Widescreen movies

[Razor X]

I try to only buy DVDs that are in widescreen format, particularly since I got my flat screen TV.  I find it really annoying to watch pillar-boxed movies on a flat screen.  I just bought Gone With The Wind on blu-ray for my mother for Christmas.  We wanted to see how it looked; when I put it on I was disappointed to see that it was not in a widescreen format.  I hadn't even thought to look because I've never heard of a blu-ray that was not widescreen.  The only explanation I can think of is that perhaps this film is so old, it predates Cinemascope/widescreen.  Does anyone know when they started making widescreen movies?

On a positive note, stretching the TV picture does not seem to distort the picture very much.

[D.A.L.U.I.]

For the life of me I can't remember the first "Cinemascope" movie, The Robe, maybe, but I remember the first theatre set up to show "wide screen" they had to extend the screen beyond the proscenium arch to get it in.  Those were really fancy movies, "hard ticket" just like life theatre in San Francisco.

[rick68]

From the almighty Wikipedia



Widescreen was first widely used in the late 1920s in some short films and newsreels, including Fox Grandeur News and Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, both released on May 26, 1929 in New York City in the Fox Grandeur process. Other films shown in widescreen were the musical Happy Days (1929) which premiered at the Roxy Theater, N.Y.C., on February 13, 1930, starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell and a 12 year old Betty Grable as a chorus girl, and the western The Big Trail (1930) starring John Wayne and Tyrone Power, Sr. which premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on October 2, 1930[1], both of which were also made in the 70mm Fox Grandeur process.

RKO Radio Pictures released Danger Lights with Jean Arthur, Louis Wolheim, and Robert Armstrong on August 21, 1930 in a 65mm widescreen process known as NaturalVision, invented by film pioneer George K. Spoor. United Artists released The Bat Whispers directed by Roland West on November 13, 1930 in a 70mm widescreen process known as Magnifilm. Warner Brothers released Song of the Flame and Kismet (both 1930) in a widescreen process they called Vitascope. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, after experimenting with a system called Fanthom Screen which was used for The Trail of '98 (1928), came out with a system called Realife in 1930. MGM filmed The Great Meadow (1930) in Realife—however, it's unclear if it was ever released in the widescreen process due to declining interest of the movie-going public.

By 1932, the Depression had forced studios to cut back on needless expense and it wasn't until 1953 that wider aspect ratios were again used in an attempt to stop the fall in attendance due, partially, to the emergence of television in the U.S. However, a few producers and directors, among them Alfred Hitchcock, have been reluctant to use the anamorphic widescreen size featured in such formats as Cinemascope. Hitchcock alternatively used VistaVision, a non-anamorphic widescreen process developed by Paramount Pictures and Technicolor which could be adjusted to present various flat aspect ratios

[Razor X]

Thanks.