711 A Hard Day's Night

Discuss releases by Criterion and the films on them. Threads may contain spoilers!
Message
Author
richast2
Joined: Wed Feb 02, 2005 9:49 am

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#76 Post by richast2 » Thu Aug 28, 2014 12:30 pm

swo17 wrote:Nah, it's a reference to that time they played on the roof of a 7-Eleven.
Eh, it's been done.

User avatar
hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#77 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Apr 09, 2016 10:13 pm

Criterion's interview with Mark Lewisohn is actually pretty amazing. The raw data isn't new - but the way he explains the context and puts it all together is revelatory. For example, he points out that conscription in Britain ended in 1960 and those born on or after 1 October 1939 would not be required - the enormity of that policy on British culture was bigger than anyone could have realized. To put it in perspective, had that not happened, George would have been in the National Service for 18 months right through February of 1964 (from their first record to the week they conquered America and appeared on Sullivan). And that's just him alone - it's not a stretch to say the Beatles probably would not have happened.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#78 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Apr 10, 2016 8:17 am

The end of National Service also immediately turned the first Carry On film, Carry On Sergeant, into a sort of time capsule! (Though of course that only added to its misty-eyed nostalgia value for certain generations wanting a return to that sort of thing to teach the youth some discipline!)

Speaking of alternate histories, I've recently been playing through Wolfenstein: The New Order which takes place in an alternate 60s after techno-Nazis and their robo-dog companions have conquered the West, and one of the collectible recordings scattered around the environment is a song from the alternate universe Beatles!

User avatar
dustybooks
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:52 am
Location: Wilmington, NC

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#79 Post by dustybooks » Mon Apr 11, 2016 11:03 am

hearthesilence wrote:Criterion's interview with Mark Lewisohn is actually pretty amazing. The raw data isn't new - but the way he explains the context and puts it all together is revelatory. For example, he points out that conscription in Britain ended in 1960 and those born on or after 1 October 1939 would not be required - the enormity of that policy on British culture was bigger than anyone could have realized. To put it in perspective, had that not happened, George would have been in the National Service for 18 months right through February of 1964 (from their first record to the week they conquered America and appeared on Sullivan). And that's just him alone - it's not a stretch to say the Beatles probably would not have happened.
Anyone who's not read Lewisohn's stunning book Tune In, the first part of his planned massive Robert Caro-style Beatles biography, I can't recommend it highly enough. For obsessives in particular, its sweep is quite staggering. Some didn't care much for his prose style but I found it consistently engaging, and stuff like the interviews with Cavern-era "lunchtime" fans is the sort of material I've never found in a Beatles book before and I've read many. His revelations about the way in which George Martin became the Beatles' producer are especially surprising and fascinating.

User avatar
hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#80 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Apr 11, 2016 11:28 am

dustybooks wrote:His revelations about the way in which George Martin became the Beatles' producer are especially surprising and fascinating.
Yes! I remember most news articles focusing on this when the book came out - all the more surprising, because George Martin himself was surprised, either because he forgot, chose to forget or told his (perhaps intentionally altered) version so many times that he came to believe it, take your pick, but Lewisohn did a thorough check, and given his authority as the official historian for the Beatles, it looks like a rock solid revelation.

A friend of mine had the expanded version, which must be the definitive word on the Beatles' early years given its sheer heft, and I was able to read some of the later parts. It's pretty miraculous how they got signed at all - they had to be very fortunate and very lucky many times over, with each time countering a bad break. If it wasn't for Brian Epstein's interest, or the friend who recommended getting an acetate made of their demo tape, or that acetate cutter who referred him to the publishers upstairs, or that one individual at the publisher who was diligent about getting the publishing for those songs that didn't even make any of their eventual records, etc., etc….pretty amazing.

User avatar
swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#81 Post by swo17 » Wed Aug 11, 2021 12:49 pm


User avatar
swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#82 Post by swo17 » Fri Oct 15, 2021 12:50 pm


User avatar
Roscoe
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:40 pm
Location: NYC

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#83 Post by Roscoe » Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:00 pm

I just can't decide whether the upgrade to 4K is going to be serious enough, improve on the image/sound over the already splendid Criterion Blu-Ray enough, to justify the purchase. I'm currently leaning against it. We'll see what the reviews and comments say.

User avatar
swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#84 Post by swo17 » Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:20 pm

A lot of Criterion's 4K upgrades will probably be "less serious" given the already high standards of most of their Blu-rays. It's subjective and debatable how much this improvement might be worth paying for in each case. But buying these upgrades is also partly a vote for the UHD format, which will impact future titles down the line, for whatever that's worth

User avatar
therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#85 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:26 pm

swo17 wrote:
Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:20 pm
But buying these upgrades is also partly a vote for the UHD format, which will impact future titles down the line, for whatever that's worth
I know you probably didn’t intend it this way, but this message helped me decide to refrain from buying the few UHDs I was considering this morning

User avatar
swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#86 Post by swo17 » Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:33 pm

That's fair but also
Passages thread wrote:any dream of a They All Laughed 4K release

User avatar
jegharfangetmigenmyg
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2011 7:52 am

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#87 Post by jegharfangetmigenmyg » Mon Dec 06, 2021 4:09 pm

whaleallright wrote:
Mon Mar 17, 2014 10:47 pm
It's quite possible that the film was shown matted to 1.66:1 in European theaters (where that ratio was quite common) and to 1.75:1 in American theaters. That would be a standard North American ratio closely equivalent to 1.66:1. I know many disagree, but I believe that in most cases the difference between 1.66 and 1.75 is close to negligible; I don't recall Lester using a lot of precise edge framing in this stylistically freewheeling film.
I will be one to disagree. If you look at the comparisons between 1.66 and 1.75 here, there are a lot of top of hair-cropping in the 1.75 version (look at the shot of George Harrison in front of the mirror): http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film4/blu-ray_ ... lu-ray.htm

And I have to say that I find the framing too tight (the shot of the George Harrison film frame looks cropped in all but the 1.33 version which leads me to believe that this was indeed Lester's preferred ratio).

I don't know anything about the film's production, but don't you think this was shot in open matte / academy ratio for it to be easily transferrable to the 4:3 television projection format of the day? And, furthermore, it being an British production, if they were securing it for masking while shooting, it would probably have been for the European standard format of the day, 1.66:1, not 1.75:1.

Again, I must say that releasing it in 1.75:1, to me, feels like the least reasonable thing to do. It doesn't make sense just because it was projected in that format in the US. If anything, it should have been released in 1.66, but looking at the screenshots, probably the most "correct" thing to do would have been 1.33. And then maybe include a cropped 1.66 as a "theatrical version".

Edit: Indeed, IMDB lists the aspect ratio as 1.66:1 which confirms that they where shooting it with the intention of it being shown in 1.66 in cinemas: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058182/technical

User avatar
EddieLarkin
Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:25 am

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#88 Post by EddieLarkin » Mon Dec 06, 2021 4:38 pm

A few facts:

A Hard Day's Night prints were distributed with leaders indicating the film should be projected at 1.75:1
Kine Weekly at the time indicated the film should be projected at 1.85:1 (confusing, I know!)
1.66:1 was the standard flat widescreen ratio in much of Europe
1.75:1 was the standard flat widescreen ratio in the UK
1.85:1 was the standard flat widescreen ratio in the US
In 1964, of all the films that Kine Weekly listed the specific flat widescreen ratio for, 90% of them were 1.75:1 and the other 10% were 1.85:1. None were 1.66:1.

The facts do not support this film being composed at 1.66:1 or 1.33:1. imdb is a user submitted website that is worthless as a resource for these matters.

User avatar
jegharfangetmigenmyg
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2011 7:52 am

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#89 Post by jegharfangetmigenmyg » Mon Dec 06, 2021 4:52 pm

Thank you for the information, Eddie! I actually didn't know that the UK used another standard than the rest of Europe. But, thinking about it again, of course the Brits had to do it slightly differently than anywhere else...

Again, though, the cropping still looks "off" to me. If instructions for projection were distributed with the prints back then, it was certainly up to the projectionist to do the masking live, and in some of those shots I would definitely have masked out a bigger portion of the bottom of the image to avoid cropping of heads. In other words, this "restored version" is probably the 1.33 version cropped to 1.75 with the exact same amount of image cropped from top and bottom, no? If so, I would call that is a lazy way (whoever did it) to "restore" a film when they could easily have gone through it scene by scene to make sure that it was cropped "correctly".

User avatar
EddieLarkin
Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:25 am

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#90 Post by EddieLarkin » Mon Dec 06, 2021 5:00 pm

British studios were presumably anxious to get their films distributed in both 1.85:1 dominant USA and 1.66:1 dominant Europe, so opting for 1.75:1 as the industry standard seems like a fairly obvious move.

User avatar
swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#91 Post by swo17 » Mon Dec 06, 2021 5:07 pm

If you think this is bad, you should watch William Klein's The Model Couple, which I believe the director actually intended to look as tight as it does

User avatar
jegharfangetmigenmyg
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2011 7:52 am

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#92 Post by jegharfangetmigenmyg » Mon Dec 06, 2021 5:20 pm

EddieLarkin wrote:
Mon Dec 06, 2021 5:00 pm
British studios were presumably anxious to get their films distributed in both 1.85:1 dominant USA and 1.66:1 dominant Europe, so opting for 1.75:1 as the industry standard seems like a fairly obvious move.
Ah, of course, that makes sense. British films would have been more likely to get a US release than a subtitled Italian one would. But back on topic, I still don't think there's an acceptable excuse for not going through the entire film, cropping it manually as a good projectionist would have done in the Sixties.
swo17 wrote:
Mon Dec 06, 2021 5:07 pm
If you think this is bad, you should watch William Klein's The Model Couple, which I believe the director actually intended to look as tight as it does
OK, that one looks odd! But if it's approved by the director, it's still different. The restored version of AHDN wasn't approved by Lester was it?

I'm just saying that to me several of the shots on Beaver looks like they were composed for 1.33. I became intserested in this issue because I haven't seen the film, and I watched the first 10-15 minutes of it yesterday before I turned it off because it looked "wrong" and too tightly composed. Then I drew the wrong conclusion that it was composed for 1.66, and now my theory is that it looks off due to automatic cropping. And if I'm right about this, it's very lazy restoration work.

User avatar
Michael Kerpan
Spelling Bee Champeen
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:20 pm
Location: New England
Contact:

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#93 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Dec 06, 2021 6:21 pm

jegharfangetmigenmyg -- When projected, there would have been "automatic cropping" -- projectionists would have set things in advance -- and would not have adjusted things on a shot by shot (or even scene by scene), right. So presumably the initial shot composition would have taken cropping-when-projected into account. Would restoration that recomposed the frame on a shot-by-shot basis reflect anyone's intention other than that of the after-the-fact modern re-editor.

User avatar
The Fanciful Norwegian
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:24 pm
Location: Teegeeack

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#94 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Mon Dec 06, 2021 7:18 pm

jegharfangetmigenmyg wrote:
Mon Dec 06, 2021 5:20 pm
The restored version of AHDN wasn't approved by Lester was it?
It was.

User avatar
jegharfangetmigenmyg
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2011 7:52 am

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#95 Post by jegharfangetmigenmyg » Tue Dec 07, 2021 5:44 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:
Mon Dec 06, 2021 6:21 pm
Would restoration that recomposed the frame on a shot-by-shot basis reflect anyone's intention other than that of the after-the-fact modern re-editor.
Probably not, but I'd prefer it to cutting top of heads throughout the film in this case.

I'm really trying not to sound like an ignorant nitpicker here -- especially after Eddie presented me with the fact that this film was apparently distributed with leaders telling projectionists to screen it in 1.75 (nevermind that many, if not almost all, cinemas outside of the UK wouldn't have a 1.75 mask at hand, and they would then either mask it to 1.66 or 1.85, anyways) -- BUT I still find it very hard to believe that Gilbert Taylor, who, when he worked on AHDN, had already shot 25+ films (including Dr. Strangelove!), composed this film for 1.75. I did a quick research and the handfuls of films he did before and after AHDN were all, with no exceptions, shot in 1.66. This includes Polanski's Repulsion and Cul-de-sac. As I stated earlier, to my eyes, the 1.66 version on Beaver looks more "correct" than 1.75, and the former would have been the format Taylor usually composed his images for.

User avatar
knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#96 Post by knives » Tue Dec 07, 2021 6:28 pm

Unless Lester asked him to change his style.

User avatar
jegharfangetmigenmyg
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2011 7:52 am

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#97 Post by jegharfangetmigenmyg » Tue Dec 07, 2021 6:32 pm

Well, Lester and Taylor already worked together two years before AHDN on It's Trad Dad, which, incidentally, was shot in 1.66...

User avatar
EddieLarkin
Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:25 am

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#98 Post by EddieLarkin » Tue Dec 07, 2021 6:49 pm

But how are you determining the aspect ratios of those films? imdb and their home video releases? Dr Strangelove was instructed to be projected at 1.85:1 in Variety; it's usually been presented at 1.66:1 merely because it was hard matted at that ratio. Repulsion and Cul-de-sac were instructed to be projected at 1.75:1 in Kine Weekly (Criterion even released Repulsion at this very aspect ratio on laserdisc!) Taylor was working in 1.75:1 as far back as The Dam Busters, which was finally released that way in its most recent home video incarnation.

Image

User avatar
jegharfangetmigenmyg
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2011 7:52 am

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#99 Post by jegharfangetmigenmyg » Wed Dec 08, 2021 5:10 am

I haven't seen the 1.75 version of Repulsion. Would be interesting. However, Beaver's comparison of the BD's and DVDs shows Anchor Bay's 1.78 version which again, to me, looks "too tight". The comparison also indicates that even the 1.66 Criterion has been cropped quite a bit. Take a look at the second screenshot. There's much more information in top and bottom of the French hardsubbed version which would be the 1.66 negative cropped to 1.33, not tasken from an open matte 1.33. Again, I'm not questioning your info regarding AHDN, I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying that if Taylor really intended his film to be cropped like the 1.75 version available, I would call him a crappy cinematographer because it just doesn't look right; it doesn't look like it was composed for that format.

Regarding The Dam Busters, I would actually say that the 1.75 version proves my point (that Taylor clearly wasn't actively composing for the format). Do you honestly think that this looks "right"?

Image

User avatar
EddieLarkin
Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:25 am

Re: 711 A Hard Day's Night

#100 Post by EddieLarkin » Wed Dec 08, 2021 6:51 am

And if I told you that in that very shot, the camera operator moves the framing slightly upwards at one point to keep the scalp in, what then? (To be clear, Taylor is credited with the special effects photography, not the direction of photography, so that wouldn't be his shot)

Honestly your argumet is becoming quite ridiculous, it's bad enough to use still frames from home video anyway but to use them from what appears to be terrible quality VHS sources (the Repulsion cap), come on, you honestly think that has any relation to how an actual print would look, whether matted or not? It is entirely useless.

The only way to determine an historical aspect ratio is to start with the contemporary documentation, and then inspect the actual film elements. Browsing DVDBeaver doesn't really cut it.

Post Reply