When I watch a movie on television or videotape, there is sometimes a statement that this movie has been formatted to fit my screen. My question is, how do they know what size my screen is?
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First some history. Prior to 1953 all movies were shot in 1.33:1, and the infant TV industry adopted the same format. But for just that reason movie moguls decided they needed a different format to parry the perceived threat from the tube. They came up with two answers: 3-D, which was seldom more than a gimmick, and wide-screen projection, which became the industry standard. A variety of wide-screen formats were introduced, the most ambitious of which, Cinerama (2.62:1), required three projectors and a curved screen. That was too expensive for routine use, so most studios making “spectaculars” adopted processes variously known as CinemaScope, Techniscope, Panavision, etc. These required a 2.35:1 screen and special anamorphic lenses that squeezed the wide image onto standard 35-millimeter film stock and then expanded it back to full width when projected.
Theater owners soon hit on an even easier way to create wide-screen movies. They used a special plate in their projectors to mask the top and bottom of the image, then projected what was left on a wider screen. Voila, instant spectacular! Two formats were widely used–1.66:1, now used for most western European films, and 1.85:1, which became the U.S. standard. (The standard for 70-millimeter movies is 2.21:1.)
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration by Slug Signorino.
