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DVD from Fox Cinema Archives, May 2014: WIDESCREEN!

posted 10 years ago by hobnob53
6 replies | jump to latest

FCA is adding Woman's World to its series this month (availability varies slightly from site to site), in its first-ever DVD release. SRP is $19.99. No extras, of course.

The good news is that the DVD is advertised as having the film in widescreen -- something Fox has been notorious for not doing with most of its releases of CinemaScope films on the FCA line.

But they may be turning over a new leaf. FCA recently issued Good Morning, Miss Dove letterboxed, and also new is The Bottom of the Bottle (1956), which is said to be in widescreen. Earlier FCA had released the third-ever 'Scope film, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, in its correct aspect ratio, though a couple of w/s films in between were issued in just pan-and-scan. So we'll have to see.

If FCA is beginning to release widescreen films in their correct format, perhaps they can go back and redo their previous p&s releases of many films and issue them in their proper AR's.

ADDENDUM: The film is indeed in widescreen, at its proper aspect ratio of 2.55:1. The DVD cover says it's in "4:3 (letterbox)", whatever that means. Regardless, the film is in its original, correct screen format.

[–] silentdisco22 10 years ago

What's really confusing to me is the difference between what the dvd actually looks like and what it's case says on the back... I just got the DVD from my local library today and was pretty bummed that I was going to watch a Cinemascope film in 4:3 (because that ruins the point of filming in Cinemascope) but when the movie actually started it certainly is a nice widescreen image. So I'm confused as to why the case would say 4:3 when it's clearly in it's spacious Cinemascope...

Unless for some ridiculous reason they made it 4:3 and then letterboxed it to turn it back into a widescreen picture, which would be the dumbest thing because it'd look terrible. Besides, the shots are still so wide that this couldn't even be possible. Do I make any sense? haha Regardless, I was pleasantly surprised.

The only thing I did notice was sometimes it looked like the image would bend some on the left and right edges, but that could just be because the technology was so new and they were still getting the hang of it.

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[–] hobnob53 10 years ago

Yes, the cover reads "4:3 (letterbox)", which basically makes no sense. Luckily, as you say, the film is in its correct widescreen aspect ratio, 2.55:1.

DVD cases sometimes give the wrong aspect ratios of their films. Why this happens is anybody's guess. People who don't know what they're doing, I guess. Not everyone who works in the video industry really knows film.

The "bend" in the image is indeed an artifact of early CinemaScope. You can also see the film "bend" in the middle when the focus shifts from the background to the foreground, for instance. It took a couple of years for the process to be refined.

Technically, I suppose you could take a true 4:3 standard image (of a panned-and-scanned or actual 4:3 print) and stretch it out anamorphically to fill a widescreen aspect ratio. But of course you'd only be stretching the existing picture. You wouldn't be "adding" the missing portions of a widescreen film that had been put in a full screen, pan & scan format. Obviously it would be pointless to do such a thing, so don't worry about that.

[–] silentdisco22 10 years ago

"You wouldn't be "adding" the missing portions of a widescreen film that had been put in a full screen, pan & scan format. Obviously it would be pointless to do such a thing, so don't worry about that."

Oh I'm not worrying about it, I was just rambling and coming up with some theory as to connect the 4:3 they claim & what it truly is :) A dumb ramble, but alas, it's late and I'm tired haha But as a side note I find it incredibly frustrating when I come across a widescreen film cut into 1.37:1, almost makes it not worth watching until you can find it correct. ::sigh::

The bend just somewhat surprised me because it was so noticeable, I spotted it right away; I hadn't noticed it before in other Cinemascope films, for example, in How To Marry a Millionaire, which came out before this (which I'm guessing you already know).

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[–] hobnob53 10 years ago

Yes, you were basically saying that that was just a ramble. I figured you weren't really "worried" about it, other than just one of those late-night worries!

But your message did prompt me to add a note to my OP stating that the film is in widescreen no matter how confusing the DVD case is.

I did once have to disabuse someone who thought that the fact he had a widescreen TV meant that he could buy a pan & scan w/s film and see the entire picture! I had to gently inform him that you could only see what was actually on the DVD -- the rest didn't magically appear just because he had a wider television set. It turned out he had been buying p&s versions of movies for years and always assumed he was seeing more than someone with a square TV. He was not happy when I told him all he was seeing was a stretched version of an otherwise square image. Believe me, I never thought that was the case with you!

The bend varies in how obvious it is from film to film. Sometimes it's really apparent and other times not. Bending in the center of the picture depends on how often it shifts focus, which is what usually causes the most apparent "bending" in most films. (I recently saw How to Marry a Millionaire again and while I wasn't paying attention to that factor I didn't offhand notice any bending, at the edges or anywhere else.)

On the other hand, I think bending at the edges is mainly a factor of the quality of the print, plus the film's aspect ratio. Such bending at the edges is more common I think in films shot at 2.55:1 than in 'Scope films shot in what became the standard w/s a.r., 2.35:1. That shift came in 1955, when CinemaScope films changed from using stereophonic magnetic sound to optical sound, which required a modification in the aspect ratio. In Fox films you can tell when they changed the a.r. because at the beginning of the movie the early 'Scope credits read, "Twentieth Century-Fox presents a CinemaScope Production", while starting at some point in 1955 films shot at the lesser a.r. read, "presents a CinemaScope Picture".

I just hope FCA continues to release w/s films in their right format. This is new for them and they haven't released any further w/s movies since Woman's World and The Bottom of the Bottle, so we'll have to see where this goes. I'd also like to see them revisit earlier CinemaScope films they put out in p&s versions and do those properly, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Incidentally, just to muddy things further, one of the films on the FCA line is The Raid (1954), a very good movie about a raid of escaped Confederate POWs on a small town in northern Vermont in 1864. This movie was made by an independent company called Panoramic Pictures and released by Fox but did not originally carry the Fox logo at the beginning. However, some years ago someone at Fox decided to splice the logo in at the beginning of the film for TV prints. Fine, except they spliced in the "squeezed" CinemaScope credit seen for decades on p&s TV prints of widescreen films. The problem is The Raid was not a CinemaScope movie, just a regular 4:3 film. FCM used the TV print with the inaccurate CinemaScope credit for its DVD, which has caused no end of confusion for people who bought the disc.

[–] cold_sky 8 years ago

It is 4:3 with letterboxing to make it look widescreen (there are still vertical bars on either side).

The alternate would be anamorphic widescreen, where the pixels are actually unsqueezed and the resolution should technically be higher.

This is one of the worst looking DVDs — a whole slew of Clifton Webb's movies were given this shoddy treatment, but I'm not totally complaining because at least I get to see them.

But this DVD transfer is crap, make no mistake about it, despite the massive "Cinemascope" advertised on the front cover.

[–] hobnob53 8 years ago

I'm not quite sure what you mean, cold_sky. It may not be anamorphic, which may be what you're getting at. That might mean it's 4x3 but "stretched" to a widescreen image. A similar thing exists with Twilight Time's DVD of Violent Saturday.

But regardless of the technicalities the bottom line is it's the entire original image, not a pan & scan print that loses over half the picture. You're seeing the entire movie. I expected Fox to release it in their usual FCA p&s print and was pleasantly surprised to find it was the widescreen image, even if it's not anamorphic. You still see everything that was filmed.

I've run both the Woman's World and Violent Saturday DVDs on the big screen for a film group, as well as watched them on a television, and there were no problems with the image quality at all. Obviously this isn't Blu-ray but I completely disagree that this is "one of the worst-looking DVDs". You're right that there have been some shoddy-looking releases of other titles but this isn't one of them as I see it. Maybe not the optimum image but not "crap".