20 Black and White Films With The Most Beautiful Widescreen Composition

Created by Igor_Brynner.

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There is nothing new under the sun and little that has ever been completely new in the cinematic world, either. The widescreen era in the motion picture world began in the early 1950s with the emergence of Cinerama and Cinemascope. These processes were introduced in an effort to lure newly converted TV fans back to the theaters by virtue of changing the shape of the motion picture screen from the long used “Academy Format”, which used a ratio of 4:3 to one of 2:35 to 1 or even wider.

In truth, this type of process had been in existence since the late silent era and Fox Films and a few independent producers had tried to introduce it into American filmmaking in the early 1930s. However, first depression then global world events prevented the introduction of anything more that was new and elaborate in the world of motion picture theaters for some two decades.

Then came television and the threat it carried to the movie world. In the effort to lure the audiences back, the film companies sought to give the public whatever TV couldn’t offer.

Widescreen was certainly something different from TV but so, largely, was something else: color. Though there were experimental color broadcasts from the late 1940s, color on TV wouldn’t come into practical usage until the mid-1960s. Color had been a part of the movie world since the silent era of the 1920s, though not perfected until 1935.

However, it was an expensive process and, though bright and radiant, it had the drawback of not being able to achieve the depth of focus and intensity of black and white. Thus, it was largely consigned to musicals, comedies, and period pieces. When widescreen came in, which was a bit costly as well, the film studios largely were of a mind that the high price meant that all widescreen films would also be shot in color in order to increase potential revenue.

The problem with this is that some films needed, artistically, to be shot in black and white. Some subjects were far better served by monochrome and the depth of focus and use of light and shadow essential to telling the story correctly. At first it was a hard sell on the part of the director to make black and white filming possible.

Fox studio head Darryl Zanuck had gone so far as to declare black and white dead (ironically, he would violate this more than once himself when he went into independent production a few years later). Thankfully, black and white was allowed to be used a number of times until the color era was firmly established in 1968 (the last year the Motion Picture Academy would give out awards in specific black and white craft categories was 1967).

Europe and Asia were a bit more lenient in allowing black and white but film makers faced a color challenge there as well. The sad irony is that black and white anamorphic films are among the most aesthetically pleasing of all films, containing both great breath and depth. Following are some fine examples of this. (Note: non-ananamorphic widescreen black and white films such as Touch of Evil, Night of the Hunter, and Psycho are not covered in this article.)