There is no joy in 1.85 Mudville this morning with DVD Beaver having posted 1.33:1 screen captures from the upcoming BFI Bluray of Werner Herzog‘s Aguirre, The Wrath of God (’77). Herzog’s dp Thomas Mauch obviously framed each shot to allow for 1.66 or 1.85 cleavering, but the fact that Herzog and the producers of this Bluray decided to go full boxy is one more stone in the shoes of 1.85 fascists. Their pain is my gain. This film and Fitzcarraldo and My Best Fiend are among my all-time Herzog favorites. Furies in the jungle, metal helmets, blonde against green, howled obscenities, etc.

Yes, Virginia — during the first few years of the 21st Century there really was a thing called 1.85 fascism. For a while there it seemed as if non-Scope movies of the ’50s and early ’60s were going to be compressed and trapped inside severe 1.85 to 1 rectangles. But that scenario is finished now, and the fascists, while not fully discredited, will never have the same authority again. Sincere thanks to the Criterion Co. for cutting them off at the knees and particularly to this five-minute essay, produced and edited by Issa Clubb.

On 2.4.13 I ran an audio clip of this essay as part of a piece “Despair Time for 1.85 Fascists“:

“There’s a five-minute visual essay on Criterion’s new On The Waterfront Bluray called ‘On The Aspect Ratio.’ It explains why Criterion went with three aspect ratios — 1.66 (the preferred default version), 1.33 and 1.85. Here‘s the narration. I’m warning the 1.85 fascists right now that they won’t like it. This is the end of the influence of this rogue cabal. Henceforth the 1.66-ers and the ‘boxy is beautiful’ gang will have the upper hand.

“Update: Some of the commenters are shrugging and saying, ‘Uhh, so these Columbia films were framed for 1.85 but protected for 1.33…so what?’ The “so what” is that the Criterion guys, the ultimate, high-end purist dweebs of the digital home-video realm, explain in this essay why they chose 1.66 as their default a.r., and how severely and pointlessly cropped 1.85 is and how open and accepting and all-encompassing 1.33 is. The essay basically says ‘if you have any taste at all or have any regard for aesthetic elegance and balance, it’s obvious that 1.66 or 1.33 is the way to go. You’d have to be a troglodyte to prefer 1.85.'”

If nothing else, the men and women of the Criterion Collection are known for adhering to purist principles in transferring older films to DVD and Bluray. Whatever and however a film in question looked to audiences when it first came out, this is how the Criterion team will present it — no ifs, ands or buts. But to go by information on a Criterion webpage for its forthcoming Bluray of Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder (’59), the aspect-ratio brain police have wormed their way into Criterion and are imposing an Orwellian reassessment.

Frame capture from ColTriStar Home Video’s 11 year-old Anatomy of a Murder DVD

Frame capture supplied by Criterion Co. website page about its Anatomy of a Murder Bluray.

A movie that was very pleasingly and beautifully filmed with a protected aspect ratio of 1.33 to 1 — an aspect ratio which has been seen thousands of times on broadcast and cable TV, and which was presented on a 2000 Anatomy of a Murder DVD, and which the jacket copy for said disc proclaimed as “the original theatrical aspect ratio” — will be presented by Criterion next February with a 1.85 to 1 cropping.

In other words, Criterion is going to pull out its samurai blade and whack the living hell out of this film. I mean, that’s a lot of visual information being chopped out of the top and bottom of the frame. Despite those 1.33 framings being so visually pleasing, so elegant, so 1950s-looking, so boxy and fuddy-duddy, so “your grandfather’s living-room TV.”

But once again, as with Sony Home Video’s recent The Caine Mutiny Bluray, we’re going to see compositions on the Anatomy Bluray that feel sliced down and compressed and confined…like they’re in prison.

Except we were told a few weeks back that Sony’s restoration guy Grover Crisp cropped The Caine Mutiny Bluray down to1.85 because he’d reviewed the film’s original notes and logs about Edward Dmytryk‘s intended aspect ratio and that this was indeed the correct way to present it. (I still say “no” to this but that’s an earlier story.)

See the dog? You can see most of it. It’s almost a whole dog.

See the half-doggy? Do you GET IT NOW, fascists? Anyone who says that the half-doggy framing is better is in DEEP DENIAL and needs to be ignored or, better yet, slapped around.

Now, if Grover was technically correct in cropping Caine to 1.85 (and one assumes he based it on original notes and specifications, even though it was a highly questionable call from aesthetic perspective), how could Sony have approved or allowed jacket copy on the 2000 Anatomy DVD stating that 1.33 to 1 is “the original theatrical aspect ratio“?

What’s good for the goose should be good for the gander, no?

In other words, how and why could the Criterion people approve a 1.85 to 1 aspect ratio on their forthcoming Anatomy Bluray if the original aspect ratio (according to Sony Home Video) was 1.33 to 1?

The apparent answer is that Criterion is going with a 1.85 to 1 a.r. because they damn well feel like it. Because they’ve decided “to hell with it, this is what we’re going with and fuck off.” But either Sony was correct with its 1.33 proclamation in 2000 or Criterion is right about its forthcoming Bluray. They can’t both be right.

The answer, I believe, is the rule of simple expediency. A boxier aspect ratio worked fine with 1.37 to 1 analog TVs 11 years ago, but it doesn’t work with today’s 16 x 9 high-def flat screens. It seems to be that simple. I think it’s a flat-out travesty to whack Anatomy of a Murder down to 1.85, and I had the power and the influence I would lead a smelly unkempt mob into Criterion’s Manhattan headquarters, and we would refuse to leave until they re-think things and, knowing that the fascist mindset refuses to consider 1.33 any more, agree to at least crop it down to 1.66, which I would find more tolerable. Occupy Criterion!

Postscript: I’ve sent emails about this issue both to Sony’s Crisp and the Criterion people. But they both reside in very thick and deep concrete bunkers, so to speak, and they rarely discuss aspect ratio matters with press people. It is their refusal to come out in the sunlight and talk turkey, really, that gets me so angry about this stuff.

The VistaVision fanfare image on top is composed at 1.85…no problem. The clip below is/was composed at 1.66 in 1954. The clip below that (third down) is composed at 1.85. The three static images at the bottom [after the jump] are, in this order, 1.42 (call it 1.37), 1.66 and 1.75. A 1.85 VistaVision fascist sees only the top and third-placed image and rejects the rest as heresy. I am merely suggesting that the second from the last image is more pleasing to the eye, and that the last image is the second most pleasing….that’s all.

1.85:1

I’m front-paging a retort that I wrote this morning to the adherents of cropping all older non-Scope films to a 1.78/16 x 9 aspect ratio. (They posted in response to yesterday’s article called “They Won’t Forget.”) I’m calling them the Aspect Ratio Brain Police, in part because they’ve been insisting that I’m “wrong” in claiming that the proper aspect ratio for Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho should be 1.37 to 1 or 1.66 to 1. Here’s the rant:

Objective truth? You want objective truth? I’ll give you objective truth. You and C.C. Baxter are profound expressions of the truism that “there are none so blind as those who will not see.”

Psycho is watchable with a 1.78 to 1 cropping, yes, but the somewhat higher, boxier framings are far more elegant, inclusive, well-balanced — they provide agreeable breathing space to the characters and compositions. My eyes know when they’re seeing a shot that has been too severely cropped, and almost every time I see an older film protected for 1.37 or 1.66 that’s been cropped to 1.78 or 1.85 those bells start going off….ding-ding-ding-ding-ding! I know, it I know it, I know it, I know it.

[Note: The difference between 1.78 and 1.85 is very slight, and in most people’s minds they are more or less the same thing. 1.85 is the current Academy-mandated theatrical aspect ratio and 1.78/16 x 9 are plasma/LCD screen proportions, but it’s roughly the same difference.]

In a 1982 phone interview Francis Coppola told me he didn’t like harsh wide-angle croppings either. We were discussing his insisting to exhibitors that One From The Heart should be projected at 1.33 or 1.37. At one point he drifted from the subject of his own film for a second and said that 1.85 croppings began as “an exhibitor scam” to create an illusion of a widescreen image that you couldn’t see on your TV at home. And, he said, this scam began to take hold, in his view, sometime in the mid to late ’60s.

Today’s scam is more like a corporate fascist order from on high — all older non-Scope movies shot from ’53 onward must conform to the widescreen aspect ratios of today’s plasma/LCD flatscreens. 1.78 croppings, in other words, are enforcing an Orwellian mandate of accommodating all non-Scope films to today’s widescreen high-def flatscreens — end of story, end of discussion, class over.

Higher framings were the rule during the VHS days to accommodate boxier TV screens of the day. Different ratio, exact same rationale — i.e., serve the dominant or prevailing film-viewing technology and not the films. It’s not about how good the film looks on its own terms, but about whether it conforms to the TV screen that everyone is watching it on. The cart before the horse.

Given this thunderingly obvious fact, the people arguing that the 1.78 cropping is the proper way to show and see Psycho are…well, I just have to step back and ask myself what they’re on? What is keeping these people from grasping this elementary simple-dick visual concept? If I wanted to be snide and insensitive I would call them seig-heil goose-steppers chanting the prevailing corporate sentiment of our movie-watching times — i.e., all non-Scope/Panavision films shot from ’53 or ’54 onward must adhere to the 1.78/16 x 9 mandate.

Well, many if not most non-Scope films of the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s, even, look nice and proper and head-roomy and visually agreeable with 1.37 or 1.66 croppings. I love the way Full Metal Jacket and The Shining looked with higher, boxier 1.37 framings. I’ve seen Elia Kazan ‘s A Face in the Crowd (’57) with 1.37 and 1.78 croppings, and it definitely looks better at 1.37. Arthur Hiller‘s The Hospital looks much better at 1.37, and anyone looking at the most recent DVD with a 1.85 cropping will notice a scene in a parking lot in which most of George C. Scott‘s head is bluntly chopped off. (The 1.78 brain police will tell you that’s a good thing.) Dr. Strangelove, same deal — nice breathing room & much more elegantly framed at 1.37. On The Waterfront looks best at 1.66 or 1.37 also — a 1.78 cropping when the Bluray finally comes out would be vandalism, pure and simple.

Scores of these ’50s and ’60s films used to be issued with 1.66 croppings in the ’80s and 90s on VHS and then on ’90s laser discs. I still own quite a few of these. Are the 1.78 goose-steppers going to come back and tell me I’m wrong about that? That my laser disc of John Frankenheimer’s The Train doesn’t use 1.66 croppings?

This is like living inside Sam Fuller‘s Shock Corridor, or begging to be calmly and considerately listened to like Olivia De Havilland does over and over in The Snake Pit. (Where is Leo Genn?) Another analogy is that I feel like Napoleon Wilson and that African-American cop beating back the gang-bangers during the finale of John Carpenter‘s Assault on Precinct 13.

I’m seriously thinking about submitting a proposal for a book titled “Aspect Ratio Wars: The Epic Home-Video Battle Between Hollywood Elsewhere and 1.85 Fascism, and How The Good Guys Lost Despite The Support of the Movie Godz.” The hero (fighting for the concept of boxiness, oxygen and visual breathing room vs. dogmatic 1.85 claustrophobia) would be yours truly, fighting alone and standing alone against the Bob Furmanek-led mob. It’s a crazy, nonsensical story but it happened, and God knows how many classic films were cleavered and partly ruined as as result.

I could write this book in a month because it’s already been written in Hollywood Elsewhere portions. I would just have to refine and rephrase. The problem is that it would only sell about 1500 copies, as the number of people in the world who give a shit about aspect ratios probably doesn’t amount to more than four or five thousand, if that. I’m not even sure it would sell that much. But someone has to stand up and tell the truth about how Furmanek and his acolytes managed to convince home-video distributors to lop off God knows how many thousands of acres of visual material from God knows how many ’50s and ’60s films on Bluray.

Comment from “Heinz, the Baron Krauss von Espy“, originally posted on 7.17.12:

Jeffrey Wells grabs Roman Polanski by the shoulders and draws him close.

WELLS: I’m gonna ask you one more time, kitty cat — what’s the aspect ratio of Rosemary’s Baby?

POLANSKI (flatly): 1.85.

Wells strikes Polanski across the face, hard. He’s got his attention now.

WELLS: Stop lying to me, ya little fucker! What’s the aspect ratio?

POLANSKI: 1.66.

Last night I finally saw James Mangold‘s Logan, having missed the all-media two weeks ago. A T2-like road movie that finally concludes the Wolverine saga, it’s Mangold’s most assured ilm since Walk The Line. It’s intelligently composed, engaging and even incisive from time to time. There’s never any question about Logan being a cut above — smart, well-produced and grade-A as far as the genre allows.

And no element lit me up more than little Dafne Keen, whose instantly riveting performance as a junior-sized mutant is one for the ages. She has great eyes and a haunting stillwater vibe. In less than five minutes I knew for sure that Keen is the new Natalie Portman. (Born in ’05, she was 11 when Logan was shot last year — Portman, born in ’81, was 12 or 13 when she made her screen debut in Leon the Professional.)

Breakout Logan star and future Oscar-winner Dafne Keen, who’s now 12.

I fell in love with Keen, wanted her protected and safe, and was seriously pissed at Hugh Jackman for taking so long to wake up to the bond between them. A natural talent, Keen will probably win an Oscar for something or other within 10 or 15 years, mark my words.

But Logan wore me down with its relentless brutality. I was engaged as far as it went for, oh, 90 or 100 minutes but then I quit. I was the angriest guy in theatre #12, not to mention the oldest. I was muttering “Goddammit, Mangold…what the fuck.”

I loved Patrick Stewart‘s final Charles Xavier performance (he has two great scenes), and I felt seriously touched by Stephen Merchant‘s carefully modulated performance as the albino Caliban. And I loved the bit about an X-Men comic book foretelling what’s happening in real time (or what has always happened or will happen in a continuous real-time stream) — I wish the script had made more of this.

I don’t know what there is to say or feel about Jackman at this stage. I began tiring of his gruff, scowling “fuck off, leave me alone!” routine a couple of Wolverine movies ago, and there’s no question that Logan’s refusal to engage or accept what’s obviously happening (plot-wise, Laura-wise) goes on for too long.

But I disengaged when Jackman’s younger twin (X24) showed up and the Godforsaken poundings, gougings and kickings just wouldn’t stop. I actually said out loud “oh, come on, man…Jesus.”

Last night I caught a screening of Bullitt at the American Cinematheque Egyptian. I was fearful when I read it would be shown in 35mm, but the print was fairly pristine. (If a wee bit faded.) And I was especiallly pleased that it was being shown in 1.66:1 — the finest non-Scope aspect ratio, the a.r. of the Godz, HE’s own, etc.

If one of the leading 1.85 fascists had been there with me (Bob Furmanek, say, or Pete Apruzzese), they would’ve sat bolt upright and said “whoa, wait a minute…theatres projected mainstream non-Scope studio films exclusively in 1.85 starting in mid-1953, and Bullitt was released in ’68 or 15 years after the big aspect ratio changeover so what is this?”

Bullitt in 1.66:1 as projected last night at the American Cinematheque Egyptian.

Same scene at 1.78:1 as presented on the Warner Home Video Bluray — the richer Bluray colors are par for the course.

I went to the lobby and asked to speak to the projectionist. The manager declined (there must be some ironclad rule about protecting projectionists from the rabble) so I asked if he’d ask the projectionist himself if Bullitt was indeed being shown at 1.66, and if so, why not the allegedly uniform standard of 1.85? I didn’t say “the 1.85 fascist cause hangs in the balance” but that’s what I was thinking. Nor did I say “Bob Furmanek and Pete Apruzzese are going to be very upset if you come back with the wrong answer.”

The manager returned three minutes later and said the projectionist wasn’t in the booth. So I went up to the balcony and noticed an older, cool-looking guy standing near the booth. “Are you the projectionist?” I whispered. ‘Yeah,” he said. “I think it’s really great that you’re showing this in 1.66,” I said. He said that 1.66 was a suggested format or that it looked best that way or something like that. I wanted to give him a hug. Every hateful emotion I’ve felt over the years while dealing with Furmanek, Apruzzese and the rest of those Home Theatre Forum fascists just flew away and were replaced by a feeling of warmth and comradeship.

This opening of Risky Business clip is a reminder that as recently as the ’80s many filmmakers shot their films in an open-matte 1.37:1 aspect ratio. Even if you’re not a boxy-is-beautiful fanatic like myself, you have to admit there’s something very pleasurable about suddenly seeing all of that extra visual information on the tops of bottoms of the frames — information that has been steadfastly hidden since the forces of 1.85 fascism decreed 20 or 25 years ago that only 1.85 croppings of standard-Academy-ratio films would be offered for rental or purchase.

I don’t like acknowledging that Risky Business opened 33 and 1/3 years ago, but it did.

Filed on 8.10.13:

“Paul Brickman‘s Risky Business reflected and in some ways defined the early ’80s zeitgeist (Reagan-era morality, go for the greenbacks, the receding of progressive ’70s culture). And it brought about an ungodly torrent of tits-and-zits comedies, so numerous and pernicious that they became a genre that forever tarnished the meaning of ‘mainstream Hollywood comedy.’ But Risky Business was a perfect brew.

“The Tom Cruise-Rebecca DeMornay sex scenes were legendary, the vibe of upper-middle-class entitlement was delivered with natural authority, Joe Pantoliano‘s Guido is arguably a more memorable character than his Ralph Cifaretto in The Sopranos, and the opening dream sequence is just as funny and on-target in its depiction of encroaching doom as Woody Allen‘s Bergmanesque train-car sequence at the beginning of Stardust Memories.

“I had an invite to a special Risky Business screening at the Beverly Hills Academy a week before the opening, but I blew it off because a girlfriend was visiting that night and things were hot and heavy at the time. I wound up catching it ten days later at a theatre in Westwood, and I remember saying to myself after it ended, ‘Wow, what I was thinking when I missed that screening?’

Here’s hoping that the forthcoming Bluray of David Weisbart and Gordon Douglas‘s giant-ant movie, Them! (’54), will be presented in a boxy (i.e., 1.33:1) aspect ratio. I don’t know if work on the Bluray has been completed or if the guys in charge are 1.85 aspect-ratio fascists, but please. Remember the bravery of Kino Lorber’s Frank Tarzi when he released Delbert Mann‘s Marty in 1.33:1 instead of the Furmanek-recommended 1.85:1. Remember how 1.85 fascism was pretty much discredited when Criterion decided to release On The Waterfront in three separate aspect ratios — 1.33, 1.66 and 1.85. And check out the YouTube scene below and imagine how it will look (i.e., all the information that will be lost) if Them! is presented in 1.85. It’ll be nothing less than criminal if that happens.

Ignore the 1.85 aspect ratio info on Amazon’s Marty Bluray page. Why? Because it’s incorrect. I’ve been asleep at the wheel for the last month but in mid-June Kino Lorber vp acquisitions and business affairs Frank Tarzi announced a decision to issue the Bluray of Delbert Mann‘s Oscar-winning 1955 drama in the preferred Hollywood Elsewhere aspect ratio of 1.33 (or is it 1.37?). I love the smell of napalm in the morning, and especially when someone ignores the advice of aspect-ratio historian Bob Furmanek, who, if he had his druthers, would chop every standard-Academy-ratio 1950s film made after April 1953 down to 1.85. Being on the winning side of these battles is wonderful!

Look at the headroom in this frame capture from DVD Beaver’s review of Kino Lorber’s Marty Bluray, which streets on 7.29.

All the 1.85 fascists were hopping mad about this last month, and here I am just joining the party. Did I miss anything?

On June 7th I reported that KL’s Marty Bluray would be presented “in the dreaded 1.85 with the tops and bottoms of the protected 1.37 image (seen on TV, VHS, laser disc and DVDs for the last five or six decades) severed with a meat cleaver.” A month earlier aspect-ratio historian Bob Furmanek noted in a Home Theatre Forum post that (a) the Marty Bluray would (a) be presented “for the first time since the original theatrical release with Mann’s intended 1.85:1 compositions,” and that (b) “we provided the documentation to insure mastering in the correct ratio.”