The Last Time I Saw Paris never released on Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Conrad_SSS]

The aspect ratio when released was 1.75.

 

[Robin9]

While recognizing his talents, I'm as allergic to Van Johnson as I'm to JA. Their cinematic couplings were just too extreme and affected my formative years. But I'd rather watch Van than JA.

Van Johnson was sometimes stuck with playing less than attractive characters in poorly written material. A case in point is Duchess of Idaho which I watched yesterday. The man he played is totally obnoxious: pushy, bad mannered and petulant. Van Johnson did well to soften the character to some extent.

 

[Robert Harris]

If they could find the Perspecta Stereophonic Sound tracks, I would be interested. They could contact Bob Furmanek on how to extract the sound to three channels.

There is no mystery to playing back Perspecta tracks, which are not true stereo. They are monaural tracks, which have audio directed to different speakers, allowing the effect of stereo, but economically via a standard printed optical track containing trigger tones.

An interesting process nonetheless. But nowhere near the quality of mag tracks.

 

[Noel Aguirre]

I like Van but would rather prefer WB release Miracle In The Rain.

 

[RolandL]

There is no mystery to playing back Perspecta tracks, which are not true stereo. They are monaural tracks, which have audio directed to different speakers, allowing the effect of stereo, but economically via a standard printed optical track containing trigger tones.

An interesting process nonetheless. But nowhere near the quality of mag tracks.

Yes, I know. It's been talked about many times on HTF. I just wanted to copy "Perspecta Stereophonic Sound" from the ad in my post.

 

[roxy1927]

When I've seen it on TV the images are soft to say the least. One of those films that is not very good but for some reason is still enjoyable. I love seeing the few location shots of Van Johnson in the streets of Paris.
Is this one of the films shot in 1.37:1 and they just lopped off the top and bottom to call it wide screen?

 

[Paul Penna]

Is this one of the films shot in 1.37:1 and they just lopped off the top and bottom to call it wide screen?

Well, that was the most common method for producing a wide screen film image, by a long shot (so to speak).

 

[RolandL]

All movies shot of film, released 1.66,1.75, 1.85 or 2.0 (SuperScope) were filmed 1.37 - exception is VistaVision which was 1.5 on the negative. OK guys, you can all flame me now.

 

[Capt D McMars]

Warner Archive released Beau Brummell on Blu-ray in March 2020, and it looks/sounds amazing!

you mean Scaramouch?

 

[Robert Crawford]

you mean Scaramouch?

He's right, Beau Brummel (1954) was released on Blu-ray by WA on March, 2020. Scaramouche (1952) hasn't been released on Blu-ray yet.

 

[roxy1927]

I am anxiously awaiting Scaramouche. Mel from down the Garden State Parkway Jersey shore is so aristocratically perfectly evil. And that sword fight!

Not a word from Warner. Is Beau Brummel equally good?

 

[haineshisway]

Forget The Last Time I Saw Paris - Paris is so yesterday - you know what's never been released on Blu-ray OR a legit release on DVD? The Last Time I Saw Archie - I want THAT. Now.

 

[Frankie_A]

Is this one of the films shot in 1.37:1 and they just lopped off the top and bottom to call it wide screen?

While I understand the disparaging tone -- yes, cropped wide screen was indeed the poor man's CinemaScope and CinemaScope was poor man's Cinerama, and you are right to scoff -- cropped wide screen as a process (it's really not a process per se, but just a way to cheat a wider picture out of the same imaging system that had already existed for decades). And of course technically, it is a method that sacrificed image quality for width -- and should rightfully be scoffed. But you have to understand, exhibitors had just spent a truck load on money to install a REALLY WIDE CinemaScope screen and once they saw the overwhelming positive acceptance it had with their audiences; there was no way Mr. Exhibitor was going to show a 21 foot wide image (1.37:1 -- the original Academy size screen) on his spanking new 50 foot wide ('Scope) screen. CinemaScope was as revolutionary a technology as sound; once exhibitors showed THE ROBE, they were never going to back to that square image...in a matter of months, the Academy 4:3 image was dead. Exhibitors were cropping movies shot 1.37:1 regardless that they had already been in the can, shot and composed for 4:3.

Mr. Projectionist: "I know you made me cut new aperture plates and you got shorter focal length lenses to show films wider, but the real-bands on this feature all say 'Flat - 1.37."

Mr. Exhibitor," Yeah, don't worry about it. So you lose a little forehead and maybe you lose a little chin...who cares...don't you get it...it's WIDE! There're gonna LOVE it!"

For that interim before that cropped ratio was fixed by the SMPTE at 1.85:1, theatre owners were moving to crop films before the directors and cinematographers began composing for the wider ratios. Even studios that already had titles in the can, shot and composed for 1.37:1, where sending them out and calling them 1.66:1 -- I recall SHANE being one of then where the ad campaign touted it as "in Wide Screen," but it was shot Academy ratio of 1.37:1 (BTW, that you for correctly calling it 1.37:1 and NOT 1.33:1, a mistake many who should know better make, like the idiots who write insert copy for DVDs.

I worked at a theatre in Texas and the owner didn't buy lenses specifically to get a 1.85:1 image on the screen, he just found some used lenses in the basement with a shorter focal length and I filed the aperture plates to match. I think we probably were screening everything in 1.7:1. Occasionally when they hard-matted the image on the prints to 1.85:1, we would see the frame lines sneak into the screen image. It was a kind of free for all back then; most studios were making release prints with a hard mattes at 1.66:1 on prints intended to be cropped 1.85:1 in order to protect theatres like the I worked at that weren't quite hitting the numbers right on the money. Disney techs, bless them, balked at losing such a significant portion of image geography - basically wasting it and then needing to use higher magnification to blow up that smaller image area for a wider picture on the screen. You magnify the image more...you get bigger, more noticeable grain and you get less color saturation, less resolution, less contrast and overall, a degraded resulting picture on the screen. Disney opted to stick not with the extreme 1.85:1 crop, but only 1.75:1. Europe was much more reluctant than the USA to degrade the screen image; they cropped only to 1.66:1 and stuck with that mild crop until the end of the celluloid era. American production, including Disney, along with the US exhibitors, whores all, eventually gave in to width over image quality, and settled on 1.85:1 which we have had to live with ever since the 60s until today.

Sorry, that went WAY off course -- what I started to say was, it wasn't really "so called." wide screen, it really was wider than the Academy ratio before it, but it's what I would call sloppy wide screen. So yes, a bit of snarkiness is warranted when talking film and copped wide screen.

PS -- Perspecta Sound in nothing like stereo. It is simply a mono soundtrack steered around the various speakers in the theatre. Richard H. is right, it can be interesting, but significant down-side is that there is no spacial component, especially to the music, and while it is a good effect to have dialog and effects follow the position of the action on the screen as was done in early 4 track magnetic CinemaScope titles, music in Perspectasound remains static with no depth. Personally, I always did like the directional dialog mixes of the early Scope titles, but not at the expense of real stereophonic music scores.

BTW, Dolby's stereo optical technology -- a poor man's discrete 4 channel stereo -- was what pretty much put an end to directional dialog. Their cheating vario-matrix, a trick they stole from Sansui, was a cheap way to get a surround channel when the medium (a film soundtrack )only has the ability to carry two discrete channels. Dolby mixes needed to keep dialog in the center channel -- if you panned any dialog hard to the left or right channels, that dialog would bleed into the surrounds...a bad no-no.

 

[Paul Penna]

Forget The Last Time I Saw Paris - Paris is so yesterday - you know what's never been released on Blu-ray OR a legit release on DVD? The Last Time I Saw Archie - I want THAT. Now.

Consider my interest piqued. You'd think by now I'd have heard of every Louis Nye… er, Robert Mitchum film.

 

[Thomas T]

-- what I started to say was, it wasn't really "so called." wide screen, it really was wider than the Academy ratio before it, but it's what I would call sloppy wide screen. So yes, a bit of snarkiness is warranted when talking film and copped wide screen.

Sorry but I disagree. I don't think the "snarkiness" is warranted. 1.66 and 1.85 are legitimate wide screen. Not everything needs to be filmed in "scope". Do you really think movies like Marty, The Killing, 12 Angry Men, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Some Like It Hot or Elmer Gantry to name a handful would have benefited by being shot in anamorphic processes like CinemaScope or 2.35 Panavision? A film composed for 1.85 wide screen with the excess area masked off could hardly be called sloppy. It's a legitimate alternative for directors who don't feel the 2.35 image is appropriate for the story they want to tell.

 

[haineshisway]

Consider my interest piqued. You'd think by now I'd have heard of every Louis Nye… er, Robert Mitchum film.

Not only Louis Nye, but you also get Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Don Knotts, Del Moore, Joe Flynn Jimmy Lydon, Nancy Kulp AND Howard McNear, along with Martha Hyer and France Nuyen. And it's based on the exploits of director/actor Arch Hall, Sr. I mean, come ON, we need this. I first saw it at a sneak preview and loved it, and then saw it several times during its run. It wasn't a hit, BTW. But it did make me fall in love with the classic WWII era song, At Last.

 

[Robin9]

Forget The Last Time I Saw Paris - Paris is so yesterday - you know what's never been released on Blu-ray OR a legit release on DVD? The Last Time I Saw Archie - I want THAT. Now.

Yes, I want that one too.

 

[roxy1927]

Sorry but I disagree. I don't think the "snarkiness" is warranted. 1.66 and 1.85 are legitimate wide screen. Not everything needs to be filmed in "scope". Do you really think movies like Marty, The Killing, 12 Angry Men, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Some Like It Hot or Elmer Gantry to name a handful would have benefited by being shot in anamorphic processes like CinemaScope or 2.35 Panavision? A film composed for 1.85 wide screen with the excess area masked off could hardly be called sloppy. It's a legitimate alternative for directors who don't feel the 2.35 image is appropriate for the story they want to tell.

So films like The Last Time I Saw Paris and others of that time period were directed and shot knowing that the film was to be shown in 1.66 or 1.85? When I see it on TCM it looks like it was produced for a 1.37:1 frame.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

So films like The Last Time I Saw Paris and others of that time period were directed and shot knowing that the film was to be shown in 1.66 or 1.85? When I see it on TCM it looks like it was produced for a 1.37:1 frame.

Yes, they were composed for widescreen. See these two articles which should help explain it:

Widescreen Documentation - 3dfilmarchive

www.3dfilmarchive.com

First Year of Widescreen Production - 3dfilmarchive

www.3dfilmarchive.com

 

[RolandL]

So films like The Last Time I Saw Paris and others of that time period were directed and shot knowing that the film was to be shown in 1.66 or 1.85? When I see it on TCM it looks like it was produced for a 1.37:1 frame.

Looks fine cropped.

Ignore the colors from my iPhone. Looks allot better on the Sony 86 inch screen.