Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

aspect ratio characteristic of CinemaScope prints up to the end of the
50s: 1:2.55. Today’s common scope ratio is more narrow (1:2.35), and all
Lola Montes prints struck after 1957 show this narrow aspect ratio,
which has cut the frame at the left side to have room for an optical
sound track. To illustrate this problem, some technical notes:
CinemaScope wants to make a picture with double width out of a
normal 35mm film by means of an anamorphic lens, squeezing the
picture while filming and printing in the ratio of 1 to 2, and
unsqueezing it in projection - technically a simple process, yet having to
contend with problems of blurring. The definition of a picture twice as
big as the 35mm frame it’s taken from is rather bad. Hence the
industry’s efforts to use the entire picture (with its side ratio of 1:1.33),
as in silent film. In unsqueezing projection, this picture has a side ratio
of 1:2.66, the 4 channel magnetic sound being played independently
from a band player. Yet, during the production of 20th Century Fox’s The
Robe (1953), the first scope film, a special process was already invented,
to bring four magnetic sound stripes directly onto the picture: the
sprocket holes were reduced and the sound stripes brought on on both
sides of the left holes. The side aspect ratio of such a picture, which is
only minimally reduced on its left side, is 1:2.75, which makes 1:2.55 in
unsqueezing projection.
Those magnetic sound prints needed special projectors and sound
systems that only bigger first-run theatres could afford. Smaller
cinemas required optical sound prints, in which the picture frame was
reduced on the left by about 10%, thus creating an aspect ratio of 1:2.35.
The smaller scope ratio caught on because it is best adaptable to other
gauges, and even more so since multi-channel sound became possible
with Dolby Stereo optical sound. If nowadays new prints are made from
old Scope films, their left side is cut just as easily, as one did for decades
with silents when printing them in the sound film gauge. With many
films, this does not show all that much, but with Lola Montes, a film
which uses the scope frame to its full extent, information is cut and the
symmetry of the pictures composition is ruined.
[SCHEDULE 3]
[PHOTO MAG]
[FRAME2,55]
FILM FRAME
FOR 1:2,55 PROJECTION
the full aperture 1:1,33 frame is slightly cropped on the left side
the perforation holes are smaller than usual to have space for
the 4 channel magnetic sound tracks
(all 4 channel magnetic track films of the fifties have this format)
[PHOTO OPT]
[FRAME2,35]
FILM FRAME
FOR 1:2,35 PROJECTION
the silent 1:1,33 frame is heavily cropped on the left side to have
space for the optical sound
(all optical cinemascope prints have this format)
11 Journal of Film Preservation / 65 / 2002