Charles Klopman , Apr 13, 2003; 04:35 p.m.
If you've ever wanted to watch a "Leica Movie," they're out there.
In 1954, Paramount released its new filming
process, "Vistavision" to compete with Cinemascope. Without getting
too much into the details here, Vistavision cameras run the film
sideways, rather than vertically. This enabled them to shoot
an 8-perf frame, compared to the much smaller 4-perf, standard frame.
These early Vistavision cameras were equiped with Leitz lenses
and nearly all VV movies were filmed with these optics.
Some of the first of these films were several of Hitchcock's
masterpieces, including North By Northwest.
In order to easily identify these movies, look for the 1954
Paramount logo (below.)
The same logo with "Gulf and Western" on the bottom marks the end
of the VV era (until it was revived years later by Lucas in his Star
Wars movies, but, that's another story.)
Also look for Filmed in Vistavision during opening credits.
Steve Barnett , Apr 13, 2003; 04:45 p.m.
Do you have permission to use that trademark Charles? I hope some hungry lawyers aren't reading this forum ;-)
Interesting info though, I only bought 'North by Northwest' last weekend!
Roger C , Apr 13, 2003; 04:46 p.m.
Were the Leitz lenses anamorphic too?
Charles Klopman , Apr 13, 2003; 05:14 p.m.
Cinemascope (affectionately referred to as "Skinnyscope,") compresses the widescreen format onto the standard frame, where it is later "stretched back" through the anamorphic projection lens.
Vistavision simply used a much larger image frame which was played back on special VV projectors. VV prints were also "shrunken" into the normal frame size for standard projectors, and this is how the prints are normally found today. This conversion from the larger negative resulted in a very fine-grained image, which may also be apparent in some of these movies.
North by Northwest is definitely a movie you want to own.
Charles Klopman , Apr 13, 2003; 05:19 p.m.
sandy 
, Apr 13, 2003; 05:35 p.m.
Andrew Nemeth , Apr 13, 2003; 07:03 p.m.
Thanks for this info CK - I'll add a reference to it in the Leica FAQ I maintain.
BTW, kinda makes you wonder why they don't shoot films in this format nowadays. Combined with 800 ISO film emulsions, you would be able to get v.high quality low-light images, and not the grainy muck you see in almost every film (eg. the remake of "Ocean's 11", a reasonably entertaining movie spoiled by a continuous blizzard of grain).
Charles Barcellona , Apr 13, 2003; 08:00 p.m.
Charles... I thought that Star Wars was shot in 70mm, or was that only the DykstraFlex shots? I know there were release prints made in 70mm so, so the assumption was the whole thing was shot that way.
Christoph Frick 
, Apr 13, 2003; 08:03 p.m.
Thank you for the information, very interesting. Nowadays, is it IMAX which is using the largest film format? (15 sprockets / 70mm) Shouldn't grain be washed out pretty much when looking at 25 frames per second? So probably other advantages of a larger format create the (clearly visible!) quality improvement (tonality, colour saturation, resolution...)?
Charles Klopman , Apr 13, 2003; 09:50 p.m.
The optical problem, of course, was coverage for the shorter lenses;
and this is when they turned to Leitz.
Their smallest lens able to handle the 75-deg coverage was a 24mm.
For the reformatted prints, resolution improves only at the plane of focus.
Star Wars (1977) marked the brief return of VV.
They're shot in digital now.
