VistaVision is again. Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” not solely earned Lol Crawley the Finest Cinematography Oscar however has sparked a renewed curiosity within the format — one that’s now being additional fanned by unconfirmed studies of the 35mm horizontal format additionally being utilized in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After One other,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Alejandro González Iñárritu’s untitled 2026 movie, and Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights.”
The timing is ideal, subsequently, for the TCM Traditional Movie Competition to display two uncommon Paramount VistaVision prints of “We’re No Angels” (1955) and “Gunfight on the O.Ok. Corral” (1957) on April 26 on the TCL Chinese language Theater. What’s extra, the films shall be projected with particular horizontal projectors, which haven’t been used for the reason that Fifties.
Crawley will introduce “Gunfight,” the Western from director John Sturges (“The Magnificent Seven”), which groups Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday, and Charlotte Barker, director of movie restoration at Paramount, will introduce “We’re No Angels,” the offbeat Christmas comedy, directed by Michael Curtiz (“Casablanca”), about three escaped felons from Satan’s Island, starring Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, and Peter Ustinov.
“The concept of truly screening VistaVision prints with VistaVision projectors first got here final November,” Genevieve McGillicuddy, founding and government director of the competition, informed IndieWire. “Paramount approached Charlie Tabish, our head programmer, and mentioned they’d a small variety of precise VistaVision prints of traditional movies. We questioned if it could be doable to undertaking them with VistaVision projectors. That began a dialog with our lead tech and projection guru, Chapin Cutler, [co-founder] of Boston Mild & Sound. We knew that if anybody may pull it off, he may. So issues rolled from there, and we’re very excited to have the ability to do that.”
VistaVision, which launched with “White Christmas” in 1954, was Paramount’s reply to twentieth Century Fox’s fashionable CinemaScope. Nonetheless, the horizontal 8-perf, 35mm movie strip offered a bigger detrimental space than CinemaScope with better sharpness, finer element, and decreased grain. Certainly, VistaVision was the forerunner of IMAX 65mm, with its horizontal orientation.
Among the many different classics shot in VistaVision had been Alfred Hitchcock’s “To Catch a Thief” (1955), “Vertigo” (1958), and “North by Northwest” (1959), John Ford’s “The Searchers” (1956), Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” (1956), and Marlon Brando’s “One-Eyed Jacks” (1961).
However “White Christmas” required a non-existent horizontal projector to point out off the brand new widescreen format. Paramount turned to Century Projector Corp. to discover a fast resolution in time for Christmas week. They created six prototype VistaVision projectors: two for Radio Metropolis Music Corridor in New York, two for the Warner Theater in Beverly Hills, and two for the Paramount lot.
But with solely round two dozen custom-built VistaVision projectors obtainable within the ’50s, few of the movies had been truly screened of their full glory. The VistaVision fad ended with “One-Eyed Jacks,” however the format was later revived by George Lucas and ILM for particular results course of work on “Star Wars” and different status VFX movies.
Of the few VistaVision prints obtainable at Paramount (which, for some unknown motive, had been made within the ’90s), “We’re No Angels” and “Gunfight” are the perfect of the bunch when it comes to high quality and situation. There aren’t any Hitchcocks or “The Ten Commandments” or “Humorous Face,” and “White Christmas” is light.
“ I believe they’re an attention-grabbing pair when it comes to showcasing the projection,” added McGillicuddy. “However I believe our viewers is hungry for that sort of materials. We all know that ‘We’re No Angels’ was remade [with Robert De Niro and Sean Penn in 1989] and we don’t typically display too many Westerns.”
“What we picked had been [very] completely different,” added Paramount’s Barker. “‘We’re No Angels’ was filmed on a stage and may be very colourful [shot by cinematographer Loyal Griggs], and we simply felt that this movie isn’t proven loads and will use a bit consideration.
“This contrasts loads with ‘Gunfight,’ Barker added, ”which was shot on location [by cinematographer Charles Lang at Old Tucson Studios], and exhibits off a whole lot of the desert vistas the place you’ve acquired that [deep] focus that VistaVision is understood for. And you’ll present all 4 of the boys strolling down the road, which, in a non-widescreen movie, would have been actually tight.”
However to drag off these particular screenings, Boston Mild & Sound’s Cutler wanted a pair of working VistaVision projectors. Happily, he had them, which he present in 1984 in a boneyard in Dallas, Texas. Cutler’s hope again then was to publicly display “Vertigo” in VistaVision for its celebrated re-release by Common Classics.
“They really despatched me reel certainly one of ‘Vertigo,’ which we ran it in our store however by no means on an enormous display,” Cutler informed IndieWire. “So, for me and my firm, it is a bucket record occasion.”
The projectors that Cutler had in possession had been two of the unique prototypes that had been made to display “White Christmas.” Some upgrading was required as a result of they had been underdeveloped. They didn’t even have doorways on them. “We’ve needed to do issues like put an image changeover on them,” Cutler mentioned. “ We additionally needed to construct new shutters in order that we may cowl [better stability of movement] between frames, which was one thing that they’d problem doing again within the day.”
When it comes to audio, Paramount has restored the VistaVision Perspecta three-dimensional sound for “We’re No Angels.” This was a less expensive different to magnetic stereo soundtracks. “ In order that’s being reformatted to a three-track grasp, which goes to be interlocked to the movie projectors and performed again [using] Professional Instruments,” added Cutler.
Nonetheless, the most important problem was becoming a pair of VistaVision projectors within the already crowded Chinese language projection sales space. Due to their uncommon development, there isn’t room to have the reels mounted on them to allow them to be modified out rapidly and effectively in the course of the run of the movie.
“ The prints are made up in 2,000-foot reels,” Cutler mentioned, “which suggests every reel runs about 10 minutes as a result of the movie runs twice as quick because it does in a typical 35mm projector. What we’re having to do is make the prints up on large reels. So every reel will run roughly an hour, and the movie is fed off a tool known as a tower, which holds about 17,000 ft of movie. So we’re going to splice them collectively and have half the print on one machine, half the print on the opposite.”
Whereas Cutler’s pulled off recreations of Scent-O-Imaginative and prescient and Sensurround on the TCM Competition, he by no means thought he’d get a crack at VistaVision. However he hopes this isn’t only a one-off. “ Personally, if this occasion turns into one thing, I would definitely like to see ‘One-Eyed Jacks,’ in VistaVision,” he mentioned.