By David Parkinson
Translator: Yi Ersan
Proofreader: Chen Sihang
Source: BFI
Most of the articles say that Henry Coster's The Robes (1953) was the first widescreen film to be shot using CinemaScope technology. In fact, the award should belong to Jean Nicholasco's "Willing to Marry the Golden Turtle Wife", which twentieth century Fox produced at the same time as the filming of Robert E. Lee. D. Webb directed Under twelve-mile reef to get a head start in the race to pull viewers from the tv set to the widescreen.
The Robe of a Thousand Autumns (1953)
Nicholasco took the lead in completing his work, but twentieth-century Fox executives believed that a Roman epic film with religious overtones was a more powerful statement of "the wonders you can see without glasses" than a musical about three single girls (played by Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Baikauer, and Betty Graber, respectively) looking for a rich husband. Thus, the magnificent, sincere, but unimaginative legend of Christ's costume on his way to Mount Golgotha became the first to try out the 654 color and black-and-white films shot using Sinimathkop techniques over the next 14 years.
"Willing to Marry the Golden Turtle Concubine"
From 1956 to 1959, Twentieth Century Fox also produced another 38 feature films using the so-called RegalScope technology. But each technique relies on a process in which, first, an image with a wide field of view is compressed horizontally onto a 35mm film by a cylindrical lens with a compression ratio of 2:1, and then viewed in an elongated form through the projector's compensating lens. Originally, the frame ratio was 2.55:1, but 2.35:1 was the best format, with four-channel stereo sound.
Twentieth Century Fox had trouble in its early days, as eager to enter the widescreen space, they purchased a simple Hypergonar series of lenses originally developed by the French inventor Henri Chretien for wide-angle tank sights during World War I. These anamorphic shots were used by Claude O'Dan-Raha for the silent short Film Origins of Fire (1928).
But in the twentieth century Fuchs President Spyros When P. Sculas approached Chrétien, he had already passed the patent term, and the optical company Dr. Lun was also improving the technology of the anamorphic lens (and winning himself an Oscar), so Sculas decided to put it on feature filming. As a result, the brightness and resolution of the earliest Siniemaskop widescreen films were reduced, while close-up shots tended to appear out of proportion, and lateral and tracked movements on the screen were sometimes distorted.
However, Siniemaskop is less expensive than Cinerama (Cinerama: shooting with 3 35mm cameras separately, with 6 projectors, 3 rotating in groups, when the 3 projectors are simultaneously screened, the pictures meet each other to form a large-screen panoramic film), which is more attractive to the audience than 3D. When Twentieth Century Fox shared the invention with competitors, many companies in Hollywood adopted the format, and other alternative formats, including Franscope, one of the most successful brands of French morphing widescreen films, and Tohoscope, also began to appear around the world.
The main exception was Paramount, who developed the VistaVision system, which used traditional 35mm film and flipped the film over to record images of an 8-foot hole-wide, 1.85-screen aspect ratio, which improved significantly due to the increased format and smaller particles), although in 1958-62 many of mgM's films used anamorphic lenses from Panavision. But they are still advertised as films made by Siniemaskop technology.
Eventually, Panavision will be the industry leader because it's cheaper, more reliable, and eliminates the distorted "muttering effect" that has tarnished many fascinating close-ups. For a while, however, Hollywood had been dancing to Cole Porter's "Glass Stockings" (1957) for Ruben Mamorian, in which he sang, "You must have a brilliant Technicolor technique (color printing, known for presenting surreal colors and saturated levels of color, classics like Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and the amazing Sinimaskop and stereo systems."
Here are ten classic widescreen films shot with Sinimathkop technology:
The Weekend (1955, directed by Richard Fletcher)
In Richard Fletcher's American town story, where everyone has their own secrets, Weekend Is a play written by Sidney Bem and adapted from the novel by William B. Lee. L. Hirsch originally published an article in the magazine Metropolis.
Similar to John Sturges's Blood on the Black Rock (1955), this master-of-the-art widescreen film turned classic Western scenes of outlaws driving to a remote area to grab a bank into a melodrama full of noir plots. But "traveling salesmen" Stephen McNally, J. Carol Nash, and Lee Marvin are not the only suspicious people in Bradville, Arizona.
In a series of elaborate long shots, Fletcher exposes soap opera-style desires, deceptions, anxieties, and betrayals, establishing not only a rhythm of life, but also transcending the boundaries of small towns, copper mines, and Amish farms.
Photographer Charles M. G. Clark used DeLuxe equipment to create extremely detailed images to emphasize the isolation that characters endure in a community that is ostensibly closely united. But in the midst of robberies, escapes and climactic gunfights, the length of the shot is shortened, and the hostage-taking mine chief Victor Mator proves to his ten-year-old son that not all heroes have boxes full of war medals.
Miss and the Tramp (1955, directed by Clyde Geronimi/Wilfred Jackson/Hamilton Lusco)
Walt Disney was one of the first moguls to receive Arnimascop authorization from Twentieth Century Fox, who experimented with the format in the Oscar-winning animated short film Beep, Boo, Bang and Bang (1953) and later hired Richard Fletcher to adapt Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1954) into Disney's fifth live-action film.
Despite the success of these films, Disney decided to produce Miss and the Tramp at the same time with the academy ratio (1.33:1) and the 2.35 frame ratio of Sinimathkop, so as not to avoid a poor public response to the latter.
Since 1942, Disney has been creating the story of a pampered Cocker Spaniel meeting a stray mixed breed dog. Finally, after 150 animators created more than 2 million drawings over four years, the $4 million film achieved both word-of-mouth and box office success.
In fact, directors Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Lusco spend more time solving problems than creating spectacles. The extra space enhances the realism of the vista and makes the world of the 1910s that Miss discovers after leaving her comfortable home for the first time both exciting and daunting.
But the scene designers had to rethink their entire approach to the relationship between the characters and the background, and they soon realized that hordes of characters filled the long shots better than individual characters.
However, while this technique is used to the extreme in the chase scene between the Siamese cat, the dog catcher and the mouse, the celebration of pasta and meatballs in the courtyard of Tony's Restaurant also clearly gives a slightly sad intimacy.
Good Weather (1955, directed by Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen)
After performing dream ballets in Vincent Minnelli's An American in Paris (1951) and his co-directed "Dream Ballets" (1952) with Stanley Donan, Gene Kelly decided to present his point in his only journey to Senimaskop: dancing is a man's game.
Donen had used this format to achieve exciting effects in the 19th-century wilderness captured in Seven Pairs of Couples (1954), but the duo later returned to New York in Spring In Jincheng (1949) to tell the story of the reunion of three young sailors. As it turns out, contemporary audiences are not interested in this film noir-style cynicism, but the satire of television and advertising still works well.
Donan and Kelly make the most of the widescreen in the music, notably, in the passage where "The Binge" sounds, Kelly, Dan Daly, and Michael Kidd walk on bucket lids on their feet, and then when they realize how alienated they will be from each other over the next decade, the three of them sing "I Shouldn't Have Come" together, and then the movie screen splits into three parts.
The two co-directors also made vivid use of the enclosed spaces of the nightclub stage and the boxing gym, with Dolores Gray and Ced Charis singing "Thanks a Lot but No Thanks" and "Baby, You Knock Me Out" to keep the men in place.
But in terms of pure widescreen performance, there's nothing better than Kelly singing "I Like Myself" while skating in Manhattan.
Laura Montes (1955, directed by Max Ofes)
Max Ofes's posthumous work is based on the novels of Cecil Saint-Laurent, his only film produced using Eastmancolor (a color print brand launched by Eastman Kodak) and Siniemaskop.
Although Jean Cocto, Roberto Rossellini and Jacques Tati, among others, wrote to Le Figaro claiming that Laura Montes was a milestone in film history, the film was completely re-edited by Gamma Pictures.
The existing version is 30 minutes shorter than the premiere version, but its condemnation of sensational hype remains strong, and Ofels unveils the scandal in a dazzling way, subverting the voyeuristic gaze of viewers.
As a master of scene scheduling, Opfils allows Christian Materas' shots to glide gracefully through Jean de O'Bonner's exquisite sets. He also borrowed Joseph von Sternberg's approach to photographing Marlene Dietrich, filling the vacant space with a variety of objects, ropes, ladders, chandeliers, and cheap corolla hanging from the ceiling of the large roof in the Circus of New Orleans, while curtains, shadows, arches, and walls were used in the carriages, hotels, theaters, and mansions that Laura frequented.
This segregation reinforces Ofels' theme and gives this genius work that fully demonstrates the aesthetics of cinema a deceptive emotional power.
Bridge over the River Kwai (1957, directed by David Lane)
David Lane had no experience in making epic films before directing the film, an adaptation of Pierre Bull's novel, which was scripted by Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman, who had been on the Hollywood blacklist. However, the film eventually won seven Oscars, and Lane himself won the Best Director Award, a tragic story about Japanese prisoners of war building a railway across the Burmese jungle.
The climactic scenes surrounding the sabotage are tremor-inducing, and the dramatic tension is between the camp commander played by Hayakawa Yukisu, the former with a strong sense of honor and responsibility but abusive tendencies, and the contradictory patriotic pride of the latter, which prompts him to cooperate, and the absurdity of this cooperative action is only revealed in his final sober and frightening moments.
At the end of the film, cinematographer Jack Hildiad offers a bird's-eye view of the daunting terrain, underscoring the impenetrability of the site and the sheer difficulty of building the railway under such challenging conditions.
The format was a key element, but as Guinness and the Allied soldiers trekked, Lane narrowed the screen space to highlight the sweltering heat and lushness of the forest. However, as the bridge was gradually being built, Lane returned to the widescreen to show the magnitude of the achievement and make the eventual destruction of the building even more spectacular and epic.
Dragon Slayer (1959, directed by Bud Berticher)
Although John Ford resisted Senimaskop and claimed that the painter never used a canvas in the shape of a tennis court, he eventually used the technique to shoot Soul of the West Point (1955). Ford must also have been impressed by the way Bud Berticher and Charles Lawton Jr. photographed the mountains of Alabama, California, and "Dragon Slayer" is a lamentable and witty and optimistic ode to the lost Westworld.
This was Berticher's sixth collaboration with Randolph Scott, which once again explored themes in The Corpses of the Seven Hordes (1956) and The Decision of Sunset Town (1957), where a bounty hunter meets a pair of maverick outlaws and a graceful widow, while attempting to lure his nemesis to the scene before sending the prisoners to Santa Cruz.
Many consider it to be one of the best Hollywood Westerns, and few films can match its visuals.
Needless to say, Berticher fully demonstrates the rugged beauty of the frontier wilderness on the silver screen. Towering rocks and intimidating expanses of desert highlight the isolation and smallness of the figures, as well as the potential dangers they face from local residents and interlopers.
In the night scenes, the expressionist use of shadows is the most powerful, and as the five are discussing how best to use their companions, Berticer cleverly illuminates their faces with bonfires and moonlight. Although Scott finally accomplished his mission, his image still seems to hover around the burning hanging tree.
The Diary of Anne Frank (1959, directed by George Stevens)
During his service in the US Army Signal Corps, George Stevens made documentaries about the Normandy landings, the liberation of Paris, and the meeting of U.S. and Soviet troops on the Elbe. He also witnessed the devastation of the Dachau concentration camp and helped prepare video evidence for use in the Nuremberg trials.
As a result, he appears to be the best candidate for Twentieth Century Fox, a film written by Pulitzer laureates Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, adapted from the diary of Anne Frank's father, Otto Frank, whose family of four hid for 25 months in a secret room upstairs from a spice factory in Amsterdam.
Twentieth Century Fox insisted on making the film with Siniemaskop technology, and Stevens complained, "If you want a technical system that better represents pythons than humans, that's fine."
Realizing that a wider screen might undermine his efforts to convey the narrow environment in which frank, Van Dans, and Fritz Pfeffer were found, Stevens asked art director Lyle Swift to work on the others. R. Wheeler and George W. Bush W. Davis added vertical columns to the set based on the actual rooms of the Anne Frank House.
Thus, in intimate and dramatic moments, he can control his actions within a limited space, while still being able to show the almost claustrophobic closeness between the eight characters in scenes like Hanukkah dinner, by cleverly invoking angles.
Stevens and photographer William Mailer also used shadows to reinforce the sense of restraint and repressed emotions. But viewers never got a chance to see Stevens' scenes of Anne at Bergen-Belsen, which were cut out because they received poor reception during the test screening.
Whispers by the Pillow (1959, directed by Mike Gordon)
In 1913, Lois Weber and Philip Small, in their silent short story Suspense, triangulated the screen for the scene on the phone. Forty-five years later, Stanley Donan used split-screen synchronization to present Gary Grant and Ingrid Bergman's bedtime call in "Fishing for Golden Turtles." But Mike Gordon wasn't content with this purity of pillow-by-side conversation, and he had New York party regulars Doris Day and Roque Hudson chatting in the bathrooms at opposite ends of the movie screen.
The first of three films hired by Hudson and Dee, it marks the screwball as what Dee's producer husband, Marty Melche, calls a "clean sex comedy."
Gordon begins by paying tribute to Webb and Smalley, and Dee is eavesdropping on Hudson's endless chat with her girlfriend. But he used standard split-screen techniques to show their impatient communication, until Hudson recognized Dey's voice in a nightclub and pretended to be a naïve Texan, flirting without knowing her true identity.
When he begins to talk to her in this disguised image, Hudson reclines on the top half of the screen, where he lies on Dey's bed and talks sweetly to her. This mischievous visual tension later reached its climax—the two men stretched out one leg each from their bathtubs, playfully parodying the touching of the pure hand between Grant and Bergman. Clean sex comedy indeed!
Billy the Liar (1963, directed by John Schlesinger)
Sinimathkop and social realism never seem to come together. But John Schlesinger's film creatively used widescreen, a remake of Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall's stage play, which was adapted from Waterhouse's 1959 novel.
Schlesinger chose an ingenious approach, moving from a limited academy ratio to a widescreen ratio of 2.35:1 to show the escapist fantasies of tom Conteney's funeral parlor in his fictional kingdom of Ambrosia.
But while Henri-Georges Kruzzo did create a 54-minute, broader frame in his seminal art documentary The Secret of Picasso, Schlesinger discovered the beauty and nobility of the harsh northern landscape and used a large depth-of-field deep-focus perspective in this kitchen sink comedy to show more than one way to broaden the horizon.
Schlesinger contrasts Contenet's unrealistic fantasies with everyday life with mischievous implications. Although in his fantasies, the parade in the Kingdom of Ambrose looks epic, it actually lacks grand and spectacular scenes, showing the limits of the imagination of a utopian.
By presenting everything from the crane to the Conga line on a widescreen, Schlesinger reveals that Contenai's narrow vision is due to his own detachment from reality. So he uses Julie Christie's swinging handbag in the city center to walk briskly, demonstrating the simple joy of true self-awareness and freedom. Through this passage — imbued with the spirit of the French New Wave — Schlesinger hints that the 60s are about to undergo upheaval.
Contempt (1963, directed by Jean-Luc Godard)
Photographer Raoul Kutar has always believed that Jean-Luc Godard's adaptation of Alberto Moravia's novel The Ghost of High Noon is his love letter to his wife and muse Anna Carina. Although a story about the breakdown of a marriage that took place during the production of the Technicolor version of the film Odyssey does not seem to be the most romantic statement.
But the fact that Godard puts Brigitte Bardot on a fashionable wig to make her look like Carina, and in a conversation between the two uses a poster for Roberto Rossellini's Journey to Italy (1954), which seems to confirm Kutar's point.
Godard's sixth work, however, is also a treatise on the extent to which art and entertainment, classical and commercial, and cinematic creativity depend on collaboration and compromise. "The Eye of the Gods has been replaced by cinema," director Fritz Lang commented in the film.
But, in the opening narration, Godard turns the camera's "Cyclops gaze" toward the viewer, reminding us that passive viewing is no longer an option.
In discussions with screenwriter Michelle Picoli and producer Jack Parrance, Lang also quipped that Siniemaskop "is not suitable for humans." Only suitable for snakes – and funerals." However, Godard and Kutar are proud of the freedom that the widescreen offers them, whether they want to photograph the backyard of Cinecittà, the gardens of Palans' luxurious residence, or the magnificent coastal scenery of Capri.
The partners also learned how the wider screen fits into scene scheduling techniques. In the second act of the film, an impressive conversation between Picoli and Bardot in their new apartment is followed by Godard using a series of complex push-and-pull shots of porches, walls and furniture, and then using a pendulum to shake a grumbling conversation that takes place across a lamp.
Moreover, only Godard would have thought that Roman erotic books would be suitable for adaptation into widescreen films.