Widescreen vs. Pan and Scan?

Sorry, if this topic has been posted already here.

Today, I think it's all widescreen or letterbox (preferred), but I don't think we all grew up on it. I probably watched Psycho in pan and scan until it came out on DVD or Blu-ray. Is there any reason to watch pan and scan?

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I feel that this topic is more up the alley of some others here with technical knowledge, but...I can't see why you would want to watch a pan and scan if you can now see the film "full screen" -- unless for the interesting experiment of watching HOW a movie is panned and scanned -- with people on one side of the screen disappearing and a two-shot of dialogue being turned into altnerating closet-ups.

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I found a bunch of VHS movies my parents had, but their vcr/dvd player broke and I got rid of mine. I think most of the older ones are pan and scan and will end up buying another vcr/dvd recorder player.

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I, too, have some VHS tapes I can't play anymore, and I'd like to . I suppose "vintage" VCRs can be bought "somewhere."

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BTW, any movies from the 1960s you recommend? I've seen the better ones already like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Once Upon a Time in the West, and the bad ones like The Brain That Wouldn't Die. Thanks.

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Well, for what its worth, here's my year by year faves of the 60s:

1960: Psycho
1961: The Guns of Navarone
1962: The Manchurian Candidate
1963: Its a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World
1964: Dr. Strangelove
1965: The Great Race
1966: The Professionals
1967: Wait Until Dark
1968: Bullitt
1969: The Wild Bunch

And throw in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Advise and Consent, Lonely are the Brave, The Birds, Charade, Mirage, and Hotel for good measure. (Other films are more famous, you'll find those.)

Ben-Hur (1959). The aspect ratio is 2.66:1 (compared to Psycho's 1.85:1) and was shown in 70mm format in theaters. I remember it being broadcast on TV back in the day before the digital changeover and the picture was severely cropped to fit the old 4:3 screen dimensions. Viewers were missing almost 50% of the picture. If I'm recalling correctly, the VHS editions were designed to fit this 4:3 ratio.

Personally, I do not like pan-and-scan or any form of tampering with the image. A movie should be viewed as it was originally intended and without cuts. I make sure my movie collection contains unaltered presentations, the only exception being extended directors' cuts.

A lot of (especially) older films and tv series these days are presented squished in the other direction - losing their tops and bottoms - for screening on today's relatively wide home screens. E.g., the blu-ray release of classic BBC doc series, The World at War (1973), currently screening on History Channel where I am, is a real travesty in this regard & I can't watch it (the color scheme is completely changed too from dvds etc., but don't get me started on that!). Spurious wide-screen is the new pan-and-scan.

Other systematic 'wrong aspect ratio' problems are less tractable. Lots of films from roughly Psycho's vintage were shot in 4-3 with matte-ing to 1.66-1 or 1.78-1 or 1.85-1 by projectionists only haphazardly recommended, but theatrical and later tv experiences varied widely even if no official pan-and-scan was done. In some cases the upshot is that there's no uniquely correct aspect ratio. For example, On The Waterfront (1954) doesn't look right in any one aspect to everyone. Criterion's bluray for it has it in 1.66-1 on disc 1, and in 4-3 and 1.85-1 on disc 2. Only the 4:3 looks right to me, possibly just because that's how I first encountered it.