THIS IS A ORIGINAL CINEMASCOPE ® ANAMARPHOT LENS BY CARL ZEISS.
HOW CINEMASCOPE WORKS:
Panoramic scene of marching Indians at left is photographed with an anamorphoscope wide-view lens in front of camera lens. This compresses image within the full aperture of 35 film. In projection, another anamorphoscope placed before projector lens expands compressed image to full scale so it appears on screen as shown above, lower right. Three microphones (X) placed strategically to cover the full range of the set or scene record three separate tracks to provide stereophonic sound, an important factor in CinemaScope system.
CinemaScope was a widescreen movie format used from 1953 to 1967. Anamorphic lenses allowed the process to project film up to a 2.66:1 aspect ratio, twice as wide as the conventional format of 1.33:1.
Although CinemaScope was shortly made obsolete by new technological developments, the anamorphic presentation of films initiated by CinemaScope in the 1950s has continued to this day.
A French professor named Henri Chrétien developed and patented a new film process that he called Anamorphoscope in the late 1920s. It was this process that would later form the basis for CinemaScope. Chrétien's process was based on lenses that employed an optical "trick" which produced an image twice as wide as that produced with conventional lenses. In New York, a premiere of Chrétien's new process impressed the major Hollywood film studios of the time, who were eager to win back lost audiences from televisions allure.
Twentieth Century Fox won the rights of the Anamorphoscope. However, the format needed more development before it would be ready to use. The first of Chrétien's lenses were quickly transported to Hollywood where they were further analyzed. From this analysis the basis of CinemaScope was formed. Fox's pre-production of The Robe was halted so that the film could be changed to CinemaScope, what Fox President Spyros Skouras envisioned as the future of film making.
Twenieth Century Fox's famous advertising slogan, Movies are Better than Ever, gained credibility with the ground breaking 1953 film The Robe . With the introduction of CinemaScope, the movie industry was able to re-assert its distinction from its new competitor television. The comedy How To Marry A Millionaire was the first film to be shot in CinemaScope. However, The Robe was released first. Fox utilized its influential people to promote CinemaScope. With the success of The Robe and How To Marry A Millionaire, the process became a hot property in Hollywood.
Fox sold the process to many of the major film studios including Columbia, Universal, MGM and Walt Disney Productions. Disney created one of the best-regarded examples of early CinemaScope productions with the live-action epic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. However, due to initial uncertainty a number of films were shot simultaneously with anamorphic and regular lenses.
Despite some early successes, the adoption of CinemaScope was slow and only major blockbusters were made in the format 10 to 30% of total output during typical years in the 1950s and 1960s.
