The Widescreen Revolution
The Anamorphic Campaign: Rivals
to Cinemascope
By Rick Mitchell
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Over a century ago, motion picture standards
for photography and presentation basically were set and have
only been altered significantly on two occasions: first by the
innovation of sound in the late Twenties, and second by the "widescreen" revolution
that began in the early Fifties and continues to this very day
and into the future with the growing popularity of widescreen
television through "letterboxed" videotapes and laser
discs as well as the anticipated introduction of high-definition
television and Digital Versatile Disks (DVD).
In this series of articles on the latter of
these fundamental alterations to the art of motion pictures,
we have presented an overview of the most notable widescreen
photographic techniques and processes, the changes within the
motion picture industry which gave rise to their introduction,
the responses of the movie-going public to each innovation, and
the widescreen's pervasive and lasting effect on motion
picture production and exhibition.
Previous installments have covered the aborted
attempt to introduce a wide film in 1929-30 and the successful
introduction of Cinerama in 1952 (The Operating Cameraman, Fall ‘92)
and the consequences that flowed from 20th Century Fox's
subsequent announcement of a new widescreen process that was
less cumbersome and easier to install in existing theatres than
the giant screen, three-projector, Cinerama process (The Operating
Cameraman, Spring and Fall ‘93).
To recap, in January 1953, Fox licensed Professor
Henri Chretien's Hypergonar lens, which he had developed
in France during the latter part of the Twenties. During photography,
this cylindrical, "anamorphic" lens would record
almost twice as much horizontal information as its spherical
counterpart.
By optically compressing or "squeezing" the
horizontal image by a factor of two, the anamorphic lens was
able to record its wider image on the same 35mm filmstock while
employing the same motion picture cameras that were already being
used by the major studios.
To project the widescreen image, existing
theatres merely needed to equip their projectors with a similar
cylindrical lens that would unsqueeze the image and spread the
picture across an appropriately wider screen. Fox called its
new process "CinemaScope" and sought to make it a
new industry standard.
Almost overnight, other studios, especially
those with a large backlog of unreleased spherical films, panicked
and began to look for other ways to jump on the widescreen bandwagon.
Many of these studios simply chose to mask off the top and bottom
of the 1.37:1 photographed image during projection, creating
the illusion of a wider image.
The resulting, and competing, aspect ratios
used by the various studios were 1.66:1 (Paramount, RKO, Republic),
1.75:1 (MGM, Disney, Warner Bros.), and 1.85:1 (Universal, Columbia,
Allied Artists).
Once they had released their inventory backlog,
these studios began to establish this type of widescreen process
as a standard by instructing their cinematographers to compose
images so that no important action would be lost during projection.
By 1956, the studios had decided unofficially upon 1.85:1 as
the standard for this masked widescreen method.
Another approach to widescreen photography
and projection occurred in 1954, when Panavision and Superscope
developed lenses for optical printers which made it possible
to make anamorphic prints from spherical negatives.
The Superscope system, which had a brief spurt
of popularity in the mid-Fifties, transformed entire spherical
features into anamorphic. The Superscope system was used under
such names as Superama and Megascope until 1963, when it was
supplanted by the introduction of Techniscope by Technicolor.
Techniscope was conceptually the same as Superscope,
except that cameras using this process needed to be modified
to pull down two perfs rather than the customary four. This yielded
a 2.35:1 aspect ratio image that was then optically stretched
and squeezed in the printing process.
In the early Eighties Superscope was revived
as "Super 35." Because of the many cost-saving and
photographic advantages of this system—spherical lenses
need less light and have greater depth of field than their anamorphic
counterparts—both Super 35, and its counterpart Super 16,
are widely used today in feature film and television production.
CHALLENGING THE CINEMASCOPE STANDARD
Soon after the introduction of CinemaScope
in 1952, many anamorphic challengers began to appear on the horizon.
When it set up CinemaScope as a new standard, 20th Century-Fox
thought it had covered all legal bases.
Fox intended to own the use of the process
and license it to other companies. Unfortunately, Fox soon discovered
its rights were limited to the patents it had obtained from Professor
Chretien and H. Sidney Newcomer, an American who had also been
experimenting with anamorphic lenses in the Twenties.
CinemaScope's other basic design patents
were considered to be in the public domain. So, as soon as the
principles behind CinemaScope were published, a number of competing
manufacturers began to announce anamorphic lens systems. One
of the challengers, interestingly enough, was Professor Ernst
Abbe of France, the original developer of the anamorphic lens.
Around this time, Fox's most serious
challenger was Warner Bros.. Some believe that Fox beat Warners
in the race for Chretien's patent. According to one account
in Daily Variety, Jack Warner had seen a private screening of
CinemaScope long before it was publicly introduced, and had attempted
unsuccessfully to purchase a one half interest in the process.
Rebuffed, Warner was determined to develop
his own process and, to that end, solicited bids from several
American and European optical companies, finally making a deal
with Germany's Zeiss Optical Company for a system that
he would initially call "WarnerSuperScope." The announcement
of this newcomer caused yet another panic among motion picture
exhibitors, who were already upset by the seemingly unending
stream of technological changes that were being foisted upon
them. At the insistence of these exhibitors, Warner shortened
the name of the Zeiss process to "WarnerScope."
WarnerScope did not meet with success. Although
Warners originally had planned to use the Zeiss lenses on "Rear
Guard" and the Judy Garland/James Mason remake of "A
Star is Born" (1954), the lenses were not ready in time.
Instead, on "Rear Guard", which
began shooting in July 1953, Warners used a lens system called "Vistarama",
that had been developed by the Simpson Optical Company for Carl
Dudley. By September, when the Zeiss lenses finally arrived at
Warners, the studio tested them by shooting footage of the Hollywood
Premiere of "The Robe" which it planned to use for
a sequence in "A Star is Born."
When Warners reviewed the footage, however,
it found, much to its dismay, that the Zeiss lenses had poor
resolution and were unsuitable for feature production. As a result,
Warners chose to shoot "A Star is Born" in spherical
three-strip Technicolor.
According to the late film historian Ron Haver
(who spearheaded the restoration of "Star!" (1968)
in the early Eighties), when "A Star is Born" was
being restored, the only version that could be located of a scene
in which Judy Garland is seen working as a carhop was one that
was shot with the WarnerScope Zeiss lenses. Curiously, in the
late Fifties, Warners would revive the WarnerScope name for three
features that actually were shot in the Superscope/Super 35 format.
While the production costs were rising on "A
Star is Born", Warners' treasurer, Albert Warner,
who was impressed by the grosses from "The Robe",
convinced Harry Warner to go over Jack's head to arrange
with Fox to use CinemaScope. Jack Warner was finally convinced
by the test CinemaScope footage shot by Milton Krasner, ASC,
and decided to scrap the first ten days of shooting and start
over.
As a part of the new CinemaScope deal, Warners
agreed to release the Vistarama "Rear Guard", now
called "The Command", as a "CinemaScope" picture.
When the picture opened, critics noticed that the images were
not as sharp as those shot in conventional CinemaScope. Some
critics even noticed that the image was darker near the edges
of the screen, an attribute noticed during the test screenings
of Vistarama in 1953.
FOREIGN RIVALS
Outside of the United States, various foreign
film companies began to develop CinemaScope-compatible anamorphic
lens systems. The quality of these systems was somewhat uneven.
One of the most significant systems was developed in France by
Prof. Abbe, father of the anamorphic lens, and was called CinePanoramic.
CinePanoramic was the basis of the French DyaliScope and FranScope
processes as well as other processes used on the Italian "sword 'n
sandal" epics of the early Sixties.
An American company, Republic Pictures, arriving
late to the widescreen party, purchased rights to CinePanoramic,
and called it "Naturama". An interesting aspect of
these anamorphic lenses, which were a separate unit, was that
each anamorphic lens was collimated to work with a specific prime
lens and camera.
The Naturama system, as recently seen on a
rare 16mm print of "Lisbon" (1956), the second Republic
film to use the process, appeared to have less of a problem with
anamorphic "mumps" than CinemaScope.
Mumps occur when anamorphosis decreases as
the lens is focused closer. This moniker came from the fact that
actors' faces, when photographed in close-up and then projected,
appeared noticeably fatter, as though they had mumps. As a result,
directors using CinemaScope were forced into staging scenes with
wider shots, seriously limiting their editorial choices.
Republic's Naturama lenses had a concave
distortion, which was most noticeable in pan shots, and was apparent
in every focal length of lens. By contrast, CinemaScope and Panavision
lenses only caused concave distortion in their shortest focal
lengths. Although Republic offered to license Naturama to other
film companies, it found no takers. Ultimately, Republic amortized
its investment by shooting the rest of its films with Naturama
lenses.
CINEMASCOPE IN BLACK & WHITE
One confusing name appearing on films of the
Fifties is RegalScope, which is really a pseudonym for low-budget,
black and white CinemaScope. Originally, Fox only licensed CinemaScope
for "A" pictures shot in color. Yet, once the process
had been established, some filmmakers wanted to use the CinemaScope
lenses on dramatic pictures about subjects that were better suited
to black and white photography.
In early 1955, two pictures, "Trial" and
Nicolas Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause", started
principle photography in black and white CinemaScope. When Fox
found out, it objected. As a result, "Trial" was
shot with spherical lenses, while the producers of "Rebel
Without a Cause" elected to shoot the teen drama in color.
MGM was
particularly rankled by Fox's absurd prohibition on black
and white. For a while, MGM toyed with the idea of shooting pictures
in color and releasing them in black and white. Finally, in the
Spring of 1956, MGM put "The Power and the Prize" (1956)
into production on black and white negative under the photographic
supervision of George Folsey, ASC. This time, Fox did not object.
Having established the CinemaScope standard,
Fox quietly began to modify its strict anti-black and white attitude.
Fox made a deal with independent producer Robert L. Lippert for
a series of anamorphic low budget "B" films. To distinguish
these low budget films from higher class color CinemaScope productions,
Fox coined the name "RegalScope" after Lippert's
production company, Regal Films.
Of course, Regal's films were photographed
with Bausch & Lomb CinemaScope lenses. Curiously, the first released
Regal film, "Stagecoach to Fury" (1956), bore a CinemaScope
logo, though the size of the logo was much smaller and less prominent
than it had been on "A" pictures. Around the same
time, Fox began to break its own color barrier. Without fanfare,
it began production on a black and white "A" picture
titled Teenage Rebel.
The most famous "almost" Regal
film was "The Fly" (1958), which Fox plucked from
the Regal program when it decided to jump on the late Fifties
sci-fi bandwagon. One year later, when Fox negotiated a new "B" picture
contract with Regal, Regal changed its name to Associated Producers
and its pictures were then officially advertised as being shot
in CinemaScope. As Associated Producers moved into the Sixties,
however, it used the anamorphic process less and less.
PANAVISION'S BETTER QUALITY
LENSES
In 1953, Panavision was founded by Robert E.
Gottschalk, who had become interested in anamorphic lenses while
he investigated wide-angle lenses for underwater use. Panavision
first developed a set of variable squeeze projection lenses.
The high quality of these lenses, in comparison with Fox's
Baush & Lomb lenses, greatly impressed MGM's research director
Douglas Shearer.
Shearer joined with Gottschalk in developing
a line of high resolution 35mm and 65mm anamorphic lenses. These
lenses also eliminated the "mumps" problem so that
they could maintain a 2x squeeze ratio throughout the range of
focal distances.
MGM was one of the first studios to use the
new Panavision lenses on "Torpedo Run" (1958), "Party
Girl" (1958), and "Green Mansions" (1959).
Due to MGM's contractual arrangement with Fox, however,
these films were advertised as being shot in CinemaScope. At
Gottschalk's insistence, the films also bore the separate
credit: "Photographic Lenses by Panavision". As one
might expect, many film historians have been confused by these
dual credits.
The first film to give exclusive credit to
Panavision was Frank Capra's "A Hole in the Head" (1959),
released by United Artists, a distribution company that was not
bound to a blanket contract with Fox because each of its individual
producers negotiated their own equipment licensing deals.
Actor-producers Frank Sinatra and John Wayne
also became strong boosters of Panavision, and insisted on using
Panavision lenses and cameras on most of the films produced by
their companies. By 1960, Paramount, which had resisted CinemaScope
(even though it had released a film shot in Technirama) also
began filming in Panavision.
Although Panavision shot tests for George Stevens' "The
Diary of Anne Frank" (1959), Fox resisted using the obviously
better lenses, most likely at the behest of its president Spyros
Skouras, who had been CinemaScope's biggest booster.
It wasn't until 1966, four years after
Spyros was deposed after the "Cleopatra" debacle,
that several of Fox's top flight directors of photography
began to shoot in Panavision. Charles Lang, Jr., ASC, used the
sharper lenses on "How to Steal a Million" and "The
Flim-Flam Man". Joe MacDonald, ASC, used them on "The
Sand Pebbles" and "A Guide for the Married Man".
That summer, Fox filmed its last CinemaScope
pictures, to be released the following spring, "In Like
Flint" and "Caprice", the latter photographed
by Leon Shamroy, ASC, who had started it all on "The Robe" and
makes a cameo appearance in the film.
Some sources at Panavision claim that "Von
Ryan's Express" was shot with Panavision lenses at
the insistence of Frank Sinatra. Yet, while this may have been
true for some scenes, there are others in which the anamorphic
mumps and other aberrations associated with CinemaScope lenses
are quite obvious.
In the late Sixties, Panavision modified the
Mitchell BNC to make it a reflex camera which Gottschalk named
the PSR (Panavision Silenced Reflex). By 1970, Panavision dominated
35mm anamorphic photography throughout the world. With the development
of the lighter and more compact Panaflex camera, which was first
used by Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, on Steven Spielberg's "Sugarland
Express", and a line of high quality spherical lenses,
Panavision solidified its position as the industry leader.
LATER ANAMORPHIC SYSTEMS
From the early Seventies on, several companies
have joined the anamorphic fray by developing lenses for use
with Arriflex cameras. In 1971, Todd-AO licensed
a line of Japanese designed anamorphic lenses, primarily for
use with Arriflex cameras, which it marketed under the name "Todd-AO
35".
The Japanese lenses were used on the Academy
Award winning documentary "The Man Who Skied Down Everest" (1976),
although the crew that lugged the bulky 35mm cameras and anamorphic
lenses up the world's highest mountain might well have
wished for lighter 16mm equipment.
In 1976, an Italian company, Technovision,
introduced a line of Cooke spherical lenses that had been modified
for 35mm anamorphic photography. The Cooke anamorphics were particularly
popular with Vittorio Storaro, ASC, who used them on "Apocalypse
Now" (1989), "The Last Emperor" (1988), and
the 35mm portions of "Little Buddha" (1994).
In 1981, widescreen buff and equipment developer
Joe Dunton also came out with a line of anamorphic lenses which
were used by Dino De Laurentiis, who housed Dunton's American
headquarters at his North Carolina studio, on films he produced
such as "Tai-Pai" ( 1986) and "Maximum Overdrive" (1986).
Other films using Dunton's lenses were "Invaders
from Mars" (1986), "The Sandlot" (1992), and "Rob
Roy" (1995).
In 1989, Germany's Isco Optic developed
a line of anamorphic lenses especially for Arriflex, which were
given the moniker "Arriscope". The Arriscope lenses
were first used by Warner Bros. on "Body Snatchers",
the second remake of the Don Siegel sci-fi thriller.
With today's tightly-grained film stocks
and high resolution anamorphic and spherical lenses, there are
many ways to produce rich and beautiful widescreen 35mm motion
pictures. Whether this might have been envisioned in 1953 at
the birth of the widescreen revolution is not known. For at that
time, each method involved great compromises in image quality:
the CinemaScope lenses had mumps and masked spherical images
wasted a significant part of the photographed image.
As soon as these techniques were launched,
industry technicians began to seek ways of improving image quality.
Through their efforts, the movie going public has greatly benefited.
Yet, on a parallel plane with the optical improvements in 35mm
photography just discussed, some studios chose instead to improve
image quality for their premiere pictures by going to a larger
negative.
Next in the series: the development of VistaVision
and Technirama. (Published in The Operating Cameraman magazine
January-June 1998)
Rick Mitchell is a film editor, director
and historian who currently lives and works in Hollywood.
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