Touch of Evil aspect ratio - what's the real deal?

[Welles Fan]

Jeff: I will look at it when I get home tonight. I have already transferred the fullscreen version to DVD-R, so it will be easy to do my captures from it.

Anyone have any favorite scenes they'd like to compare?

[blunted by community]

i don't have an axe to grind with schmidlin. it was just funny how when he was posting here no matter what he said all the minnions were lining up behind him, thus my messiah comment. at first schmidlin defended the lbx version then later he admited he had nothing to do with the lbxing. i never placed blame on him for that. i think he and murch did an incredible job on TOE, i also think schmidlin did a superb job on GREED. my beef is with what happened to the dvd after it left the hands of murch and schmidlin

[Gus Moreno]

Rick Schmidlin's 1998 TOE restoration was released commercially on VHS at full frame. Same cover art as the DVD, just a different aspect ratio.

[Welles Fan]

I did some captures from the full screen version and posted them here once.

[blunted by community]

i think my TOE laser disc might have more image than what i'm seeing here.

[blunted by community]

a few scenes to compare lbxed and not lbxed is the scene, framed in dutch angle, where risto runs away from the hotel after pancho shines flashlight in susan's room. the pre-strangle events with susan passed out on the bed. when coroner rises from linaker's body, the abyss of space that opens up above his head. also, the ride with vargas and schwartz down the streets of venice. the sanchez interrogation.

i have these full screen captures but am not web-literate enough to post them, so i will email them to wellesfan, who seems to have done a dandy job of getting them in here.

i'm almost sure i sent a bunch of these full screen captures to jeff wilson a while back, don't know if jeff still has them around. it was quite a while back.

[Glenn Anders]

Now you're beginning to interest me! This is "Good Wellesnet Forum"!

Examining the actual TOE frames is like examining alternative copies of the Zapruder Film.

More. More!

Glenn

[R Kadin]

To blunted's point about his LD having more image than Wellesfan's screen caps, above, would that not be expected, since they are taken from the receiving end of a broadcast that would have forfeited a percentage of the frame in the transmission?

[blunted by community]

rkadin, i captured a copy of the restored TOE shown on ENCORE, and it had as much image as the LD. but who knows. maybe one of our in-house experts can shed some light on this.

[Gordon]

I was planning to transfer my copy taken off of cable TV when it screened back in '99 or so, along with the Reconctructing Evil docu.

Is Reconstructing Evil still being held up from general distribution by the Usual Suspect?

[R Kadin]

Well, whatever the technical explanation, this whole discussion reminds us that it was then, and is now, a known risk that a film frame's outer edges are extremely susceptible to the vagaries of their preservation and presentation. Somehow I can't imagine Welles failing to take that into account and, as a result, I can't imagine him subjecting the success of his visuals' as art to those vagaries. So, even if someone can come up with examples of the above showing slightly more image, that should hardly change one's opinion of the virtuosity of Welles' compositions.

Major, unforeseeable and adverse differences, such as those blunted is alleging in the letterboxed DVD version of this film, I can join in protesting. But to proclaim as critical thematic elements things like a neon stripper sign parked at the upper extreme of a frame-edge known to be expendible in more than just one aspect ratio seems rather a stretch to me, one I object to all the more because it implies a lack of technical sophistication on Welles' part that's wholly undeserved.

While I'm sure there might be plenty of "nice to have" enhancements to be found among the outer reaches of this frame or that frame in either format (reflecting the over-abundance of Welles' gift for the visual), I find that TOE's inherent robustness easily transcends any dependence on such minutiae and that a debate which reduces an appreciation of it to a comparably minute level does a disservice to the film's creator.

In either format, TOE is a masterwork, something that can be said of a very few films. Can we not just be properly thankful for that fact and drive on? It would do Welles far more honour if we did, IMHO.

[maxrael]

R Kadin, with all due respect, i don't think the current discussion does any disservice to Welles visual talents/capabilities, it's more a criticism of a cynical commercial process years down the line whereby the otherwise wonderful restoration has been unfortunately very slightly clipped in the process of putting it onto DVD, where to suit the mass market peanut eaters a film presented in "1.85 widescreen" just means it's somehow magically better and thus sells more units.

To the untrained eyes this isn't noticeable, but to those who've the patience to compare presentations in more than one ratio, it becomes apparent that there's a layer of depth or complexity that's missing from the composition in the clipped image, not limited to the neon stripper sign which definitely (in my eyes) adds to the relative spatial narrative that Welles was such a master of...

eg.

Jaime M:

i'm using captures from the square version, because i find that version to have better composition. welles always used the entire screen to compose his framing, and in some scenes in the lbx version it's obvious nothing was masked in the viewfinder when it was framed. look at the scene when the drunk quinlan comes in the hotel room and strangles grandi, in the lbx version, susan lying across the bottom of the screen is lost. if this isn't a clue, nothing is.

i agree with Sergio and Wellesfan in that it's my belief the film was filmed at 1.33, but intended to be shown at 1.66 not 1.85 and herein lies the mistake with the current dvd. But of course it's just my belief and we may never ultimately know the truth. i still find it fascinating to discuss, and if we can get more screen captures to digest and compare, the better!!

Yes the film is still brilliant on the DVD that's available today... and i don't think our continuing this discussion takes away from that at all... No more than discussing what changes OW might have made had he remained in charge of the editing... But perhaps, just maybe, this discussion may one day add fuel to the possibility of having the disc released at the ratio it was always intended to be... which would bring us just that one little step closer to seeing it the way Orson wanted us to...

best wishes to all,
max!

[Welles Fan]

blunted has sent me a tape of his "window-boxed" version. I did not know a full-frame laserdisc of the "restored" ToE ever exisited?

I looked at it on TV, and did not see any difference, but will try to post a comparison or two this evening. Also, I think I have the widescreen version working now, so I should be able to post captures from it, too.

Usually, when I record something off TV, the overscan is only a problem on TV. Once I zoom back with my DVD player's remote, or if I view it in a window on my computer, I usually see the missing edges.

[R Kadin]

So noted, max, as you might likewise have noted that I am quite in favour of investigating whether the letterboxing job done on the DVD is a faithful reproduction of the 1.85:1 aspect ratio version Welles produced, a version connected to Welles by some good eyewitness evidence, according to accounts mentioned, above. But that's a different issue.

If one is prepared to admit that an "Academy" (1:33:1) version was pretty much a given and that support exists for there being an equally "official" 1.85:1 print, then how much of a surprise is it going to be that it the film looks darned good in an intermediate format, too? I'd even believe it well within Welles' scope to have had all three aspect ratios in mind, such was his talent. In which case there is no right or wrong answer to the question, merely a matter of each viewer's personal preference.

[R Kadin]

Also of some value to this discusssion might be the following exchange between Welles and Bogdanovich

PB: How do you decide where you’re going to put the camera?
OW: I don’t make a conscious decision—I know instantly where it goes. There’s never a moment of doubt. And I never use a viewfinder any more.
PB: You look through the camera when it’s set up?
OW: No. I place my hand where the camera goes and that’s it. It never moves — I know exactly where it’s going to be.
PB: But don’t you then look at the set-up?
OW: Then. And that’s where it should be, and I’m right. For my money. I don’t fish for it—or very seldom, only when I’m in real trouble. And then the fishing leads me nowhere and it’s better if I go home or go to another scene. Because if I’m fishing it means I don’t know, something’s wrong.
PB: It’s really instinctive rather than—
OW: Oh, it always is. I think I share with Hitchcock the ability to say what lens goes in the camera and where it stands without consulting a finder or looking through the camera. He does that, too, I believe.
PB: He sometimes draws a little sketch for the cameraman.
OW: Oh, I don’t do that. I just walk over and say, “There it is.” I may be dead wrong, but I’m so certain that nothing can shake it. It’s the only thing I’m certain of. I’m never certain of a performance—my own or the other actors’—or the script or anything. I’m ready to change, move anything. But to me it seems there’s only one place in the world the camera can be, and the decision usually comes immediately. If it doesn’t come immediately, it’s because I have no idea about the scene, or I’m wrong about the scene to begin with. It’s a good sign, a kind of litmus paper for me. If I start to fish, something is wrong.
PB: Then it must be inconceivable to you, the idea of covering a scene from many different angles, as many directors do.
OW: That’s right. Inconceivable. I don’t know what they’re fishing around for—they don’t know what they’re doing in the scene. Though I think the absolutely solid camera sense is not a sign of a great director. It’s just something you have or you don’t have. I think you can be a very great director and have only a very vague notion of what the camera does at all. I happen to think I have total mastery of the camera. That may be just megalomania, but I’m absolutely certain of that area. And everything else is doubtful to me. I never consult the operator or anything. There it is.
PB: Was it that way on Kane, too?
OW: Yes.
PB: Right away?
OW: Right away.
PB: It’s instinctive.
OW: Yes, kind of instinctive, if you will—an arrogance that I have about where it’s going to be seen from.
PB: I know it’s difficult to dissect the creative process—
OW: Well, it’s not even creative, because it is an instinctive thing, like a question of pitch for a singer. Where the camera goes. If you’re absolutely sure, you may be wrong but at least it’s one thing you can hang on to. Because I’m filled with doubts all the time about a movie: that the whole tone is wrong, that the level of it is wrong, that all the text, the performances, the emphasis, what they say, what it should be about—I’m constantly reaching and fishing and hoping and trying and improvising and changing. But the one thing I’m rocklike about is where it’s seen from, by what lens and so on. That to me doesn’t seem to be open to discussion. And it’s something I must be grateful for: even if I’m wrong, I don’t have that worry. But I always find scenes in a movie—I did in Kane and I have ever since—that I don’t know how to photograph, and it’s always because I haven’t really conceived of it fully enough.