The TCM basic film contest is more than just an overdose in classic movies – sometimes, the contest also finds strategies to make room for long-term projection and exhibition strategies. That said, despite this, the competition once again introduced perfumes that were screened again in the 2010s. “We ended up conveying it again in every format,” TCM competition director Genevieve McGillicuddy said at the annual gathering Sunday night..
In this case, she refers to a speech that took place during the 2025 competition, which could be rarer or longer than in a movie with perfume. On Saturday night, held at TLC Chinese Theater, nineteen Vistavision courses in the fifties were celebrated and two action photos taken in this format, “We Are Not Angels” and “A Gunfight on O.Ok. Corral” were screened. There is a huge wrinkle that makes these movies show more than they sound.
These are not just 35mm recording studios with the standard release of Vistavision brand, but you can still find revivals from time to time in revival homes. Two movies proven on Saturday Chinese have been proven to leverage precise Vistavision proof ProjectorThere are only a few on this planet, and they are preparing to run large prints running horizontally through projection systems, namely the modern IMAX. Movie printing in this format is almost rare because of the projector.
when Once was In these extremely rare local Vistavision projectors, are these specialized prints publicly displayed the last time of the Vistavision movie?
“Oh, maybe the mid-50s,” Paramount's Charlotte Barker, the woman in charge of the TCM screening, advised choose Between the screenings, it was confirmed that this has not happened publicly for about 70 years.
Vistavision projected at TCL Chinese Theater in TCM Basic Film Competition
Chris Willman/Choose
Baker entered the auditorium again and introduced the fierce audience to the “Gunfight on O.Ok. Corral”.
Thanks to the film restoration director in Paramount Photos, Buck developed a rather crazi curiosity in Vistavision, developed by her studio in the 190s and fifties as a replacement for Cinemascope, one thing that conveys moviegoers to cinemas to the cinemas, to buy something that can be bought. By the beginning of the 1960s, it had disappeared.
However, Vistavision still attracted cinemas. The latest Oscar contender, “The Savage”, is sold for shooting using a Vistavision camera. Paul Thomas Anderson's development also filmed “fight after battle” through Vistavision – but, in this case, it is believed that Anderson plans to discover a strategy that even uses the precise Vistavision Projector for a particularly limited film launch. If he made a profit in this regard, it would be the main time in about seven years. The TCM competition offers strong signs that Anderson will likely follow through this radical concept: He is embroidered with a trailer of “Fight after Fight” in the horizontal, seven performance formats that aren't enough in Saturday's two historic TCM revival screens to keep it from suffering in the early stages of the junior level.
After all, a lot of queries are: In fact What's special about Vistavision? Everyone is a serious film lover and probably saw a standard print for unique Vistavision launches like “Vertigo” or “The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The New Beverly or The The Vista” (no matter), and thought it seemed good, but it was good. But, as witnesses of TCM screening can prove, there is a completely different high quality from seeing the precise Vistavision prints and projectors used. “We are not angels,” the additional shooting of these two proven basic films is a clear revelation. The stainless steel print looks like the eyes of an uninitiated man and looks as sharp as the latest digital imax, but the origins and prints of Siloloid (including extra richness). (The “A Fight” trailer proved with the system seems to be excellent, too.)
To better clarify what Vistavision is – or yesthere are several filmmakers that have aroused new curiosity at present – that's how Paramount's Barker defines it as a group in Chinese.
“It was Paramount's reply to Cinemascope, with Paramount turning issues on their facet, with an eight-perf picture.. Not like conventional 35mm movie, it ran horizontally by means of the digicam, and it captured a picture throughout two 35mm frames, giving a wider display picture. This gave filmmakers a bigger unfavorable space So it was actually form of the 4K or 8K of its time. And the format ended up inspiring Imax, which is Nice type, because we are right in the IMAX theater.”
One advantage captured in Vistavision is that subsequent films may be printed to straightforward 35mm prints, which may be put into the theater, are a wide range of proportions in every aspect. The truth is, this is usually what happens. Showcase the movie with a Vistavision projector, which might handle prints that match unique negative relationships, but is actually an extra hindsight, albeit a great negative that only happened in a few theaters in the 50s.
“This is entirely a format as a digital card, and by no means a projection format, we are currently seeing it. So the movies shot on this (Vistavision) department have been printed all the time to the launch of the typical 35mm 4 perf format, allowing them to be displayed on any projector, not wanting to show them on any projector, and not wanting to have specific projection gear.” “But naturally, once executives started showing this adorable new format in 1954, everyone started asking, ‘Can we see it in a local 8 cup format?’ So a few projectors have been built and horizontal formats have been proven in several larger cities around the world, as we see here now.
The truth is, Humphrey Bogart starred in “We Are Not Angels” and “O.Ok Corral”, which is by no means one of many movies that are publicly produced at level eight. The printing of the “angel” confirmed on TCM was a reference printing for Paramount in the 1980s. However, there are a wide variety of Vistavision movies, as well as the format of the opening movie “White Christmas”, which is indeed on display with the Radio Metropolis Music Corridor and Warner Beverly Hills in this extra dramatic class at the theater.
Barker found the prints in the Paramount Archives and looked around and chose the material for the e-book she wrote on Vistavision. (The printing of “angels” is a “content of the preservation over the past 30 years, and we find that that is just hidden in the archives. After confusion, she seems to have discovered a strategy that enables the public to see these prints.
Charlotte Barker participated in the History of Vistavision: Historical Past of Vistavision at the 2025 TCM Basic Film Competition held in Hollywood Roosevelt, California on April 25, 2025.
TCM's Getty Images
“I added the traditional Vistavision wish list to the combination when there was time here to push the concept to TCM so that I could point out various issues in the game,” Buck said. “End, I came up with an imaginative and prescient seventy years celebration. But, this is Colombia’s 100Th Anniversary, to get the celebration, because the focus should be better. But this time I considered a “why not go big or live” tone: Hey, we got some Vistavision movie prints, and if you find a projector you might have “Em”. Starting from the blue, it is not only a circular concept, but indeed a concept that can happen. So, during the holidays, we all started working. Charlie and Genevieve of TCM started trying the whole thing on TCM to see if they would happen. C. Chapin Cutler and Sean McKinnon of Boston Mild & Sound began investigating to see if [they could get some projectors to make it work. By January, we were all in, and then started a massive team effort.”
She’s thankful to Cutler for providing the all-important projectors, which “don’t exist. They took some of the original six projectors that were built originally to project ‘White Christmas.’ They had three of the six, and out of those three, they made two that function, and those are the two that are up in the booth today.”
Cutler told Variety, “I collected them originally in 1984. They came out of a dealer’s boneyard in Dallas, Texas. They were two of the original six Century prototypes that Century made in 28 days. They either went to Radio City Music Hall, the Warner Theater in Beverly Hills or to the Paramount (studio) theater here in L.A. How they got to Dallas, I’ve got no clue.”
Cutler says that for a time, colonial Williamsbug had a set of projectors they were using for 40-minute special attraction films. Some time in the ‘70s, they sold those to Lucasfilm, “and those were the machines that they used for doing the background plates and the special effects work for ‘Star Wars.’” (FX people liked working with VistaVision for a time because of the added clarity, even though those sequences got transferred down to standard 35mm when it came time to integrate with the live-action work.) “And Doug Trumball used VistaVision for the original entertainments at the Luxor Hotel. There are a few of those machines still around too. But once again, it’s not feature film work, that’s special effects work.”
Cutler is taking the two projectors that were installed in the Chinese back to Boston now that TCM Fest is over. But Barker is hopeful they’ll be brought back next year, to show some more of the massive prints that exist in the Paramount archive. “I’d like to go back into the vault, and personally, I would like to do ‘10 Commandments.’ I would like to see us do ‘One Eyed Jacks’ [the early ‘60s release that was the last feature filmed in VistaVision in its original run]. And, I'd rather see us doing “big power” in Technorama, which is Vistavision with a deformed format…just an extra bucket record object. ”
What happens when PT Anderson movies wrap its method into a few Vistavision projectors that exist? “It's not a call, but they're proud of the appearance of the trailer, from them seeing a little bit of Vistavision stuff on the huge monitor, so our fingers crossed.”
For Barker, a conservationist who won awards for restoring the work of the Godfather, a competition is a dream come true among different most important initiatives. “In the past, I never thought it might happen,” she said. “I was the one who found the regulation of prints in archives. (Usually) annoying people, that's what it takes.”
