The Oscars: CinemaScope and the Doom of Film

Will the Oscars remember how to save art.

The CinemaScope into for 20th Century Fox

Movies are done for. First the Hayes Codes killed them. Then the invention of television. A pandemic came and went, and a cynical restructuring of the movie business into securitised products ravaged Hollywood. Streaming services came and extracted a pound of flesh from the art form. Yet against all odds movies keep getting made.

Those stubborn artists never know when they're beat. Won't you die already, movies!

Studios introduced grand bombast of CinemaScope and the anamorphic lens in 1953 to save movies from the scourge of television. A wider aspect ratio, a flood of gorgeous color, and grander films of epic scope.

20th Century Fox's "The Robe." With Richard Burton and Victor Mature. The first film released in CinemaScope.

Movies like The Robe, How to Marry a Millionaire, Ben Hur, and Lawrence of Arabia, took to the format and audiences were floored. Movies were saved. Hooray!

There was even a period when the films themselves broke the fourth wall to remind audiences of what they were missing. Like in this hilarious example below with Tony Randall from the film "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter."

And today we've sort of forgotten this format. Forgotten the lesson of why people love movies as a true artform. So I'd to share a link I've found from the British Film Institute that reviews the technology and the films that used it.

>10 great films shot in CinemaScope

Enjoy the Oscars. But I hope you get a chance to see these amazing CinemaScope art works for yourselves one day.