Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

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Adam
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#251 Post by Adam » Fri Oct 31, 2008 7:03 pm

yoshimori wrote:At least we (except for Gregory) can agree on this. No? HerrSchreck's insistence that the Academy camp has always maintained Sirk "composed for both" ratios is pure fantasy, as I was scolded more than a year ago for even suggesting that 2:1 worked well for this film, and the American Cinematheque, which showed the film in 2:1, was laughed off as a fly-by-night operation (which it is, but that's another story) which had brutalized/amputated/etc the film.
The American Cinematheque isn't "fly-by-night." It's been around for twenty years now I think.

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Bob Furmanek
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#252 Post by Bob Furmanek » Fri Oct 31, 2008 7:55 pm

Did Sirk ever compose a shot where someones head is cropped in his pre-1953 films?

You may find the following of interest. On June 24 1953, Sirk and Metty began production of their first film composed for 2:1 widescreen under UI's new studio policy.

Here are some 1.37 ratio frame-grabs for the ongoing study of Sirk's mise en scene:

Image

Image


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domino harvey
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#254 Post by domino harvey » Tue Nov 25, 2008 3:55 am

I've got my fingers crossed. And lol at a random screencap with two background extras serving as "proof" of Sirk's mise en scene

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reno dakota
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#255 Post by reno dakota » Tue Nov 25, 2008 4:01 am

domino harvey wrote:I've got my fingers crossed.
Me too. I wondered if the new AR listing might be just the default setting for the templates on the new website, but the other new releases grouped around MO seem to have correct AR listings. Now we wait, I suppose.

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HerrSchreck
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#256 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Nov 25, 2008 9:38 am

I just watched this film again recently in Academy (the Carlotta), and, refreshing my memory (last viewing beyond snips and snaps and screen caps was me mom watching when I was a kid) it's a curious film.

Cropped to 2.0:1 it becomes a bunch of fucking heads bobbing around ripped of context in so many scenes where Sirk has meticulously built up an outrageously lush atmosphere that corresponds to the emotional climate of this or that scene-- not to mention his blocking in space which has been carefully noted.

The arguments are never going to end on this I'm afraid, and I'll say why (though I personally have no doubt that Sirks deep sense of craft and mise en scene is resident in Academy, and atrophied to high hell in 2.0):

I actually think he did an odd thing here, which was before the established norms of "protection" were established:

I actually think he went to town for academy, and protected for WS. Why? Because unlike modern academy, which usually represents a cutting away of what's being shot in widescreen's edges, this film's widescreen represents a cutting away of the full image-- i e the reverse of the common protection method. So the reduced image-- which you "normally" protect for-- is the WS image, whereas the AR was the one he could go to town on and fully express himself.

But-- due to the arrangement-- Sirk had to leave a constancy of high headroom in academy, to make way for the WS cropping.

WS feels strangled of life, I'm afraid. Sirkian life, in this case.

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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#257 Post by yoshimori » Tue Nov 25, 2008 10:53 am

HerrSchreck wrote:Because unlike modern academy, which usually represents a cutting away of what's being shot in widescreen's edges, this film's widescreen represents a cutting away of the full image-- i e the reverse of the common protection method.
Uhhh. There have always been multiple kinds of "protection". When shooting for multiple ratios (say, 1.85 for theatrical but open matte for TV) the filmmakers "protect" for the open matte image, i.e. making sure the top and bottom of the image don't have mics, etc and look watchable re lighting, composition, etc. This is roughly analogous to what Sirk was doing and is and has been very common, not at all "the reverse of the common protection method". [Also, I assume you mean by "modern academy" the hideously cropped P&S TV versions of WS films. No? Not sure why one would call this "modern academy", but ...]
HerrSchreck wrote:So the reduced image-- which you "normally" protect for-- is the WS image, whereas the AR was the one he could go to town on and fully express himself.
I think you meant to say the opposite: that you normally "protect" for 1.33:1, but that Sirk did the opposite, concerning himself mainly with the "lush" environment/context you mention and squeezing those pesky actors into the central third of the frame. Otherwise you're using "protect" in a way quite the opposite of normal filmmaking lingo.
HerrSchreck wrote: ... his blocking in space which has been carefully noted.
Somehow I missed that part of the discussion.
HerrSchreck wrote:Cropped to 2.0:1 it becomes a bunch of fucking heads bobbing around ripped of context in so many scenes where Sirk has meticulously built up an outrageously lush atmosphere that corresponds to the emotional climate of this or that scene
But you would never know that if you hadn't seen it. I wonder how many films would be thought likewise "improved" for you if you saw "context" and "atmosphere" the filmmakers may not have intended to show. I'm sure I'd like some better myself. Nonetheless ...

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HerrSchreck
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#258 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Nov 25, 2008 1:01 pm

"uhhhhh". "uhhhh"..

(Sorry I was being checked for tonsilitis and had a tongue depressor in mouth)

There has not "always" been multiple forms of protection because there has not always been widescreen or television. This film came during contemporary widescreens relative infancy (not counting the diddling in 70mm at the dawn of the sound era-- which incidentally, see Roland West or The Big Trail, resulted in the academy version being the atrophied image).

Yoshi we can go round & round on semantics and verbiage if you'd like but I don't see the productivity viz the thread.

What was the primary problem during the age of television and vhs primarily? That we did not get to see films in widescreen with their full image. Pan and scan versions represent the classically "protected" cinematographic version of a film, with left & righthand edges chopped off. Occasionally you will get a film where the converse is true and open matte was presented as the alternate-- or television, or vhs-- version of the film. But I think most people's general understanding of protection represents those little lines in the viewfinder and on the director's video monitor on the set, which provides a smaller 1.33 boundary within the larger widescreen image (which in itself may of course be in a larger 4x3 viewfinder of course). Certainly there are exceptions where there's soft-matting involved, but that's-- and I'm open to correction-- probably in a minority of cases nowadays. And anyhow, the way the word has been used in this thread by the 2.0 crowd is in this fashion-- he shot for 2.0, but protected for the academy ratio... which I really don't think accurate. But I will concede that the film is a curious specimen in it's concessions to both ratios. I suspect the arguments will never end based on preference.

As for "nobody would know what was lost in 2.0 if they never saw it," (paraphrasing)-- what was the percentile of cinemas geared for ws at that point? 47%? Plenty of people saw it in academy. Obviously many did, and found it superior, thus this pit of endless debate! Look at the thread we're in-- look at conflicting releases around the world!

As for blocking, David Hare and gregory spoke most eloquently, imho, on this specific subject, here and in the dedicated thread for the film.

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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#259 Post by yoshimori » Tue Nov 25, 2008 2:05 pm

I'm not trying to convince HS or anyone to love the 2.0:1 more than the 1.33:1. There are historical questions and there are aesthetic ones and there's no accounting for taste. He may find my attempt to correct his usage a pedantic one and rip my use of "always" out of its context to score a point, but nonetheless, in filmmaking terminology, "to compose for x and to protect for y" means "x is of primary concern re the composition of the subjects in the frame but an attempt to make y useable in secondary contexts (TV, e.g.) is also in the minds of the filmmakers." You may claim that we have a very special case re MO and that normal thinking does not apply, but it is quite clear that the compositions re the placement of the subjects were designed for a widescreen projection.

And let's all send HS our best wishes for a forevermore disease-free throat.

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Gregory
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#260 Post by Gregory » Tue Nov 25, 2008 3:50 pm

yoshimori wrote:There are historical questions and there are aesthetic ones and there's no accounting for taste.
Aesthetic questions do not boil down merely to personal taste. This discussion should be based on discussion on the visual structure of Sirk's films and on interpretations of how he used space variously in his '50s films. This would be much easier if we were all sitting in a room with a projector and some of the films in question, but as this is an internet message board, the discussion has barely risen above the level of "hand-waving" at best, and poor arguments and red herrings at worst.
In filmmaking terminology, "to compose for x and to protect for y" means "x is of primary concern re the composition of the subjects in the frame but an attempt to make y useable in secondary contexts (TV, e.g.) is also in the minds of the filmmakers."
If you're quoting something you should mention the source, but nevertheless, I don't have a problem with that definition. But I'd like to see us move beyond the misinformed view that one cannot compose for academy and protect it so that the widescreen frame (with less visual information) looks acceptable when soft-matted.
For those who maintain that this does not happen (something I remember coming up repeatedly earlier in the discussion), let me give a more recent example. Judy Irving, the director of the outstanding documentary Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill has stated that the DVD is in academy because that's the ratio she preferred and composed the film for. She was forced to crop it for widescreen projection, and it looked pretty OK this way, but this was never really how she preferred for it to be seen. She compromised, knowing that people would see it again on television and video at her preferred academy ratio. My source for this is a review she wrote on Amazon.com after people freaked out about it being presented in 1.33:1. They assumed that the way they saw it theatrically is the way it should be presented on DVD, but this is not always true.
Most of the arguments in this thread could be applied, mistakenly, to the case of Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill: (1) The distributor sent the film out to be projected in widescreen, so that's the correct aspect ratio, (2) The director knew the film would be premiered in widescreen, so obviously that's the ratio she would compose for. And so on.
One might ask why, if Irving knew it would generally be screened in widescreen, she wouldn't just compose for that, rather than have to go to the trouble of mucking around with two different ratios. Well, it's because she saw the inherent value of the academy frame for certain kinds of images and subjects, such as close-up shots of a man interacting with a bird.

This example might seem somewhat random, but I think (aside from it being an excellent film) it's helpful simply because here we have a case where the director has gone on record about the compromises involved in the decision to compose for a ratio that differed from what she knew many projectionists would use.
With Sirk and Metty, and most other auteur films from roughly 1953-56, we just don't know with as much certainty what their process with what was generally a gradual shift to composing for widescreen, because the sources are not there.
There is one statement in Sirk on Sirk about the bother of having to compose for two aspect ratios at once with the arrival of widescreen, but this doesn't refer specifically to Magnificent Obsession. There just aren't enough sources on all this, but we do know that Sirk adored the academy frame.
There is also other hard evidence we could look at, just as camera height, but I don't want this post to get any longer than it already is.
You may claim that we have a very special case re MO and that normal thinking does not apply, but it is quite clear that the compositions re the placement of the subjects were designed for a widescreen projection.
That is not quite clear, and your repeated assertion of that will not make it so.
Sirk simply did not use many of the tightly cramped "compositions" that are rife throughout MO in 2:1.
Sure, not every single frame makes complete use of the full frame, but many do (something I'd enjoy trying to discuss further). Furthermore, many of the shots are just obviously wrong, even to a layperson who isn't familiar with Sirk's mise-en-scene. For example, look at the shot in the last scene where Helen is reclining against the pillow. In academy, her face is perfectly framed with roughly equal space on all for sides. In 2:1 her head gets chopped off at both the top and bottom with awkward dead space to the left and right. It's downright ridiculous to anyone really paying attention to the aesthetic side of the filmmaking. The average viewer who saw this in 1954 wouldn't have heard of Sirk, wouldn't even think about what the director contributed in terms of visual style, and would focus more on story, dialog, and performance and probably wouldn't even be consciously aware of the horribly cramped feeling.

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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#261 Post by yoshimori » Tue Nov 25, 2008 4:43 pm

Gregory wrote:Sirk simply did not use many of the tightly cramped "compositions" that are rife throughout MO in 2:1.
And Sirk simply did not use the egregious headroom that is rife throughout the 1:33:1 MO. Now what?
Me: You may claim that we have a very special case re MO and that normal thinking does not apply, but it is quite clear that the compositions re the placement of the subjects were designed for a widescreen projection.

Gregory: That is not quite clear, and your repeated assertion of that will not make it so.
Should have written "but it should be quite clear" etc etc. My mistake. Didn't mean to suggest that anyone has understood. Question for you: what did motivate Sirk's unprecedented-for-him placement of the subjects in the middle third of the frame in MO if it was not that he was composing the image (re subject placement) for the widescreen image? I assume your answer will be, correct me if I'm wrong, that Sirk knew the movie would be projected in 2.0:1 and didn't want headless actors so he put them there. If that is indeed your answer, then, all I'm saying is that this means, whatever his preferred aspect ratio for the film, or yours or mine, that Sirk/Metty "composed for" 2.0:1 and "protected for" 1.33:1. Those are the meanings of the terms.

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HerrSchreck
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#262 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Nov 25, 2008 5:01 pm

yoshimori wrote: Question for you: what did motivate Sirk's unprecedented-for-him placement of the subjects in the middle third of the frame in MO if it was not that he was composing the image (re subject placement) for the widescreen image? I assume your answer will be, correct me if I'm wrong, that Sirk knew the movie would be projected in 2.0:1 and didn't want headless actors so he put them there. If that is indeed your answer, then, all I'm saying is that this means, whatever his preference, or yours or mine, that Sirk/Metty "composed for" 2.0:1 and "protected for" 1.33:1. Those are the meanings of the terms.
They most absolutely are not, and I'm confused as to how you could extrapolate such a thing in technical terms.

If Sirk knew that headless actors would be visible in 2.0 if he didn't arrange them in correspondence with it, and so thus put them where they are as we see the film today, is this not different from your own example above defining composing in soft matted widescreen, but protecting for Academy (making sure that no mics/booms show in the open matte version is no different from gregs example, i e making sure that no heads are cut off)? In other words, "composing" the film with the most beauty and expression in one aspect ratio, and "protecting" in the secondary ratio-- that is, making sure it at least works, despite the loss in expressive power.

You're saying, above, that the mere act of acknowledging a ratio = composing for it. If that's the case, and since protected ratios require the same acknowledgement (thus "protection"), what defines protection to you?

By your quote above, the mere act of acknowledging the requirement (in some theaters, not quite half, btw, in this case) of a ratio equals "composing".

Well, I'm sorry but in the acts of both "composing" and "protecting", the team is acknowledging the requirements of BOTH AR's. The question is which one he granted primacy to, which one represents the fullest expressive intention of the film, it's director, the actors' blocking, and the cinematographers framing of such.

Whereas the AR (this is rudimentary, no?) a film is "composed" for will be worked on, labored over, sets dressed with care over in correspondence with subtext and event-- and thus bear the greater expressive power-- the AR that is "protected" for will be merely acknowledged, as in making sure the heads are there in the 2.0 version of this film... but will lack much of the freight and sense of deliberate arrangement of the "composed" AR.

That is what greg is saying, and it makes perfect technical sense and is devoid of contradiction.

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Gregory
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#263 Post by Gregory » Tue Nov 25, 2008 5:25 pm

yoshimori wrote:And Sirk simply did not use the egregious headroom that is rife throughout the 1:33:1 MO. Now what?
I don't see anything that I would ever call "egregious headroom" in all but a couple of moments in MO. As has been explained or at least sketched out by myself and others here, Sirk used what some would hastily see as "dead space" in order to position the actors in an environment where architecture and decor play a crucial role, so this is especially unusual in interior shots. E.g., he liked using ceiling mirrors and skylights and overhead beams in important ways (in MO, All that Heaven Allows, etc.) which are lost if these are cropped too much. Not cropping too tightly at the top also allowed him to use a lot more discretion about where the actors are positioned. In MO for example, Hudson assumes a more overbearing presence nearer the top of the frame during the first part of the film, and this changes as his character learns to be more loving and humble.

As for "egregious" headroom in exterior shots, which great director was it who said, in defending the qualities of the academy ratio over pressure to go to widescreen, "The people in my films have skies over their heads."? (Quoting from memory)

I don't think people who assume that there should be no space over the actors understand Sirk's expert use of academy. And it is slightly different here than in All I Desire, but it's not night-and-day.
Question for you: what did motivate Sirk's unprecedented-for-him placement of the subjects in the middle third of the frame in MO if it was not that he was composing the image (re subject placement) for the widescreen image?
Related to the above, I really don't see actors positioned in the "middle third" of the frame, as you say, nor do I accept that that kind of horizontal segmenting of the frame exists here. I see actors close to the top edge, in the middle, and in the bottom portion. Why would he put them in the bottom (as with some of the shots of Helen on the beach, for example)? Well, because he was employing blocking in the ways I allude to earlier in this post, suggesting that he wasn't composing primarily for 2:1.
I assume your answer will be, correct me if I'm wrong, that Sirk knew the movie would be projected in 2.0:1 and didn't want headless actors so he put them there.
Even though I don't go along with the assumption that Sirk did position things in the middle, I'll respond to this and say, No, I don't think we have grounds to say Sirk knew the movie would be projected in 2:1, at least beyond a relatively small number of theaters when it premiered. Indeed 2:1 was still a pretty odd thing in 1953. There's been discussion of a poll that allegedly shows that 47% of U.S. theaters had widescreen masking equipment or said that they planned to get it by the end of 1953, if memory serves. But it doesn't follow that 2:1 was at all widespread. Unless I'm mistaken 1.66:1 was a much more commonly used mask, and it seems plausible that Sirk and Metty were counting on most theaters who did have the equipment showing it in that ratio.
But as I explained with a specific example at the end of my last post, there are a lot of cropped heads, but these were not really an issue for most viewers upon original release.

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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#264 Post by yoshimori » Tue Nov 25, 2008 5:29 pm

Didn't want this to be my 500th post, but ...
HerrSchreck wrote:Well, I'm sorry but in the acts of both "composing" and "protecting", the team is acknowledging the requirements of BOTH AR's
Not sure about what the grammar of this is meant to convey, but if you're trying to say that "composing" means "acknowledging the requirements of both ARs", and that "protecting" also means "acknowledging the requirements of both ARs", then you are, technically, wrong. If you mean that by both "composing and protecting" the same image, both ARs are considered, then that's what I have been writing and I have no idea why you would write "well, I'm sorry".

From page 6. This is what I've been working from re the terminology:
I wrote:First a definition: as far as I (as well as every cinematographer I know, and there are many) am concerned to "composing for" a ratio has first of all to do with the placement of the subject(s) in the height of the selected frame.
This is what filmmakers first mean when they talk about "compose for" a particular ratio. You're "absolutely not" is absolutely (technically) wrong. You may work with some other definition of "composing for", but then we're simply not talking to each other.

I'm glad Gregory mocked me for writing "middle third", which was, of course, overly simplistic, huh? Still, I think my point was clear enough. He feels the compositions are "cramped" in 2.0 and I see unusual amounts of headroom in 1.33. I thought it was clear that the placement of the subjects in 1.33 MO was out of the ordinary compared to Sirk's earlier work and that this would make it clear that the filmmakers "composed for" (according to the abovementioned definition) a widescreen ratio. Apparently, even that near tautology is not convincing. We've been over all this. I'll let you guys continue because I, for one, am no longer contributing anything new and it's tiring repeating myself.

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Gregory
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#265 Post by Gregory » Tue Nov 25, 2008 6:12 pm

Regarding the definition you quote: I find that with any director with his/her salt, composition is not limited to positioning in the height but rather positioning everywhere (including off-camera), and "subjects" should be understood to include actors but also objects as small as flowers or as large as airplane wings or church steeples. Even abstract things such as fields of light become part of the composition, at least the way I prefer to watch these.

I really don't want to see this become a predominantly terminological discussion, especially after I've tried to give several kinds of specific examples for consideration.
I don't think Schreck and I really need to be able to say that Sirk "composed" for academy, in a certain sense, and "protected" for widescreen to be able to argue what we're arguing. It is known to be true that filmmakers sometimes frame for the academy ratio and yet make sure the film looks acceptable for a smaller widescreen framing within the full frame. I gave the example of Judy Irving earlier, and there are probably many more out there that I haven't read about. If that's not "protecting," then let's simply find another word for what the director is doing in such cases.

Finally, yoshimori, I definitely did not mean to mock, I just didn't agree with your desciption. Sirk often did use a very different kind of segmentation of the frame into thirds in his Scope films, so that there are distinct areas: left, center, and right. The results are extremely different from the way Magnificent Obsession looks, and I think this says a lot about just how much changed with Sirk's mise-en-scene with the adoption of Scope. I can post and discuss examples from Tarnished Angels if anyone is interested.

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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#266 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Nov 25, 2008 6:20 pm

Yoshi--
First of all, pictorial composition is not first and foremost the act of placing objects (or heads) in height within a shape (usually a square or rectangle). I attended art high school and art college and that definition of composition of yours is so oversimplified to suit your conversational needs for this film it's telling me I'm probably not going to get anywhere here. Composition is something I've studied intensely and have a lifelong fascination for in all it's forms, and in the cinema and photography in general it is much more than placing objects in height: it is arrangement in depth, it is the leading the eye through the frame in a coherent and functional and pleasing fashion. It is the balancing of color, the use of corresponding and complimentary primaries and secondaries, the interaction of lights and darks and tonal contrasts. It is recognition of the horizontal plane. It is recognition of the vertical plane. It is the telling of a story through spatial arrangement of people and objects and their interrelatedness before an actor even moves or opens their mouth. Look at a frame from a Mann/Alton picture-- a frozen moment tells a story. That's tour de force pictorial composition.

The verbiage you had trouble with was pointing out the following:

You read gregs statement (or inferred statement) that 1) because Sirk placed the heads on a horizontal plane that acknowledges the demands of 2.0, he therefore positively 2) composed for 2.0 and protected for 1.33.

I said that thereby you must define the act of composition as the mere act of "acknowledging" an aspect ratio... because for you the mere act of noting that the heads had to be available for 2.0 functionality (however artlessly) means he composed for that ratio. My response is that this is problemmatic, that the mere ackowledgement that a film will be exhibited in an aspect ratio doesn't mean that's the one he granted primacy to. REASON:

Both aspect ratios are acknowledged in this film by it's authors. The question is which one he arranged more artfully within, with primary intentions. Because you can say the same thing-- that Sirk knew the film was going to be exhibited in 1.33, he arranged the images whereby the film will function in that arrangement as well. This would not satisfy you as an explanation for 1.33, nor does yours for the opposing crowd. It comes down to-- for those with doubts-- the artfulness of the images, and a sense of the greater intention.

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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#267 Post by reno dakota » Tue Nov 25, 2008 7:05 pm

I just received this e-mail from Mulvaney regarding the AR of their MO release:
The 1954 version is 2:1 and the earlier (1935) version is 1.33:1. Both films will be presented in the correct aspect ratio on the upcoming Criterion DVDs. I hope this helps!

Best,

JM
Disappointing news, as I would have liked to see this in 1:33:1.

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Gregory
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#268 Post by Gregory » Tue Nov 25, 2008 7:19 pm

The quote below is interesting for a number of reasons, including the way Sirk discusses working with two aspect ratios and he does so without talking about "composing vs. protecting." Interesting that he also talks about being "required" to do this, so it's not as though the visual beauty of MO in academy was some fluke or even a clandestine thing he and Metty were doing on company time. I would never want to see Tarnished Angels in academy, of course, because by them h
The main thing was that with Sign of the Pagan, and the other Cinemascope pictures I did, I was required to shoot so that the film would fit both the new Cinemascope screen and the old-size screen. You had one camera, and one lens, but you had to stage it so that it would fit both screens. This is just as tough as doing a picture in two versions was in Germany. (Sirk on Sirk 117)
Note of course that Sign of the Pagan was the film after MO, so it's reasonable to argue that things were probably even more up-in-the air with the use of widescreen and a film like MO where the U-I was trying to shoehorn into a wide ratio in their rush to compete with Scope.
At least I hope there will no longer be any doubts that this was a gradual and difficult transitionally period in which in any number of films he "composed," or "staged," for more than one aspect at a time, rather than switching immediately to widescreen just because U-I did a training session or two and converted the studio's official screening room.
Bob and Jack in the earlier part of the discussion seemed totally unwilling to recognize any of the difficulty of which Sirk gives us the barest impression here. The idea that Sirk and Metty might have had more than one ratio in mind was totally unacceptable to them (and it had been quite a while since I'd read Sirk on Sirk, and I forgot about this quote until going back and rereading it a few weeks ago). Anyway, I guess that's not the kind of thing one can find out about by relying just on studio records.

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domino harvey
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#269 Post by domino harvey » Tue Nov 25, 2008 8:31 pm

The 1954 version is 2:1 and the earlier (1935) version is 1.33:1. Both films will be presented in the correct aspect ratio on the upcoming Criterion DVDs. I hope this helps!

Best,

JM
Good thing Mulvaney isn't a real person, because them fighting word

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reno dakota
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#270 Post by reno dakota » Tue Nov 25, 2008 9:09 pm

domino harvey wrote:
The 1954 version is 2:1 and the earlier (1935) version is 1.33:1. Both films will be presented in the correct aspect ratio on the upcoming Criterion DVDs. I hope this helps!

Best,

JM
Good thing Mulvaney isn't a real person, because them fighting word
I was careful not to use the word 'correct' anywhere in my e-mail--or to imply that their release might be in the 'wrong' AR--but I'm not surprised that Criterion will be insisting upon the correctness of the AR of this release.

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Bob Furmanek
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#271 Post by Bob Furmanek » Wed Nov 26, 2008 11:54 am

The 1954 version is 2:1 and the earlier (1935) version is 1.33:1. Both films will be presented in the correct aspect ratio on the upcoming Criterion DVDs. I hope this helps!

Best,

JM
Excellent job Criterion! It will be good to see this film in the intended 2:1 ratio.

Image


From American Cinematographer: May, 1953

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Image
Last edited by Bob Furmanek on Fri Nov 28, 2008 2:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Antoine Doinel
Joined: Sat Mar 04, 2006 1:22 pm
Location: Montreal, Quebec
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#272 Post by Antoine Doinel » Wed Nov 26, 2008 11:59 am

Bob, your endless posting of documents adds nothing to this discussion.

Gregory, that quote (and your post) is for me, the strongest argument yet that MO really needs to be presented in both aspect ratios if just for academic purposes to highlight what different audiences may have seen at the time, and also to tangibly display how Sirk was working to meet the requirements for both ratios, and what those results would've been.

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Bob Furmanek
Joined: Fri Oct 17, 2008 9:59 am

Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#273 Post by Bob Furmanek » Wed Nov 26, 2008 12:31 pm

Those images from American Cinematographer will help some to better understand how a director can compose for one ratio while protecting for another.

Some young film-makers on this site may not be familiar with the technique.

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skuhn8
Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2004 4:46 pm
Location: Chico, CA

Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#274 Post by skuhn8 » Wed Nov 26, 2008 12:31 pm

Kind of a sad state of affairs for any discussion when historical documentation is deemed as offering 'nothing'.
Thanks, Bob, for coming up with the goods. Though it certainly won't quelch much of the disapproval of the 2:1 aesthetics here; it at least goes a long way to justify the CC's opting for that choice as 'correct' even if it isn't superior or according to Sirk's heart of heart preference.

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swo17
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Re: Aspect Ratio discussion for Magnificent Obsession

#275 Post by swo17 » Wed Nov 26, 2008 12:43 pm

No one is saying that historical documentation adds nothing per se, just that it adds nothing to a discussion of an aesthetic evaluation of the film in the two aspect ratios, which is the one we are trying to have. Bob's documentation (some of which he has already posted before) proves that MO was exhibited in theaters in 2:1. Well, roughly speaking, so does Gregory's quote. We're not disputing historical facts.

Guess what--my avatar is in a 2:1 ratio. Because those are the size restrictions that the forum imposes upon me. This is historically documented fact. But my source image is a lovely 1.56:1. Yeah, the 2:1 works in that it doesn't cut off any heads, but if I had my druthers, you would see the full expanse of the chalkboard above Max's head, and the top of the perfect attendance pin gracing his blazer from below.

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