(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
VistaVision is enjoying a comeback. This is a wide-screen movie format from the 1950s. But two films now getting awards buzz, "One Battle After Another" and "Bugonia," were shot with restored VistaVision cameras. As NPR's Mandalit del Barco reports some of today's top filmmakers hope the old tech gets new audiences into theaters.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: In 1954, Paramount Pictures introduced cinemagoers to its first VistaVision movie, "White Christmas," with this promo.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: VistaVision, the ultimate in film presentation that will thrill all your senses with its unbelievable clarity, sharpness, brilliance.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DEL BARCO: Charlotte Barker is director of film restoration and preservation at Paramount Pictures. Her office is filled with VistaVision memorabilia and a vintage VistaVision camera. She's also writing a book about VistaVision, which she says was part of the wide-screen craze of the 1950s that started with Cinerama.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: This is Cinerama.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DEL BARCO: Then 20th Century Fox came out with CinemaScope.
CHARLOTTE BARKER: Which would squeeze an image onto regular 35-millimeter film. But by doing that, that added a lot of film grain. And so that's what Paramount didn't like about that.
DEL BARCO: Barker says VistaVision was Paramount's response. It used 35-millimeter film. But instead of running through the camera vertically, it feeds through horizontally, like a still camera. As a result, the image is twice the size.
BARKER: There's no grain. And the image clarity is beautiful. It showed the full view of your eye, like what your vision sees in your peripherals. That was the scope of VistaVision.
DEL BARCO: Paramount actually held a patent for the wide-screen format in the 1920s. But it was later developed as VistaVision by the studio's sound director and chief engineer and the head of the studio's camera departments. Their technical achievements earned them Academy Awards.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE TEN COMMANDMENTS")
CHARLTON HESTON: (As Moses) Behold his mighty hand.
DEL BARCO: Filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille used VistaVision for the 1956 remake of his epic "The Ten Commandments." And Alfred Hitchcock used VistaVision cameras to shoot many of his iconic films, including "North By Northwest," "To Catch A Thief" and "Vertigo."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, screaming).
DEL BARCO: Barker says Paramount and its directors hoped the format would lure people to the movie theaters at a time when television was becoming popular.
BARKER: This was absolutely a ploy to try to get people back in, show them something that they couldn't get from their own couch at home.
DEL BARCO: But she says VistaVision soon fell out of fashion once Panavision created better wide-angle lenses. Paramount released its last VistaVision film, "One-Eyed Jacks," in 1961.
BARKER: After that, they just couldn't justify spending the extra money, especially for the amount of film that had to be used in the camera.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN WILLIAMS AND SKYWALKER SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA'S "STAR WARS, EPISODE IV 'A NEW HOPE': MAIN THEME")
DEL BARCO: VistaVision found a new hope in the 1970s when George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic used it to shoot the special effects of "Star Wars."
JOHN DYKSTRA: George wanted a realistic representation of space travel.
DEL BARCO: John Dykstra led the team in winning the 1978 Oscar for Best Visual Effects. He says they developed their own cameras with the horizontal format.
DYKSTRA: We built more than one. I can't remember how many, but we did modifications on existing VistaVision cameras. They were basic legacy devices. They were big, clunky things.
DEL BARCO: Dykstra says the cameras allowed them to animate the motion of miniature ships flying through space.
DYKSTRA: George, bless him, was trying something different.
DEL BARCO: Also on the crew was Dennis Muren, who became a visual effects supervisor at Lucasfilm for 40 years.
DENNIS MUREN: You know, we built equipment to do all the maneuvering of the spaceships. And this better format, this bigger film aspect ratio, more consistent with the live action photography so they look like you're out in space flying around.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "STAR WARS: EPISODE IV - A NEW HOPE")
DEL BARCO: Now in this age of streaming, live action filmmakers have revived VistaVision, once again hoping audiences watch in cinemas.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BRUTALIST")
ADRIEN BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) The people here, they do not want us here.
DEL BARCO: Most of the period drama "The Brutalist" was shot in VistaVision by Lol Crawley, earning him the 2025 Oscar for cinematography.
LOL CRAWLEY: The VistaVision camera enabled us to shoot these incredible high-resolution images and avoid the sort of distortion of a wider-angle lens.
DEL BARCO: The architecture, marble quarries and landscapes Crawley shot in Hungary were gorgeous. But he says the vintage Beaumont VistaVision camera he used was as finicky as a classic car.
CRAWLEY: They're just beautiful pieces of machinery, you know? And you have to forgive them their failings.
DEL BARCO: That's because VistaVision cameras are divas, larger than life and very noisy.
CRAWLEY: I can't think of anything more off-putting than trying to give this very nuanced, sensitive, quiet performance (laughter) with this camera rattling away at you, you know? You know, so sometimes we just had to put up with it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GIOVANNI RIBISI: OK, ready? And here we go.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAMERA WHIRRING)
DEL BARCO: From his home in Los Angeles, actor Giovanni Ribisi demonstrates his refurbished VistaVision camera, the same one he lent to Paul Thomas Anderson to shoot "One Battle After Another." The film's director of photography, Michael Bauman, says they ended up with three cameras, which were very loud.
MICHAEL BAUMAN: It's kind of like starting up a lawnmower, (imitating whirring), and then conk. All of a sudden, the camera would just go, whir, and just stop. All right, we got a jam. Let's figure it out. Sometimes film would come flying out.
DEL BARCO: Bauman says, throughout the shoot, he was constantly tweaking the bespoke cameras.
BAUMAN: You know, you're trying to resurrect a great format back from the dead (laughter). And it can be frustrating at times. But the visual value of what we were getting was well worth the pain and misery at the time.
DEL BARCO: You can see the payoff in the dramatic climax of "One Battle After Another." Bauman and his crew strapped a VistaVision camera to the front bumpers of a car for a chase through a rolling desert landscape.
BAUMAN: So we could get the camera just a few inches off the surface of the road, which provides that super dynamic image with the wide lens of going over the hills, what we called the river of hills. It gets an incredibly powerful sequence.
DEL BARCO: Like Hitchcock, today's filmmakers cover the cameras with sound-proofing cases to muzzle the noise, especially useful for scenes with lots of close-up conversation.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BUGONIA")
EMMA STONE: (As Michelle) Can we have a dialogue, please?
JESSE PLEMONS: (As Teddy) Don't call it dialogue. This isn't "Death Of A Salesman."
STONE: (As Michelle) OK. Can we talk?
DEL BARCO: For his film "Bugonia," Yorgos Lanthimos says he wanted the wide-angle look even though much of the film is set in a cramped basement.
YORGOS LANTHIMOS: I felt the juxtaposition of filming close-ups of faces in a very limited space with that kind of format made them iconic. It's almost like photography portraiture.
DEL BARCO: Lanthimos first experimented with VistaVision in 2021 for a scene in his film "Poor Things." And for "Bugonia," he again worked with cinematographer Robbie Ryan.
ROBBIE RYAN: I got a little bit traumatized when the whole shoot was going on on a daily basis. But I loved it because it's a massive camera. And because the magazines are horizontal, you could almost put your cup of tea on it, you know? So (laughter) it was great.
DEL BARCO: Ryan says they were able to work out some of the kink.
RYAN: It's called VistaVision, so you think you're going to get all this landscape photography. But the landscape in "Bugonia" is the face. You know, just looking at the iconic bald Emma Stone with antihistamine cream all over her helped make that even more super real. It zings off the screen. The results are so gorgeous.
DEL BARCO: Coming soon to a theater near you are other films shot in VistaVision, including "Wuthering Heights," Greta Gerwig's "Narnia" and the new Tom Cruise movie by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu.
Mandalit del Barco, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF RENAO SONG, "LIFELINE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
