A little more than a month ago I guessed that the newly restored version of Marlon Brando‘s One-Eyed Jacks (’61), a collaboration between Universal Home Video and Martin Scorsese‘s The Film Foundation, would have its world premiere showing at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. Well, this morning it was announced that this digitally reborn Jacks will in fact debut next month on the Cote d’Azur…hooray!
There is unfortunately a semi-tragic aspect to the One-Eyed Jacks restoration. I was informed this morning that it’ll be screened in Cannes and presented on the Bluray within the dreaded 1.85 aspect ratio. The VistaVision negative offered an image area of 1.5:1 and they couldn’t even master it at 1.78:1, which perfectly fits 16 x 9 high-def screens? They had to slice it down even further to 1.85?
My heart is broken. Think of all that luscious top-and-bottom visual information (all of that sky, all those desert vistas, all of those waves off the Monterey coast) thrown into the dumpster!
“We understand your position,” a Universal source confides, “but we feel that 1:85 is more in line with how Paramount intended VistaVision to be shown and [that going with 1.85] requires the least amount of blow-up and loss of image.” The sides of the frames, he means. The restored Jacks will at least deliver left- and right-side visual info that hasn’t been seen in eons, if at all.