascope Technicolor prints is that on a large screen, sometimes the image would be softer, the Deluxe sharper.

Yes to both of these!!

The wonderful book, Glorious Technicolor by Fred E. Basten, list not only Beneath The 12-Mile Reef as being produced in Technicolor along with several other Fox CinemaScope being produced in Technicolor including The Robe and How To Marry A Millionaire. It appears that by 1955 Fox switched all their films to Deluxe.

(The book was published for the 90th Anniversary Of Technicolor with their assistance.)

They had Technicolor "credits" but Fox was basically puling a fast one as they didn't want people to know their new process was not compatible with "Technicolor." CinemaScope helped hasten the end of the three strip camera.

So Color by Technicolor on Prince Valiant, Hell and High Water, River of No Return, How To Marry a Millionaire,Beneath The 12 Mile Reef, King of the Khyber Rifles, Three Young Texans, The Robe, Demetrius and the Gladiators are all lies. No mate, all sources say a Technicolor movie. Eastman Color a version of which became De Luxe, was first used by Fox on New Faces in 1954.

I wouldn't say "lies" as much as creative marketing. The Technicolor name meant a lot and Fox was determined to have it associated with their new process. Whatever you want to call it, all of those films were shot on Eastman negative and had Technicolor make some (or in some cases, all) of the release prints, whether they were used or not. That's just a fact.
 
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Will Krupp

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Title idea for a book: "Three-Strip in the Fountain".:)

Hahah! PERISH the thought! THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN was the very first time Technicolor LOST the Oscar (to DeLuxe no less) for color cinematography!
 
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Will Krupp

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We all know how faithful to their source Hollywood can be! Zanuck may have been a great producer and head of the studio, but he put some terrible actresses into his movies with only one thing in mind. Bella Darvi anyone?

Sometimes the actresses are good but the choices are still perverse. My personal favorite is SONG OF BERNADETTE when he cast his mistress, Linda Darnell, as the Virgin Mary! :blink:
 

ptb2017fr

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Sometimes the actresses are good but the choices are still perverse. My personal favorite is SONG OF BERNADETTE when he cast his mistress, Linda Darnell, as the Virgin Mary! :blink:
Have you heard the famous story about the screening of Song of Bernadette for a particularly up tight group of Hollywood folk where they cut a frame of a hard core sex movie in every foot so it was subliminal, and by the half way mark the entire audience was dying to have sex! Wish I could remember who did it!
 

Will Krupp

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Have you heard the famous story about the screening of Song of Bernadette for a particularly up tight group of Hollywood folk where they cut a frame of a hard core sex movie in every foot so it was subliminal, and by the half way mark the entire audience was dying to have sex! Wish I could remember who did it!

Hahahah! I must admit I've never heard that story but they sound like my kind of people!
 

Peter Apruzzese

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Have you heard the famous story about the screening of Song of Bernadette for a particularly up tight group of Hollywood folk where they cut a frame of a hard core sex movie in every foot so it was subliminal, and by the half way mark the entire audience was dying to have sex! Wish I could remember who did it!

That sounds...fake. You can see 1/24 of a second.
 

DannyLewis

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Sometimes the actresses are good but the choices are still perverse. My personal favorite is SONG OF BERNADETTE when he cast his mistress, Linda Darnell, as the Virgin Mary! :blink:
Bella Darvi was indeed Zanuck's mistress, but I do not think the same applies to Darnell (even though I heard the same rumour, when her been cast in Bernadette is mentioned). Actually she was constantly rebelling against Zanuck and was constantly punished by it (being replaced in the brunette role in The Gang's All here and being put in supporting roles in films like Buffalo Bill and Anna and the King of Siam, when she was already a Fox Star.
 

Will Krupp

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Bella Darvi was indeed Zanuck's mistress, but I do not think the same applies to Darnell (even though I heard the same rumour, when her been cast in Bernadette is mentioned). Actually she was constantly rebelling against Zanuck and was constantly punished by it (being replaced in the brunette role in The Gang's All here and being put in supporting roles in films like Buffalo Bill and Anna and the King of Siam, when she was already a Fox Star.

Well that's unfortunate because it's a GREAT story!
 

john a hunter

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Wasn't Darvi also Zanuck's wife "mistress" and when he discovered their relationship, he had his famous meltdown and departed Fox and moved to France.
 

Thomas T

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Sometimes the actresses are good but the choices are still perverse. My personal favorite is SONG OF BERNADETTE when he cast his mistress, Linda Darnell, as the Virgin Mary! :blink:

Darnell was never Zanuck's mistress and they often had a contentious relationship over the studio's decision to cast her in mediocre films. After her initial flush of success in films like Blood And Sand, The Mark Of Zorro and Brigham Young (perhaps not coincidentally all starring Tyrone Power), Fox cast her in weak movies like Loves Of Edgar Allan Poe and loaned her out for B movies like City Without Men. Reputedly, Zanuck was punishing her for eloping with a 43 year old camera man (she was 20). It wasn't until she was cast as the slutty waitress in Preminger's Fallen Angel in 1945 and got great reviews that Fox put her in their A list movies again: Anna And The King Of Siam (1946), My Darling Clemetine 1946), Forever Amber (1947), Unfaithfully Yours (1948) and Letter To Three Wives (1949). Alas, after she left Fox, without the benefit of the power of a major studio behind her, her career was unable to sustain itself. The low point came when she was required to do a screen test for her old studio for the part of the wife in The Wayward Bus. She didn't get the part, Joan Collins did.
 

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