Boyd Ostroff

Just watched this film last night and was astounded to learn that Fox was shooting 70mm widescreen movies as early as 1929 in a process they called "Grandeur": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020691/

The black and white cinematography in this film is spectacular; you will see widescreen composition here which you probably thought didn't develop until 30 years later. Unfortunately, the sound recording was a long way behind the photography - it's actually an early "talkie" picture with everything recorded on location. There's also a lot of melodramatic, acting (and some good performances too), but that makes it kind of fun.

Since hardly any theatres were equipped with 70mm projectors they had to shoot a 35mm version concurrently. And as they wanted to release it in other countries and hadn't developed a system of dubbing audio yet, they also shot the scenes repeatedly with different foreign actors. Quite an epic achievement and the statistics are also impressive - more than 20,000 extras, 700 Indians, 90 principals, a crew of 200. It's also John Wayne's first starring role.

And here's an article by Arthur Edeson from the September 1930 American Cinematographer on the challenges and rewards of shooting a widscreen movie! http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/wide...ur-sep1930.htm

Some truly prophetic words from 1930. Unfortunately economic conditions killed off Grandeur prematurely; otherwise we might have had a widescreen standard 25 years earlier. Here are a few other good links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Trail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/70_mm_Grandeur_film

Check this one out if you get a chance, it's a remarkable film.

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