MovieChat Forums > The Pawnbroker (1965) Discussion > Aspect Ratio???

Aspect Ratio???

posted 12 years ago by evan_schiller
2 replies | jump to latest

I am driving myself crazy trying to figure out the correct aspect ratio of this movie. Being a big Sidney Lumet fan, I really want to watch it, but I won't watch it if it's not in its original aspect ratio.

According to imdb, the aspect ratio is 1.85:1 - which I had no reason to doubt until I rented the dvd - quite an old release - which was fullscreen. The dvd gave me mixed messages - it said on the back, "formatted to fit your screen", and indeed it appeared to me as if the sides had been cut off as the framing of the shots just seemed wrong. Yet, the dvd also said it was presented in fullscreen, "preserving the 1.33:1 aspect ratio of the original motion picture".

So, either the DVD is wrong or imdb is. Normally I would think imdb was wrong, but the full screen version really didn't look right.

Help?

[–] amd8404 10 years ago

I'm pretty sure 1.85 is the correct aspect ratio. Might your DVD be an open matte version?

[–] jt-hix2112 10 years ago

As the poster above suggested, you probably watched an "open matte" version. Before the advent of 16:9 TV's and the digital revolution, most 1:85:1 films were actually filmed with a 4:3 image, which was cropped to 1.85 ratio when projected in the theater. This is the simplest widescreen process.

The various widescreen processes are all quite fascinating, actually - there's 35mm anamorphic, VistaVision, 70mm, 70mm anamorphic (called MGM Camera 65 or Ultra Panavision 70), IMAX, Cinerama, etc....

My short films: http://www.youtube.com/user/jthix2554/videos?flow=grid&view=0