CineSavant Column

Saturday February 1, 2025

 

Hello!

Last week we posted an image from the 1955  Oklahoma!, which prompted correspondent Allen Moss to send in a link he’d found, to a YouTube encoding of a song & dance number from the Fred Zinnemann musical.

Oklahoma was actually filmed twice, once in ordinary CinemaScope and once in the giant 65mm format Todd-AO. A few years back Fox released a full set of Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals that included the original Todd-AO version. It was an entirely incompatible system, that ran at 30 frames per second, not 24 …. the picture was brighter and fast action was less blurry. Since the frame rate was more like video, fire and water had a different quality in Todd-AO.

Anyway, we wonder if many people can still tell the difference in a video transfer. The YouTube poster ‘marlbrouk’ adds his own version of ‘Smilebox’ formatting to the equation, which looks rather handsome. He calls it ‘Ultra-Curve.’  I honestly don’t know whether or not the original Road Show performances of the Todd-AO version were projected on a curved screen.

 

Oklahoma! 1955 ‘Kansas city’ presented in Ultra-Curve
 

Note: A helpful follow-up from correspondent and mentor Dick Dinman

Hi Glenn, I saw Oklahoma! and Around the World in 80 Days first run at the Rivoli in N.Y. and can attest to the fact that a giant and deeply curved screen was utilized to absolutely spectacular effect.  Cheers, D.D.

 


 

Next up, CineSavant advisor Gary Teetzel was the first to jump on this New York Times article by Ben Kenigsberg about an unusual film restoration.

The Museum of Modern Art has been working for quite a while to properly restore Charlie Chaplin’s 1918 comedy Shoulder Arms. Who knew a restoration was needed?

It’s a World War One combat comedy filmed during the fighting. The restorers say that we’ve never actually seen Chaplin’s original movie, only a reconstituted recut assembled from outtakes. The original negative wore out and deteriorated to the point that no new copies could be made. But Chaplin saved everything. He shot many takes, and ranked them in order of preference to assemble alternate versions. Years afterwards, new cuts were made from 3rd and 4th- ranked takes. The new replacement version was also step-printed so it could be shown at 24 frames per second and not look too jerky. In other words, what’s been shown forever has all been rejected material.

This new reconstruction effort conducted a worldwide archive roundup to collect existing original prints. They’re calling it a work in progress, because a few shots have still only been found in 16mm.

 

A Charlie Chaplin Movie Like You’ve Never Seen Before
 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson