MovieChat Forums > The Last Command (1955) Discussion > Anyone know this film's Aspect Ratio?

Anyone know this film's Aspect Ratio?


IMDB doesn't list any (unusual). This grand epic would greatly benefit from a widescreen perspective, if it was, in fact, shot in widescreen. TCM always plays it in full screen, though it does do that with other widescreen movies, like "Attack." Cinemascope came into being in 1953 with The Robe. But this was Republic Pictures, I believe, and maybe they didn't have the finances to support widescreen.

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Although TV stations always show this open-matte 4:3, it was intended to be masked in the projector, to 1.66:1 widescreen.
The credits are in a band across the centre of the 4:3 screen & there's excess head/foot room in every shot.

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I'm 90 percent sure that "The Last Command" was 1.33:1 A.R. It was a Republic Western, albeit with great intentions to do a fair presentation of the story and battle. The story and screenplay were derived from the screenplay written by James Edward Grant for John Wayne's "The Alamo" while Wayne and Republic president Herbert J. Yates were planning to do it together. Wayne left the studio because Yates kept back-burnering the project, but Yates informed Wayne that he paid Wayne's writer to write the script. Yates kept the script and rewrote it. Wayne kept writer Grant... who rewrote it for Batjac Productions (Wayne's company).

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