The Return of VistaVision: How The Brutalist Revived a Decades-Old Film Format
If you’ve seen Brady Corbet’s new film The Brutalist, one of the most talked-about films of the awards season, you might have noticed a vintage-looking logo following A24’s well-known logo animation and the host of modern production companies backing the film. A large “V” zooms in towards the screen, and letters appear on both sides to spell out “VistaVision,” followed by words appearing underneath letting the audience know that the film you’re seeing is “Motion Picture High Fidelity.”
It’s a logo that might not look familiar to modern audiences, but if you’re a fan of old Hollywood films, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered VistaVision at one point or another. Alfred Hitchcock used it for a number of films in his famous 60s run such as Vertigo and North by Northwest, John Ford used it for The Searchers, and the first film to be shot in this format was the perennial holiday classic White Christmas with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.
But what exactly is VistaVision? Is it another form of 70mm film? And how did an independent production like The Brutalist (reported to be shot for only $8 million) resurrect a format that hasn’t been used for an entire feature-length film since 1961?
What is VistaVision?
In the 1950s, as Americans moved out to the suburbs and millions of baby boomers used their novel disposable income to purchase televisions, movie studios scrambled to find innovative new ways to get audiences back into movie theaters. Warner Bros. invested millions into 3D film production and exhibition, while 20th Century Fox developed a super-widescreen CinemaScope process that required special lenses and equipment for any exhibitors that wished to play it. Paramount, however, developed a new form of widescreen film that could be printed onto existing 35mm film and run through normal projectors like most exhibitors had on hand: VistaVision. The main difference in the process lay in the development of the camera; instead of having the film run vertically in front of the lens as it had for nearly all of film history, the film instead was turned on its side, with 8 perforations (or “sprocket holes”) on a single frame instead of 4.
What this means is that, while the film itself remained 35mm, the size of each individual frame changed and allowed for more information to enter the frame. The effect meant that the image projected onto the screen was sharper and clearer than anything that had come before it, with a finer grain than most film stocks available on the market. Most importantly, it created a widescreen image that did not create any warping effects on the edges of frame that you get from anamorphic widescreen (as in, aspect ratios of 2.35:1, 2.4:1, or wider, as CinemaScope typically was).
The downside is that, while any theater that had already equipped their theater for traditional widescreen (i.e. 1.66:1 or above) could play VistaVision films normally, the cameras used by the studios needed to be specially outfitted with spherical lens and film reels built into the cameras horizontally, meaning that many traditional production processes required new workarounds that were not necessary before. And as regular film began to develop sharper color processes and finer grain emulsions, the cost of VistaVision, which essentially required double the length of film as a typical production due to the larger image, became too cost-prohibitive to keep up.
However, despite the fact that the last film to be fully shot in VistaVision came out in 1961, the format received a revival of sorts in 1975 when a group of technicians and special effects artists looked for the best way to handle the complicated effects photography in George Lucas’s 1977 epic Star Wars. Because they liked the larger negative area that compensated for the increased grain in the most complex optical process shots, they used a modified VistaVision camera called the Dykstraflex to achieve a lot of the biggest effects scenes in Star Wars. For the next 20-30 years (until the dawn of digital effects and compositing), VistaVision became a key component in the field of visual effects and was used on a number of big blockbusters - seen on everything from modern classics like the Back to the Future series, Aliens, and Jurassic Park to films as recent as Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and even 2023’s Poor Things.
How Brady Corbet Utilizes VistaVision in The Brutalist
Despite still being utilized in certain fields, no filmmaker had attempted to shoot an entire feature-length film in VistaVision since the late 50s, but Brady Corbet thought it was the perfect format for his epic The Brutalist for a number of different reasons. For one, he wanted to immerse audiences in the time period during which the film takes place (roughly 1947-1960), so he wanted to find a format that felt epic and large-scale but still existed in that timeframe. By that logic, if he wanted to shoot in widescreen, he would have the choice of Cinemascope (which is far more commonly used today) or VistaVision. Since The Brutalist is all about architecture and there are several scenes showcasing the large vistas and the construction of the main character László Toth’s buildings, Corbet thought that the warping on the edges of the frames that you get from anamorphic Cinemascope would distort the image in a way he didn’t want. The 1.66:1 VistaVision frame, on the other hand, could more easily fit the majestic heights of Toth’s buildings in the frame while avoiding the distortion you get on the sides of the frame with Cinemascope. There was also the added benefit of the information on the VistaVision negative looking great when blown up to 70mm, especially compared to other 35mm film formats.
However, despite having a distinctly vintage look in the grain of the film itself, the visual style of the film feels far more modern than any other features that had been shot on VistaVision in the 1950s. While those films were locked down in the traditional Classical Hollywood studio system style (defined by a locked-down, heavy camera moving through constructed sets via large dollies and cranes), Corbet and DP Lol Crawley opt for a frequently-handheld style and long sequences achieved without cuts. Mounting a VistaVision camera on a steadicam and learning how to operate it with ease required lots of practice. Even then, Crawley has openly admitted to using traditional lightweight 35mm cameras for certain sequences that required lots of maneuvering in tight spaces for extended periods of time, such as the long take on the ship that takes Toth to America at the opening of the film. The biggest reason why they switched to 35mm for sequences like this, though, is because the VistaVision reel can only record 5 minutes of film at a time, which meant it was unusable for any sequence that could go past 5 minutes in one take. In the final film, these transitions are almost entirely seamless and viewers could be easily forgiven for thinking that every inch of film was shot in VistaVision.
A 70mm print of The Brutalist
With the big promotional push for seeing The Brutalist in 70mm and the novel aspect of the film being shot in VistaVision, it’s not surprising that several other films are already in production utilizing the format. Most notably, Paul Thomas Anderson is filming his biggest-budgeted film yet in Los Angeles currently on VistaVision, and is expected to release this August. The reported title is The Battle of Baktan Cross, but beyond that and several cast members including Leonardo DiCaprio as the lead, very few details are known. Beyond that, word on the street is that there are a few other films in the works currently that are utilizing the VistaVision cameras, but we’ll know more about that when they come out. As for Corbet, he’s already at work on his next film, which he announced at TIFF will be shot on 8-perf 65mm as opposed to the 8-perf 35mm VistaVision format.
Already, The Brutalist has garnered some great box office in the specialty market, especially for those exhibitors that are fitted to play 70mm film. And with these other films on the horizon, it seems like 70mm and other large-scale film formats are poised for a revival across the country!