On its opening day (10.2.30) the widescreen 70mm version of Raoul Walsh‘s The Big Trail (2:1 aspect ratio) played in exactly two theatres — Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles and the Roxy Theatre in New York City. The rest of the country saw a 35mm boxy version.
The exceptional clarity of image and seemingly enhanced sound in the 70mm version is worth the price in itself. The 70-mm version ran 122 minutes; the 35mm boxy was 12 minutes shorter.
And that was all she wrote for widescreen cinema until the debut of CinemaScope in 1953.
