Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

[swo17]

Swo17, I'm glad you prefer my statement about both versions. However, if given the choice of one or the other, I'm glad that Criterion went for the intended widescreen version. When I watch it on DVD, I want to see it in the same way they did at the 3,300 seat Loew's State on Broadway, and not the 300 seat LaBelle Theater in South Charleston, West Virginia.

In what hypothetical dreamworld are you living that Criterion had to choose one or the other? They can do whatever they want, and they have a precedent of offering multiple versions of films, even if the alternate version is merely an historical curiosity (i.e. the "Love Conquers All" cut of Brazil). Now, if the elements for an Academy version were subpar that would be another matter (and admittedly, I don't know anything about this), but assuming this is not the case, the fact is that Criterion was either unaware of the Academy cut of MO, ignorant of the demand for it, or that they consciously ignored it. In none of these scenarios is Criterion "to be applauded," as you suggest.

Also, you have made many enemies in South Charleston today.

[HerrSchreck]

Reading over the initial posts in this thread.....damn, I miss davidhare....

Coincidentally, David sent me an email today with an expansive central section covering this very subject in his usual thoughtful way. I figured some thoughtful words from a voice that's been sorely missed around here-- and on this thread in particular-- would be rather pertinent and satisfying.

If you watch Sirk's Scope films -the best of which by far is Tarnished Angels, more about the rest later, iincluding A Time to Love which has good things but if fucked up by the producer - you can see him trading his signature diagonal planes of décor or static objects into a WS mode. I couldn’t help really feeling this after watching a "restored"(not your word but edited for legal reasons D) Marcel version of Lola. Which I now think is a masterpiece (I havent for the forty years prior.) Ophuls cuts the frame up both vertically with camera moements, and diagonally with Sternbergian bits of biz like blacked out side (One at a time with semi iris fades in and out) and areas virtually partitioned with masks, veils, translucent fabric - you name it. You really have to see this at Film Forum.

Anyhow, to get down to it, I rewatched MO after Id been poring over Lola. What struck me again was how obviously he's left a ton of headroom in just the first reel. The second reel is obviously disntinguishable because it opens with three strip neg fringing through the first two shots - a wide of the hospital, and the corrider with Morehead moving in towards Rock's room. I get the impressiom, but there's nothing to support this, that the whole movie may have been shot more or less chronoligcally, given it was Sirk's first but coming out with Rock to make him a star. What is obvious from the third shot in Reel two is how he uses Rock's Height (apparently 6'4 but we don’t know about the other part.) THe rest of the movie variously has Rock always with head intact in positons of superiorirty, UNTIL he "makes over" (after that nonsense with the Lloyd C Douglas Ministerial philospohy - for another OTT example of this benign twaddle see Borzage's Green Light with Erroll Flynn and Tina Louise. Anyhow, Rock remains dominant even when he's "pretending" to be someone else to Jane. AS Jane's voyage continues through the narrative, Sirk keeps throwing people, doctors and décor all around her in postiions of dominance. The most excruciatingly obvious shot which should be 1.37 (and which I posted two years ago) is the letter which is fully legible in Acad. But cut to insensibility in 2.00. The peak scene of course is the great Metty Piece of the lights starting to go on, after headroom blackness, when she stumbles around blind on her own in the Swiss Hotel Suite, ending up on the baclcony, with headspace fully lit in screaming orange, where she knocks over the flowerpot. A visual contour for the obvious emotional narrative.

Getting back to There's Always, Sirk and Metty have clearly adopted a conmpletely unsuaul for both of them, and fairly expressionist, even Gremillionesque camera movement which involves panning and a swivel or a tilted pivot (like Dainah la Metisse in the cabin scene.) He does it with Fred coming home to the family and facing the hideous children., for two three and four shots to keep heads in frame. And this continues as a Sirkian/Metty signature movement for the rest of his movies in fact. I don’t recal anything like it in his earlier pictures, including the astounding Shockproof. He even does it in A Time to with upward tilts to maintain the ceiling etc. (This was of course shot by a German DP who was not his first choice.) Anyway the real punches for horizontal eyline in TAT are in particular Fred McMurray's factory with the workbenches and display tables. These all become horizontal diagonals extending beyond the frame (like all his earlier movies in which décor plays this animated role) Here he and Metty continue the pan/pivot shots which ends up - this absolutely fantastic - to effectively animate the toys int MacMurray's factory. It later animates the emotional contours as well of course. There might be some argument, if I ever put this out there, that Sirk and Metty developed this idea specifically for TAT but I think what they have definitely done is expand an aspect of Sirk's methods of moving camera for framing and variable persepctive and pure expressivenes. And indeed for widescreen, finally.

..and if anyone wants to yell at him for leaving the forum, now's your chance. He'll be reading here for sure.

[Highway 61]

Well, in case this is going to get locked, I'd like to jump in here and request that people contact Criterion, politely expressing interest in seeing an academy transfer of MO and other Hollywood films from this period in cases where there is reason to believe that they were screened in academy and that there is value in seeing them this way.

Done weeks ago my friend. I often write to Criterion when it's clear they've misrepresented a film, but I don't know how much good it does. I'm always brief, polite, and articulate, but they never respond. Still, I hope that it makes an impression.

And if David Hare is indeed still following this thread, then I'll join the chorus begging him to come back. We never communicated, but his posts inspired me enormously. I've spent hours at my university's library reading about Technicolor for instance, and all because I was floored by his peerless knowledge on this and dozens of other obscure subjects.

[Antoine Doinel]

I'll definitely add my voice to the choir. I had the exact experience as Highway 61 -- I found DHs posts to be illuminating, passionate and inspiring. I do hope he reconsiders.

[LQ]

Why exactly did he leave? I haven't been here for very long, but in meandering around the forum I've come to deeply appreciate his thoughts.

[Gregory]

David is right to point to that scene in MO where Helen is groping around, searching for the confidence and hope that allowed her to to walk down to the shore unaccompanied back in the States and even to go on living. In academy, the scene strikes me as a good example of Sirk's lighting of the scene with fields of light that go from the top of the bottom of the frame (this is done elsewhere with tall windows and skylights, as in the hospital). The use of color here reminds me particularly of what Sirk and Metty did with the old mill in All that Heaven Allows.
I'd probably also agree with David that Tarnished Angels is Sirk's best Scope film. I might go a step further and call it one of the best Scope films ever. And to think it could have been even more brilliant visually than it already is if only the studio had let it be a color production! Just another example of U-I undercutting Sirk because they didn't always understand or believe in what he was doing. Elsewhere he's referred to producers of these classic melodramas doing this like demanding that he show more "bosom," suggesting that he cut the scene in All That Heaven Allows in which Cary picks up Walden and reads a passage, etc.

Edit: removed what I said about why David left. It was merely something based on a comment over at Kehr's blog. I just don't feel like it's my place even to pass something like this along.

[HerrSchreck]

It might be better left unspecified, as I don't want to launch a shitstorm. But he & Kinsayder left for pretty much the same reason..

[LQ]

(Sorry, wasn't my place to ask ) I'll just say that I also hope he comes back.

[Gregory]

I can see why someone could get you confused with Jack Theakston (the one who was banned). You two often seem to arrive at forums at the same time, consistently make the same points as each other, and leave (voluntarily or otherwise) at the same time.

[Props55]

Talk about bad timing! Just when I was about to ask whether there was any information in Mr. Furmanek's treasure trove of old back issues of Variety, Hollywood Reporter, American Cinematographer, Box Office etc. regarding when Universal decided to abandon the (IMHO) awkward reconciliation of Academy/2:1 in the effort to combat/accomodate 'Scope and backed off to the "Golden Mean" of 1.85. I'm sure the introduction of Vistavision and, to a lesser extent the 1.77(8) and 1.66 English and continental compromises were an influence, but at this point I'm really wondering if there isn't some evidence of audience feedback (in the form of complaints to exhibitors) at Big U's attempts to turn silk purses into sow's ears. If not I must assume that '50s moviegoers were, for the most part, just as unaware of basic compositional elements as television viewers later would be when watching 'scope films on the tube.

[Gregory]

I still cannot post screencaps from Magnificent Obsession, as I haven't acquired the software or the expertise to use it.
But I thought it would be helpful to post some examples from Tarnished Angels to illustrate what I meant earlier in the discussion when I referred to Sirk's use of horizontal blocking in the Scope films and how earlier films, such as MO use a much more conventional academy type of composition. The horizontal organization of the frame is apparent in many, many shots in the film, not just the rare ones in which Sirk indulges in a more obvious horizontal component such as the plane wing.

Click on the thumbnail to get a larger image, if all goes according to plan (first time I've done this).

[GringoTex]

Anyone want to comment on The Tarnished Angels?

My favorite Sirk. I think MO suffers because it's obvious Sirk was composing for both ratios- so neither is optimal. Academy or 2:1, there are clumsy parts. With Tarnished Angles, there is no such ambiguity. I never knew he wanted to film it in color- I love it in b&w. I can't even imagine it in color.

[Bob Furmanek]

As a matter of studio policy, UI did shoot two different versions of their first few 2:55 CinemaScope productions. (In fact, I have an original 35mm trailer for the 1:37/1:85 flat release of SIGN OF THE PAGAN.) This necessitated the annoying practice of using two cameras with different lenses (one standard and one anamorphic) in order to shoot this film. That's twice the work with double the set-ups and this practice was quickly abandoned by the studios.

In the case of MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, Sirk used one camera and one set-up. That had to present a difficult challenge in order to insure his artistic vision was represented in both 2:1 and 1:37 ratios. Not an easy task for any film-maker!

When I worked at American Movie Classics, we were the first station to air both versions of THE ROBE; the commonly seen 2:55 anamorphic and the standard, flat 1:37/1:85 which was made for theaters that did not have the CinemaScope lens or screen. (They also used the flat version for 16mm prints for schools and churches.) There was some resistance to the required stereo sound element to CinemaScope, and here is an interesting - and accurate - article by Jack Theakston about the outcry from exhibitors: http://centraltheater.blogspot.com/2007 ... -bust.html

Sensio has just released a 3-D field-sequential DVD of Sirk's first wide-screen film, TAZA - SON OF COCHISE. They are presenting it in the standard 1:37 ratio, even though it was intended for 2:1 presentation. We tried an interesting experiment with the transfer. Thankfully, it's not zoomed in so we cropped the image to 2:1 on the computer. The compositions were perfect, and in every shot, Metty took great care in order to frame the action to work within the wide-screen image. There were quite a few instances where an actor would move, and the camera would pan up or down carefully in order to keep their head properly framed.

[mckeldinb]

Somewhat off-topic, but relevant. I queued up the Netflix "streaming" 1.33 version of All that Heaven Allows with my Criterion 1.77 version last night and watched the final 5 minutes simultaneously in both aspect ratios. Both versions were cropped: the 1.33 on the sides and the 1.77 much more on the bottom (just a sliver missing from the top). Of course I have no idea where the Netflix transfer comes from, so it could just be terribly overscanned (almost certainly is)... but then that's a potential problem with any transfer. I mention this, because the MO screen caps posted seem inconclusive and at least one looks like it might be cropped on the side. I've got a Hi-Def 1.77 version of MO on my DVR and I might try to see if I can freeze the right frame to match up with some of the frames posted.

At any rate the great aspect ratio debate seems more complicated... both technically AND aesthetically than either side seems to credit.

[mckeldinb]

Just a follow up: I did compare screen caps (very inexact, as it's difficult to pause precisely on the same frame) from the posted 1.33 MO and the 1.77 version aired on American cable television in hi-def a month or so ago. There seems to be little or no cropping on the sides of the 1.33 image, but there is significant geometric/vertical compression (possibly something that occurred in the screen capturing process?). Unlike All that Heaven Allows, the widescreen edition of MO seems to be extracted more from the middle of the frame rather than the top.

I counted three significant "text" scenes: a post card Hudson receives, a letter and a newspaper article. All three were perfectly framed in widescreen. No text missing at all. The scene where Wyman drops the flower pot over the hotel railing still has a significant amount of light coming from the top of the widescreen frame as in the academy screen cap. The orange reflection of that light in the wall above the door is quite prominent (but not as much so as in the 1.33 screen cap). The effect that Mr. Hare refers to in the posted letter is arguably muted, but not lost in the widescreen frame.

I'm personally unconvinced that Magnificent Obsession is ideally presented in the academy ratio (call me agnostic, as I wouldn't want to argue with a high degree of certainty for widescreen either), but what does seem obvious to me is that Sirk and/or Metty knew the film would be exhibited in widescreen; but I suppose that was really never in dispute. I'd certainly sign a petition to get Criterion to release both framings though.

[domino harvey]

The Netflix On Demand transfers come from the cable movie channel Starz

[Gregory]

mckeldinb, I don't know the exact nature of the vertical compression you're observing, and I haven't seen the 1.77:1 broadcast. It seems to me, as I've said, that Universal got the 2:1 ratio partly by showing a little extra information from the left and right but mainly by cropping away from the top and bottom. I expect Criterion will use a similar release print and get similar results.

I, for one, would not point to the shots of Helen's letter as an example of what's wrong with the film in 2:1. The three "text" examples mckeldinb mentioned above are all functional in either ratio. The problem is not as obvious as text getting chopped off. If it were, this discussion would have been much shorter and simpler.
To me, what seems like the best example of an obvious problem is the shot of Helen's face (pretty much head-on, not the side angle) in the final scene. As I mentioned earlier, it's perfectly framed in academy but looks dreadfully cropped in 2:1.
Any chance of posting a cap (or one from each ratio), David? Or maybe if you were planning to post any from the UK disc anyway that could be among them.
The 2 shot of Bob over Helen in her hospital bed from the same final sequence is an example of some of the subtler uses of color and light that is ruined in 2:1 (I would not say just "muted" as mckeldinb does). People have called this mere personal preference, but I believe the shot conveys the mood more effectively with the actors lower in the frame with a larger field of blue light in the upper part of the frame. I'd love to watch some of the great color Sirks or other films that use color in subtle but significant ways* with a group of experts on color psychology and cognitive science. It's an interesting field -- things like colors and shapes within visual representations impact our consciousness in ways we're just beginning to understand.

I still think the best argument against viewing MO as a 2:1 is looking at the stylistic ruptures between this one and his true widescreen work e.g. Tarnished Angels. The differences are just too numerous and too great to ignore, and I think if Sirk and Metty were composing MO to look best in 2:1 I can't see why there would be innumerable lapses into academy composition as opposed to what we see in Tarnished Angels etc. It just doesn't add up.

*which would be a great thread for discussion.

[mckeldinb]

mckeldinb, I don't know the exact nature of the vertical compression you're observing

The faces look slightly squished like an old CinemaScope film. Doesn't have anything to do with which aspect ratio is appropriate for the film, it was just an observation about the screen caps.

[skuhn8]

Sure are a lot of screen caps on this page. Any chance we could move these over to the screen caps thread?

BTW, has the aspect ratio listed on the Criterion site always been listed as Academy ratio? In any case, it is now.

[reno dakota]

BTW, has the aspect ratio listed on the Criterion site always been listed as Academy ratio? In any case, it is now.

It was listed at 2.00:1, but changed to 1.33:1 when the new website went live. See here and here.

[HerrSchreck]

I don't dare entertain a hope. I think it's just a glitch/default.

[reno dakota]

I don't dare entertain a hope. I think it's just a glitch/default.

Nor do I, as the Mulvaney e-mail clarified that the Sirk film will be 2:1 and the Stahl film 1.33:1.

[domino harvey]

Well, now that I've seen Magnificent Obsession in the 2.0:1 ratio, I guess I can stop dealing in the hypothetical and make an honest evaluation of the reality. The truth is, 2.0 doesn't look horrible. Everyone is in frame and the necessary information is gleaned by the viewer. But there's something "off" about the framing and it took me about thirty minutes into the viewing to realize what it was. The film at 2.0 ironically resembles full-frame TV blocking from the era the film was produced. Everything you "need" on the screen is there, but it's presented without artistry, without attention paid to anything but functionality. And watching it after a night of Sirk that ran the gamut from Has Anybody Seen My Gal? to the Tarnished Angels, the pedestrian visual composure offered here in 2.0 was an anomaly impossible to ignore.

[carax09]

Good post, Domino. Despite some of the earlier histrionics, if there ever was a thread I wish Lee Kline would read through, it's this one.

[billy feldman]

The DVD Beaver now has screen caps posted for the Criterion MO - there is not one cropped head, not one shot doesn't look perfectly framed and none of his caps look remotely like anything posted here, which leads one to think that maybe the other widescreen DVDs were taken from a zoomed in print. I'm looking forward to seeing the DVD very soon.