…and by the way, don’t you hate the word “matter?” Or “matters,” for that matter? Not “matter” the noun, which is a perfectly good noun, but “matter” the intransitive verb, which over the years seems to have hypertrophied way beyond its modest meaning to become a word that both mediocre artists and faux-middlebrow publications like to trot out when they’re feeling a bit pompous? As in, you know, “I want to make a film that matters,” or some such? I’m actually friends with the fellow who concocted that slogan for the Clash—“The only band that matters”—and that was all right, back in the day, but sometimes I think I’ve got to upbraid him for wellspringing*…
All right, that’s it for my impersonation of a mediocre blog comedian. Plus which, if you’re reading this particular blog, you already know why aspect ratios matter. So sue me for coming up with an uninspired tease for my exploration of a rather interesting ratio conundrum, involving two editions of the underseen Alain Resnais classic Muriel, in today’s Foreign Region DVD Report, over at The Auteurs’.
*(The gentleman in question is Gary Lucas, who did a stint in corporate at Columbia Records before reinventing himself as the guitar god he is today.)
UPDATE: In comments, Steve Santos notes that the IMDB lists the film’s aspect ratio as 1.66. Well, that’s true, and perhaps my characterization of the current 1.78 image as “proper” is a little inaccurate. A comparison of the Koch version, from a screen grab with the black bars on the side of the screen to render a 1.66 image, with the MOC disc screen cap below, will prove instructive.
Look at the cropping at the top of the above frame, and then the cropping of the bottom frame. Look, over at the Auteurs’ post, at the cropping of the top of the frame in the shot of the casino.
The truth is, Muriel is a 1.66 film, but the transfer for the MOC version was approved in 1.78 by Resnais…as opposed to a telecine that had the top and bottom of the frame cropped, and then was squeezed to fit a 1.66 aspect ratio, resulting in an image that, once revealed for the horror it is, can’t be looked at without inducing something like cinephilic carsickness. Hence, I deemed it as good a video version of the film “as we will have for some time,” said time necessitating access to the original materials.
Reading this blog is becoming expensive.
I thought the image accompanying the previous post made the point better…
Whenever I hear the words “I want to make a film that matters”, my eyes roll in the back of my head. You’re not making shit, you’re just jumping into another genre.
Haven’t seen the film, but according to IMDB, the film is 1:1.66. A true original aspect ratio transfer of the film would have slight black bars on the left and right side of the frame which is not represented in the pics for the director-supervised transfer. So, to maintain framing vertically, did they stretch horizontally to keep the vertical framing correct but fill the 1:1.78 frame?
People that watch television programmes in the wrong aspect ratio on their widescreen TVs make me mad.
That is all.
@Steven Santos / All – The individual who made the master took the 1.66 image, chopped off the top/bottom for 1.78, and then re-squeezed the 1.78 image into a 1.66 frame and called it a day. Which is why the Koch Lorber edition looks artificially squeezed (because it is). The MoC edition restores these proportions.
ck.
Craig I have always thought Muriel was originally meant to be masked at 1.66 (from open matte presumably.) I no longer have the SBS TV screening of it from the 90s but this had slightly more headroom, and was masked down to some “nonofficial” ratio of something like 1.50 for TV. In any case I think the KL is completely unwatchable and, despite the necessity of having to now mask to 1.78 the MoC finally fixes the problem. But this surely then begs the question – how far away from the original elements are we? Cerainly the color values of this in first release screening for me (SFF 1966) were typically Sacha Vierney-luscious and fine grained. But that was then, of course.
Anyway I look forward to seeing mine (shipped on the weekend.)