On The Waterfront: Why in widescreen? (1 Viewer)

[Patrick McCart]

Last night, Turner Classic Movies aired a 1.85:1 version of On The Waterfront.

Is there a reason to why a matted version of the film was created?

 

[Richard Kim]

Well the film came out in 1954, when widescreen was new to theaters, so I would imagine that On The Waterfront was formatted for both the Academy ratio and a matted ratio.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

I played it theatrically last year and the original leaders were clearly marked "1.85 projection".

 

[Andy_G]

Unmatted, there is a lot of headroom on this film. I would guess that 1.66 is the minimum correct ratio.

 

[Kirk Tsai]

I asked the professor about it too during a film class at UCLA. He basically gave me the same response. We saw it at 1.85: 1.

 

[Sam Graves]

From Here to Eternity is another example of a film from this period that has been matted/unmatted. I wonder which ratio TCM uses for it?