The Lady From Shanghai - aspect ratio

[fantomas]

I just saw a 35mm print of THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI. It was projected in academic aspect ratio, but you could see that the fun house sequence was letterboxed for widescreen 1:1,66. Checking the DVD I also found the same effect. Does it mean that the whole film was meant to be projected in 1:1,66 or was it a "special effect" just for this scene? Does anybody know about it?

[jaime marzol]

on the dvd i figured it was done to get the viewer past tv-overscan, so they could enjoy the real framing.

could it be that some hacks cut the 35mm print from a dvd? that would be the only explanation. or if the 35mm print was made from a telecine that was made that way, for the dvd.

the whole film should be framed like the way you saw the funhouse sequence. get a malata 520 dvd player and you can watch all your old films framed like the fun house sequence. i think they are very cheap now

[jaime marzol]

well, they are no more malata 520s, i just looked on ebay. maybe their other models have the zoom back feature.

that zoom back feature has certainly enhanced my viewing experience. you can enjoy kane with the real framing, not the way your tv frames it.

[mteal]

You don't have to get a Malata. Most Toshiba DVD players have a zoom-out feature, including the player I bought from Best Buy for about $70.

If I remember correctly, the funhouse sequence from LFS has at least 3 aspect ratios: 1.66, 1.33, and what looks like about 1.20, which is what was seen in some classic European films of the 20's and 30's, including Fritz Lang's M.

[fantomas]

It was a print from an old negative, not from a tape. That means you have to crop the picture most of the time by showing the whole film in 1:1,66. And as far as I know this widescreen 1:1,66 aspect ratio was developped in the 50s, not in the 40s.
By the way, all the stills of the mirror sequence are also widescreen.

[chrissie]

My cheap DVD player allows zooming back too. Ironically, the more expensive one doesn't, on top of suffering from frequent laser lens problems -- don't always get what you pay for, apparently!

[jaime marzol]

glad to see more decks are offering the zoom back feature. 2 years ago it used to be only the malata and one other brand that i've forgotten. it's such a great thing to have if you watch a lot of films made before the 1950s

MTEAL:
you mean that the actual film was made with different aspect ratios? not that the manufacturer of the dvd zoomed back because of tv-overscan? that fun house zoom back only happens in the dvd that has the bogdaovich commentary. it's not like that on the laser disc, or the vjs tapes I've had of it.

when i watch lady from shanghai zoomed back it gets real small for the fun house sequence, but the rest of it plays with the same framing, or at least i have not noticed any big jumps in framing. but that jump in framing for fun house sequence is huge once you are already zoomed back.

i see a lot of old films now where they zoom back on the credit sequence, or on certain scenes, but then zoom right back in for the rest of the film. like the new TREAUSRE OF THE SIERRA MADRE

[otis]

Bogdanovich explains this on the commentary track (Chapter 26):

"In some scenes - it's noticeable particularly in the funhouse scene, in the mirror scene at the end, but there are other places where you can see it - he actually changed the aperture in the camera when he shot, so that sometimes the image was narrower than normal, top and bottom. He did that on purpose in a way that in fact DW Griffith did, changing the shape of the image by masking the top and bottom or the sides or whatever, something that Griffith did. Orson brought that into sound pictures, something that very few people did. He was amused that he'd done it and nobody'd ever noticed it."

On the DVD, the shots of Michael stumbling through the crazy house are about 1.17:1 (like early synchronised sound films, eg Sunrise, M, The Public Enemy, though this last one is not presented in the correct ratio on the Warners DVD), then back to 1.37:1 for the shot/reverse shot of Elsa shining a torch in Michael's face and entering the mirror maze, then a switch to about 1.66.1 for the first shot of her with mirrors, then back to 1.37 for a reprise of the previous shot as Michael enters, and then much of the mirror maze stuff is 1.66, but with occasional 1.37 shots appearing (eg Bannister in three mirrors moving right to left, medium close-up of Elsa pointing gun directly at camera, insert of a hand switching on the light). In the later part of the shootout there are also shots that appear to have been filmed in 1.66 but then had broken glass effects superimposed in 1.37 (eg Bannister firing directly at camera), as well as shots with the superimposed glass in 1.66 (most noticeable when the camera pans right as Elsa exits the mirror maze and broken glass effect pans with it!). The scene with Michael and the dying Elsa continues in 1.66 (including a cut back to Bannister as he dies) until a cut to a high angle of Michael exiting the turnstile in 1.37, followed by a reprise of Elsa in 1.66 as she dies, then a dissolve to Michael outside for the final track and crane.

I think it's safe to say this sequence shows signs of the film's complicated production history. Famously, the part of Michael in the crazy house was originally much longer, and presumably was all shot in 1.17. While a lot of the mirror maze scene was apparently done "in camera" (particularly up to Bannister's entrance), various superimpositions were done in postproduction, most noticeably the closeup of Bannister saying, "Of course, killing you is killing myself...", with a still image of Elsa on the right (probably a blownup detail of a single frame from elsewhere). At some stage superimposed effects of broken glass were added to certain shots. And it looks as if some additional shots were made after principal shooting had ended.

Obviously the fast cutting of the sequence means a lot of this goes unnoticed. What's much more jarring is the cutting into what was presumably a sustained low-angle shot of Elsa on the floor dying, with Michael in the background. This is interrupted by a cut back to the shot of Bannister as he dies, but when we return to Elsa, Michael (who was in the back left corner) now appears from screen right, suggesting a significant part of the shot has been removed. And the closeup of Michael exiting the turnstile is obviously in the wrong place, as on either side of it he's still inside with Elsa. Presumably it was supposed to follow the end of the low-angle shot which now comes immediately after it.

While it's impossible to know which elements of all this were supervised by Welles and which happened in the year or so between his stopping work on it and its eventual release, some parts at least are very clumsy. Apparently James Naremore's bookThe Magic World of Orson Welles has a discussion of what the film was like in its prerelease form. Anyone got a copy?

[Clive Dale]

What was the intended aspect ratio for Touch of Evil?

[jaime marzol]

i guess i have to rewatch lady from shanghai. i never noticed any of that, and i've seen it bunches of times. all of welles' films are like that. just when you think you had found everthing he stuffed into a scene, a whole new layer is discovered.

TOUCH OF EVIL aspect ratio:
in an letter welles wrote to THE NEW STATESMAN, welles complains that he was given the same old crappy kit, not the newer stuff, which he must have gotten an eye full of while acting for jack arnold in MAN IN THE SHADOWS.

but a lot of people discount what welles said and say it's suppossed to be in wide screen. i don't know, but i prefer full screen, and when you zoom out it's incredible.

[Clive Dale]

I thought I read somewhere that because it was made in 1956, and it was sort of a B movie, and TV was becoming the standard, they intentionally filmed it to look right for TV

[jaime marzol]

i've heard a lot of people say that, but who knows. to me, in the wide screen version, the compositions look clipped and don't look like something welles would do, so i doubt that welles composed his shots with the top and bottom of the viewfinder masked. to others, the compositions look great letter boxed. so in the absence of welles to point us to his intended viewing ratio, it's a matter of taste.

[Holly Martins]

I heard Welles wanted to film "Evil" in Cinemascope. Is this true?

[jaime marzol]

here is how welles closed the letter to the new statesman about touch of evil:

Finally, while the style of Touch of Evil may be somewhat overly baroque, there are positively no camera tricks. Nowadays the eye is tamed, I think, by the new wide screens. These 'systems’ with their rigid technical limitations are in such monopoly that any vigorous use of the old black -and-white, normal aperture camera runs the risk of seeming tricky by comparison. The old camera permits of a range of visual conventions as removed from 'realism' as grand opera. This is a language not a bag of tricks. If it is now a dead language, as a candid partisan of the old eloquence, I must face the likelyhood that I shall not again be able to be able to put it to the service of any theme of my own choosing.

............................

to me this says welles did not film it to be widescreen, and what i see on the screen in lbx doesn't look right, but a lot of people are sold on the widescreen version. i'm a big fan of framing, so i can't watch the lbx touch of evil. a week after i bought it i sold it on ebay.

[Sir Bygber Brown]

That's fascinating about Lady from Shanghai. I must get the new DVD transfer of it. I've only seen it on video. I've heard its much the same.

Just watching Casino Royale, btw. I'm 17 mins in, no Welles sightings yet.

As for Touch of Evil, I saw it at an art-gallery screening of the recent so-called director's cut version and the image filled out a wide cinema screen as I recall. It was quite a while back, tho, so i can't really remember. All I remember is it looked great, and the best bit of all was the audience actually flinched in their seats for that shock-cut to Janet Leigh decked out in full lingerie. She's such a sexy sight (and its so deliciously over the top) that people actually made loud "whoa" noises.