Aspect Ratios - The Director's Vision

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Originally Posted by garyrc

RE: Raintree County.

I was an avid film buff at the time. Either no 70mm prints were made, or I couldn't find them ... in either the San Francisco Bay Area or in L.A. I absolutely saw a 35 mm print.

I always wondered if Elizabeth Taylor and Mike Todd (who were married to each other at the time) had little talks about this. Taylor was in Raintree, and Todd had marketed Todd-AO, the first modern 70mm process, with a more comfortable AR, IMO. Perhaps Raintree couldn't be shown in 70 mm because Todd's Around the World in 80 Days(1956) was still running (it ended up running well into its second year) in the only available 70mm theaters. They ended up equipping more theaters for Todd-AO so South Pacific could run in 70mm, while 80 Days ran on and on, still in 70mm

But, as you say, Raintree was shot on 65 mm film, the first film in Camera 65 (essentially an imprint for Ultra Panavision 70), and was very widely advertised as being in Camera 65, "Window to the World." My movie, photography and audiophile friends were sorely disappointed when it came out in 35mm, and looked and sounded no better than CinemaScope. A few years later Ben-Hur demonstrated that, in 70mm, Camera 65 had a "walk into it" or "reach out and touch it" quality (far superior to any BD I've ever seen, anywhere).

Actually, I made a mistake. in70mm.com did not state that no 35mm prints were made. What they actually said was,

"the few theaters then equipped to show 70mm were tied up with Todd's "Around the World in 80 Days" and committed to follow it with "South Pacific". While it's understandable why MGM didn't go to the expense of setting up the Brown Theater in Louisville, KY, where the film premiered, for the process, why they didn't do so for the New York and/or Los Angeles theaters in which it was roadshown is a subject for further research. Thus this film has never been publicly shown in 70mm."

But they also say this:

However, cinematographer John Hora remembers seeing a 70mm print at MGM when he was a USC Cinema student in the early Sixties