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The Big Trail (1930), dir. Raoul Walsh.

Aspect Ratio
As the '20s ended, filmmakers experimented with widescreen formats to which they returned in the early 1950s. Fox dubbed the wide screen format they used for The Big Trail "Grandeur." To perceive how "Grandeur" differed from the academy ratio standard, click above.
Cropped frames of cinematographer Arthur Edson's widescreen version of The Big Trail emulate the narrower, 35 mm version also shot by Lucien Andriot for theaters screening conventional 35 mm release prints.
cowboy movie on screen
Read it. Learn it. Do it.
Napoleon, Abel Gance
 
Paris-Roubais Bike Road Race
Paris-Roubais Bike Race (1927).

You are an Abel Gance booking agent responding to an exhibitor in Provence unequipped to project Napoléon.

You Did It Then:  Create new triptych shots for a “new version” of Napoléon combining standard 35 mm shots that Gance used elsewhere in the movie.   Then take apart a widescreen triptych from Napoléon, convert it back into the three 35 mm shots it originally was. Then manipulate the shots other ways, too. Step-by-step instructions and the files you need are in the button above.

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Josephine Baker (above) singing J'ai Deux Amours in 1931 expressed as much as anyone the atmosphere of Paris in those years.

 

You Do It Now: Crop one of the still photographs you created for Chapter 5 (Mise-en-Scène). Create a new aspect ratio. Describe how it changes the feel of the shot.

 
 

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Paramount Opéra Cinema (1927). In 47 seconds you could stroll from the Paramount (above) to the Paris Opera House, where Gance premiered Napoléon on April 7, 1927.William Wellman's You Never Know Women (1926) was playing at the Paramount in early 1927.
The Grand Café, where the Lumières had premiered their movies in 1895, was a five second walk in the opposite direction.
Josephine Baker 1927