Originally Posted by JohnQuig:
“I recorded Dirty Dozen today, looked like Channel 5 were showing it in 1.78:1 - do you happen to know if that's right? IMDb has it listed as 2.20:1”
The IMDb trips over itself yet again!*
THE DIRTY DOZEN was shot in hard-matte spherical 35mm (ie. black borders burned into the image top and bottom during principal photography, which meant the central image could be properly centred on-screen during theatrical exhibition), and the website in70mm.com says the AR was 1.75:1. The process is billed as 'Metroscope' on some contemporary ad-mats, but there's no such process - it was just a fancy way of luring punters at a time when screen formats were a commercial virtue.
The film was blown-up to 70mm for some engagements, presumably with the same AR (it would be 'pillarboxed' on the 2.21:1 frame, black bars down the sides, though you wouldn't see those on-screen).
It
could have been screened in the larger format at any ratio between 1.66:1 and 1.85:1 (depending on whether the matting allowed anything wider than 1.75:1), but the IMDb's insistence on '2.20:1' (actually 2.21:1 until the late 1970's) is probably down to the fact that they think the shape of the frame is paramount, NOT the projected image. It has led to a ludicrous situation whereby many post-1953 35mm films are listed on the main page as '1.33:1', even though the
intended projected image is anywhere from 1.66 to 1.85, which you wouldn't know unless you clicked on the Technical Specifications (and how many people would do
that, do you wonder?!!). With TDD, they've simply listed the shape of the frame, not the intended theatrical image.
I'm told the film WAS released in some territories at 2.21, but was hideously cropped, a fact borne out by a recent DVD version released in Europe (including the UK), cropped to similar dimensions and generating critical heat from all corners of the Net. That has subsequently been corrected, and all subsequent versions are correctly framed at around 1.78:1.
* It doesn't help that anyone can edit info on the site, which means that even if you correct misinformation, someone else can come along and mess it up again while your back is turned!