Hollywood’s Love Affair with VistaVision

Summary

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Up First from NPR

Episode: Hollywood’s Love Affair with VistaVision
Date: February 22, 2026
Host: Ayesha Rascoe
Guests: Mandalit del Barco, Charlotte Barker, John Dykstra, Lowell Crawley, Michael Bauman, Giovanni Ribisi, Yorgos Lanthimos, and others.

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Overview

This episode of NPR’s Up First Sunday Story dives deep into the resurgence of VistaVision, a classic widescreen film format from the 1950s that’s enjoying a surprising comeback in contemporary Hollywood. As two current Oscar-nominated films—One Battle After Another and Begonia—catch eyes for their stunning visuals, the episode explores why filmmakers are turning to this vintage technology, the technical artistry of VistaVision, and the cultural moment it represents for moviegoers and the theater industry.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Why VistaVision, Why Now?

[02:56 – 04:52]

• Ayesha Rascoe opens by asking NPR culture correspondent Mandalit del Barco why old-school film techniques like VistaVision are appealing in the streaming era.
• Mandalit explains the difference between today's ultra-clean digital images and the more organic, immersive visuals of VistaVision, emphasizing the dramatic impact of seeing these films in a theater.

Quote:

“VistaVision is kind of different. It's a special widescreen format that uses 35 millimeter film, and it really turns the viewer's experience up a notch or two.”
— Mandalit del Barco [03:32]

• There’s an implicit admission that part of VistaVision’s revival is to lure audiences back into theaters, which are still struggling after COVID-19.

Quote:

“Movie theaters have been in really bad shape since the COVID-19 pandemic shut them down and they still haven't fully recovered... But filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson... and Yorgos Lanthimos... are betting that VistaVision will attract people back.”
— Mandalit del Barco [04:18]

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2. VistaVision’s Historical Impact

[05:10 – 09:00]

• Originally launched by Paramount in 1954 with White Christmas, VistaVision was a deliberate response to television’s growing popularity.
• It was part of a broader widescreen “craze,” alongside technologies like Cinerama and CinemaScope.

Quote:

“Back then, movie theaters were also feeling threatened by the growing popularity of television... People watched those shows on tiny old black and white TVs before color came along.”
— Mandalit del Barco [05:10]

• Charlotte Barker, Paramount’s student director of film restoration, shares her archival passion and surprise at the format’s revival.

Quote:

“I feel like I'm living in some crazy, weird alternate reality where people are interested in this weird format that I like.”
— Charlotte Barker [06:36]

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3. Widescreen Rivalries and Technical Innovation

[06:43 – 08:54]

• Barker recounts how competing widescreen technologies (Cinerama, CinemaScope) faced issues: multi-screen seams in Cinerama, “mumps” facial distortions in CinemaScope.
• VistaVision’s unique horizontal feed doubled the image size, reduced grain, and avoided distortion.

Quote:

“There's no grain. And the image clarity is beautiful. It showed the full view of your eye, like what your vision sees in your peripherals.”
— Charlotte Barker [08:42]

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4. The Fall and Afterlife of VistaVision

[09:18 – 12:16]

• Innovation continued and VistaVision faded as newer lenses and formats emerged (Panavision, etc.).
• Paramount’s last VistaVision film was One Eyed Jacks (1961).

Quote:

“They just couldn't justify spending the extra money... it was twice the amount of film costs.”
— Charlotte Barker [12:07]

• VistaVision was repurposed for visual effects, lying dormant until the late 1970s.

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5. Star Wars and the VFX Revival

[13:59 – 15:45]

• George Lucas’s team at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) brought VistaVision back for the original Star Wars to achieve unprecedented realism in space effects.
• John Dykstra describes customizing “big, clunky” VistaVision cameras for the job.

Quote:

“We did modifications on existing VistaVision cameras. They were basically legacy devices. They were big, clunky.”
— John Dykstra [14:33]

• The format’s high fidelity enabled seamless layering in special effects, contributing to the Star Wars Oscar for VFX.

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6. Contemporary Renaissance—The 2020s

[15:56 – 19:51]

• Directors like Brady Corbett (The Brutalist), Paul Thomas Anderson, and Yorgos Lanthimos (Begonia) choose VistaVision for its distinctive look.
• Cinematographer Lowell Crawley credits the format for its period-appropriate aesthetic and high-resolution, undistorted images.

Quote:

“The VistaVision camera enabled us to shoot these incredible, you know, high resolution images and avoid this sort of distortion of a wider angle lens.”
— Lowell Crawley [16:38]

• However, these cameras are notoriously finicky: loud, heavy, and unreliable.

Quote:

“You gotta be gentle with them. It's just kind of like I will roll with the punches with these cameras because they're just beautiful pieces of machinery, you know, and you have to forgive them their failings.”
— Lowell Crawley [17:00]

• Bauman (DoP for One Battle After Another) describes fixing constant jams and noise, but says the payoff—such as car chase scenes with the camera just inches off the road—justifies the pain.

Quote:

“You're trying to resurrect a great format back from the dead, and it can be frustrating at times, but the visual value... was well worth the pain and misery.”
— Michael Bauman [18:05]

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7. Creative Uses and Iconic Imagery

[19:51 – 21:07]

• Techniques like soundproof camera blimps—originally used by Hitchcock—are revived to address noise issues for dialogue scenes.
• Yorgos Lanthimos deliberately subverts expectations by using VistaVision’s expansive scope in cramped settings (e.g., a basement in Begonia), making actors’ faces iconic landscapes in themselves.

Quote:

“It’s called VistaVision. So you think you’re going to get all this landscape photography, but the landscape in Begonia is the face.”
— Cinematographer (Ryan) [20:44]

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8. The Enthusiast: Giovanni Ribisi

[21:14 – 23:11]

• Actor Giovanni Ribisi is revealed as a collector/restorer of VistaVision cameras, lending his own to productions.
• Ribisi demonstrates his camera’s loud, mechanical operation and compares VistaVision’s appeal to vinyl records.

Quote:

“Honestly, I think that there's just something that is very emotional about it when you watch it. It has this sort of analog feel to it that nothing else is like.”
— Giovanni Ribisi [22:43]

• Ribisi laments the loss of artisanal camera-building knowledge as new generations turn digital.

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9. Is the Comeback Enough for Theaters?

[23:20 – 25:59]

• The hosts discuss whether nostalgia and film craft can actually revive the movie-theater experience, with many cinemas now experimenting with events, amenities, and spectacle beyond film.
• Mandalit expresses cautious optimism that cinephiles will embrace VistaVision, but acknowledges most viewers won’t notice the technical change even if they feel the artistry.

Quote:

“Even though most people in the audience won't even realize a movie they're watching was made in VistaVision, they might feel that it was shot with a lot of thought.”
— Mandalit del Barco [24:01]

• Notably, recent high-profile productions (Wuthering Heights, Narnia, Tom Cruise’s new film) were shot in VistaVision.

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10. The Magic of Film

[25:35 – 25:59]

• Lowell Crawley encapsulates the romance of analog moviemaking.

Quote:

“There's something about the fact that every frame is different, is made up of a different collection of silver halides. There's something very analog and organic... for me is a magical process that creates better images.”
— Lowell Crawley [25:35]

• The episode closes with Mandalit and Ayesha reflecting on the lasting power of craft, artistry, and the shared cinematic experience.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “My whole office is nothing but VistaVision items and a camera. It is a VistaVision museum of sorts.”
  — Charlotte Barker [06:24]

• “Actors didn't want to go to the edge of the lens because their face started to look a little funny. They called it the mumps.”
  — Charlotte Barker [08:01]

• “It was kind of like a... back alley drug deal where I went with a bag of cash and we just traded.”
  — Giovanni Ribisi [22:15]

• “The magic of the silver screen.”
  — Mandalit del Barco [25:55]

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Summary Table of Important Segments

| Timestamp | Topic/Quote | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:56 | Introduction to VistaVision’s appeal in a digital age | | 04:18 | Cinema's post-pandemic struggles and VistaVision as a draw | | 06:43 | Cinerama, CinemaScope, and technical fixes offered by VistaVision | | 08:42 | VistaVision’s unmatched clarity and lack of distortion | | 13:59 | Star Wars and the VFX legacy of VistaVision | | 16:38 | Cinematic craft and period appropriateness (Lowell Crawley, The Brutalist)| | 17:00 | Mechanical frailty and personality of VistaVision cameras | | 20:44 | Using VistaVision for close-ups: “the landscape is the face” | | 22:43 | Giovanni Ribisi on the emotional analog feel of VistaVision | | 24:01 | Can nostalgia and craft bring people back to theaters? | | 25:35 | "There's something very analog and organic... a magical process." |

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Tone & Style

Throughout the episode, the tone is nostalgic, warm, and conversational, balancing technical discussions with stories from passionate practitioners. Both hosts and interviewees share genuine wonder for the craftsmanship of traditional filmmaking and an optimism that artistry still matters—even in an era dominated by digital convenience.

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Conclusion

"Hollywood’s Love Affair with VistaVision" offers a rich blend of movie history, behind-the-scenes craft, technical geekery, and cultural commentary. VistaVision’s revival is presented not just as a technical choice but an act of faith in the power of big-screen magic. Whether or not it can save struggling theaters, it’s clear that the love of film—analog, imperfect, and handmade—remains alive in the hands of today’s most daring storytellers.

Transcript

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Aisha.

[Aisha Rascoe]

I'm Aisha Rascoe and this is the Sunday STORY from Up first, where we go beyond the news to bring you one big story. Two of the nominees for best picture at this year's Academy Awards are especially beautiful to watch on the big screen.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

This is Bob Ferguson. I was a part of the French 75

[Aisha Rascoe]

and one battle after another. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a washed up revolutionary trying to outrun his past.

[Commercial/Advertisement Voice]

Viva la revolution.

[Aisha Rascoe]

In Begonia, we see Emma Stone as a high powered executive who gets kidnapped. Her captors shave her bald and slather her head and face with white antihistamine cream. Where is my hair?

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Your hair has been destroyed to prevent you from contacting your ship. What ship? Your mother ship.

[Aisha Rascoe]

The filmmakers of both of these movies made a very deliberate artistic choice. To use a once obsolete technology from the 1950s is called VistaVision.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

VistaVision, the ultimate in film presentation that will thrill all your senses, touch all your emotions with its unbelievable clarity, sharpness, brilliance.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Films shot in VistaVision are made for large widescreen, the ones you find only at theaters today on the Sunday story. VistaVision and what it can tell us about Hollywood's past and in some ways, its future.

[Charlotte Barker]

I feel like I'm living in some crazy, weird alternate reality where people are interested in this weird format that I like.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Stay with us.

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[Aisha Rascoe]

We're back with the Sunday story. I'm Aisha Rascoe. And joining me today is NPR culture correspondent Mondalit Del Barco. Mondalit is here to talk to us about Vista Vision, a vintage movie format and its unusual comeback. So, Mondalit, I I gotta be Honest, I don't get to the movies much. I'm usually with my kids, and so it's just easier to stream a little bit at home. And I can barely get to do that. So help me understand the appeal of this kind of old school film technique in this modern age.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Yeah. So, Aisha, I'm sure you know that most streaming shows these days are digital creations. And the same goes for a lot of films, too. That look is very clear, very precise, maybe a little too clean. But VistaVision is kind of different. It's a special widescreen format that uses 35 millimeter film, and it really turns the viewer's experience up a notch or two. It can be visually exhilarating with a big widescreen image. You might feel some of that watching on your tv, but to get to the full experience, you really have to go to a movie theater. And that's part of what's driving the VistaVision comeback.

[Aisha Rascoe]

I mean, obviously, I know that theaters have been struggling. Right. Is this kind of like a gimmick to renew interest in going to the movies?

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Well, I wouldn't quite call it a gimmick, but yeah, the idea is in part to get people back to cinemas. You know, movie theaters have been in really bad shape since the COVID 19 pandemic shut them down and they still haven't fully recovered. Plus, Aisha, in this age of streaming, people have gotten used to watching movies on their TVs or even their cell phones. But filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, who made One Battle After Another, and Yorgos Lanthimos of Begonia, they're betting that this division will attract people back to the movie theaters.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Well, I know that both of these movies have gotten a lot of praise and, you know, as you say, like, they're up for awards. So something is working. But take us back. Like, was VistaVision a big deal? Like, did it make a big splash when it came out in the 50s?

[Mandalit Del Barco]

It really did, yeah. In 1954, Paramount Pictures introduced audiences to its first VistaVision movie, White Christmas, A wonderful story that will warm your hearts, just as the breathtaking scope of a new screen wonder will widen your eyes. White Christmas in VistaVision, may your day be. From all accounts, the premiere at Radio City Music hall in New York was a hit. But the interesting thing is it was developed in part to address that very familiar problem. Back then, movie theaters were also feeling threatened by the growing popularity of television. I Love Lucy was a hugely successful TV show. So were shows like the Honeymooners. And at the time, people watched those shows on tiny Old black and white TVs before color came along.

[Aisha Rascoe]

So, I mean, did it work like Beyond White Christmas? Was Vista Vision like a real draw?

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Yeah, I was really wondering about that, too. So I decided to dive into the history of this format. So I drove over to the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood to visit Charlotte Barker. She's the student director of film restoration and preservation.

[Charlotte Barker]

My whole office is nothing but VistaVision items and a camera. It is a VistaVision museum of sorts.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

She's also writing a book about VistaVision, and she says she's pleasantly surprised it's become so timely.

[Charlotte Barker]

I feel like I'm living in some crazy, weird alternate reality where people are interested in this weird format that I like.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

So Barker says VistaVision arrived at a really innovative time in movie history. It was part of a widescreen movie craze in the 1950s. It started with science. Cinerama. This is Cinerama.

[Charlotte Barker]

Cinerama was the three screens, three projector system. And when that came out, everyone in Hollywood said, we need to do a widescreen system. It was a different image three times, and those were put together to make one panoramic image. The problem was it had these visible seams where the images were joined, so they could never really get rid of that. That's what Cinerama was.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Okay, so it sounds like those scenes could be annoying. People might not want to see them.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Yeah. You know, but, you know, despite that, seeing movies in widescreen was considered pretty neat. And it was so new and different. But Cinerama was soon upstaged. Barker says 20th Century Fox introduced another format called CinemaScope.

[Charlotte Barker]

They figured out a way to do it with one lens, one anamorphic lens, which would squeeze an image onto regular 35 millimeter film whenever they shot it. And then whenever it was projected, it would unsqueeze it and make it a widescreen image. But by doing that, that added a lot of film grain to the image,

[Mandalit Del Barco]

and the edges of the image were distorted.

[Charlotte Barker]

So actors didn't want to go to the edge of the lens because their face started to look a little funny. They called it the mumps.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Okay.

[Aisha Rascoe]

And, you know, a Hollywood actor is not gonna want their faces to be distorted. That's their moneymakers. What about VistaVision? Like, did it fix these problems?

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Yeah, well, VistaVision was really an improvement. There was no stretching of the images, no distortion like the other formats. It also uses 35 millimeter film, but instead of running the film through the camera vertically, it feeds through horizontally like a still camera. And Barker says this meant the image could Be a lot larger. In fact, twice as large.

[Charlotte Barker]

There's no grain. And the image clarity is beautiful. It showed the full view of your eye, like what your vision sees in your peripherals. That was the scope of VistaVision.

[Aisha Rascoe]

But how is it different from, like, other widescreen formats, like IMAX film?

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Well, IMAX wasn't around in the 50s, but it's true. We now have IMAX and interactive 4DX experiences and other theater formats. The cinematographers I interviewed told me those are much more expensive than. And they sometimes require special projectors and special theaters.

[Aisha Rascoe]

And so who was behind VistaVision? Like, was some, you know, somebody who loved movies just tinkering in their garage or who developed it?

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Well, actually, way back in the 1920s, when motion pictures were just getting started, Paramount Pictures held a patent for a widescreen format. But it wasn't developed until the 1950s as VistaVision, when two guys from Paramount, the sound director and the chief engineer and head of the studio's camera departments, developed it. Their technical achievements earned them Academy Awards. And Aisha. Really quickly, some of the top filmmakers of the day started using VistaVision. Behold his mighty hand. Filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille used VistaVision for the 1956 remake of his biblical epic, the Ten Commandments. That film had the biggest sets ever constructed. And with the huge scope of the camera, you could see. See Charlton Heston as Moses parting the Red Sea. You could watch all those movie extras dramatically getting swept away.

[Aisha Rascoe]

That's the big moment with the Red Sea.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Yeah, very dramatic. You know, director Alfred Hitchcock also famously used VistaVision cameras to shoot many of his iconic films. In Vertigo, the VistaVision cameras captured Kim Novak's character jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge and Jimmy Stewart's character losing it.

[Aisha Rascoe]

That is quite the scream.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Yeah, it's haunting. You know, Hitchcock made other VistaVision movies, too. In north by Northwest, the wide angle shots of Mount Rushmore added to the suspense of the story about a man on the run. In a case of mistaken identity, Cary Grant plays him. And there's that famous scene of a prop plane chasing him through an open field. And one more example, Aisha. In To Catch a Thief, which stars Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, again, the VistaVision cameras captured the magnificent panoramic vistas of the French Riviera, Nice and Monaco. No one but Hitchcock could create such relentless excitement, filling the screen with fireworks as he matches the blazing talents of these two great stars in the love affair of the year.

[Aisha Rascoe]

So what happened? I mean, you had all these classics made using VistaVision. Did filmmakers keep using this format for a while or did something newer and shinier come along?

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Well, VistaVision fell out of fashion once the company Panavision, created better wide angle lenses. Paramount released its last VistaVision film, One Eyed Jacks, in 1961. Here's Charlotte Barker again.

[Charlotte Barker]

After that. They just couldn't justify spending the extra money, especially for the amount of film that had to be used in the camera. Because think about it, it was twice the amount of film costs.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

That might have been the end of it all, but thanks to another film, it wasn't.

[Aisha Rascoe]

So it sounds like we'll have more on that when we come back.

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[Mandalit Del Barco]

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[Aisha Rascoe]

we're back with the Sunday Story. I'm Ayesha Rascoe talking to NPR culture correspondent Mondalit Del Barco about an old movie technology that's become hot again. VistaVision. So what happened to all those special VistaVision movie cameras after that last Vista Vision film was made in the early 1960s?

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Well, they got mothballed for about a decade and then VistaVision found a new hope in the 1970s.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Okay, everybody knows that one. Star Wars.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Yeah, George Lucas team at Industrial Light and Magic used VistaVision to shoot the special effects of Star Wars.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

George wanted a realistic representation of space travel.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

That's John Dykstra. He led the team creating visual effects in the movie. He says they pulled out some old VistaVision cameras and customized them.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

We built more than one. I can't remember how many, but we did modifications on existing VistaVision cameras. They were basically legacy devices. They were big, clunky.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Okay, so they modify these clunky old Vistavision cameras to make it looked like spaceships really were traveling through space. Were they happy with the results?

[Mandalit Del Barco]

They sure were. Dykstra won the 1978 Oscar for best visual effects. He says the bigger images from the modified cameras kept the quality high. When the images had to be processed and layered, that's something you have to do again and again for stop motion animation. Dennis Muren was also on the crew.

[Commercial/Advertisement Voice]

George, bless him, he was trying something different. And John said, I think we can do this.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Muren became a visual effects supervisor at Lucasfilm for 40 years, and he was also creative director for ILM.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

You know, he built equipment to do

[Commercial/Advertisement Voice]

all the maneuvering of the spaceships in this better format, this bigger film aspect ratio, they should be more consistent with the live action photography. So they look real, so the shots look like you're out in space. You're actually shooting real objects flying around.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

This division continued to be used on animated films until digital cameras became mainstream. But for decades, it wasn't at all used to shoot live action films.

[Aisha Rascoe]

So what brought it back?

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Well, one of the first people to bring it back was director Brady Corbett. He decided to try it for his film the Brutalist.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

People here, they do not want us here.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

The cinematographer for the Brutalist was Lowell Crawley. And Ayesha, in 2025, he won the cinematography Oscar for his work. When I interviewed him, he gave a lot of credit to Corbett for choosing to use VistaVision.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

Brady was intrigued by the idea of using a camera system from that era, given that a large section of the Brutalist takes place post Second World War, in the sort of 50s in America. So he thought that was a nice idea to shoot with that system.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Crowley also says it was a beautiful format.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

The VistaVision camera enabled us to shoot these incredible, you know, high resolution images and avoid this sort of distortion of a wider angle lens.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

So the architecture, the marble quarries and the landscapes that Crawley shot in Hungary and Italy were gorgeous. But he says a vintage Beaumont VistaVision camera he used was as finicky as a classic car.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

You gotta be gentle with them. It's just kind of like I will roll with the punches with these cameras because they're just beautiful pieces of machinery, you know, and you have to forgive them their failings.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Their failings. So what's wrong with these cameras?

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Well, these cameras are kind of divas. They're larger than life and big, very noisy.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

I can't think of anything more off putting than trying to give this very nuanced, sensitive, quiet performance with this, you know, with this camera rattling away at you, you know? You know, so sometimes we just had to put up with it. It's kind of like starting up a lawnmower. It's like.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Michael Bauman was the director of photography for one battle after another. He says they used three VistaVision cameras.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

All of a sudden the camera would just go and just stop. All right, we got a jam. Let's figure it out. Sometimes film would come flying out, sometimes the magazine that holds the film would just be dead.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Bauman says throughout the shoot, he was constantly tweaking the cameras.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

You know, you're trying to resurrect a great format back from the dead, and it can be frustrating at times, but the visual value of what we were getting was well worth the pain and misery at the time, you know.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

And Aisha, you can see the payoff in the dramatic climax of one battle after another. Bauman and his crew strapped a VistaVision camera to the front bumpers of a car for a chase through a rolling desert landscape.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

So we could get the camera just a few inches off the surface of the road, which provides that super dynamic image with a wide lens of going over the hills, what we call the river of hills. It's an incredibly powerful sequence.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

What's interesting is that filmmakers are doing something that Alfred Hitchcock did to muzzle the camera noise. They're covering the cameras with soundproof cases called blimps.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Blimps, that's quite the name.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Yeah, blimps. They're especially useful for recording scenes with lots of close up conversation, like in Begonia. Can we have a dialogue, please? Don't call it a dialogue.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

This isn't Death of a Salesman.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Okay? Can we talk? Begonia's director, Yorgos Lenthimos, says he wanted the wide angle look. Even though much of the film is set in a cramped basement. It could feel counterintuitive, like you'd normally

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

use a larger format if you had, like really impressive vistas, or as the name itself says, or, you know, wide

[Mandalit Del Barco]

shots and landscapes and things like that.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

But I felt the juxtaposition of filming close ups of faces in a very limited space with that kind of format

[Mandalit Del Barco]

kind of made them iconic.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

It's almost like photography, portraiture, and it

[Mandalit Del Barco]

kind of focuses on the characters even more. Lanthimos first experimented with VistaVision in 2021 for a scene in his film Poor Things. He had a cinematographer wr, where Emma Stone's character is reanimated.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

It's the first time in Poor Things where the film goes to color. So it's this like crazy technicolor like explosion that hits you. And it's all in VistaVision. So it's a really brilliant sequence.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Ryan told me he used VistaVision again to shoot Begonia.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

I got a little bit traumatized when the whole shoot was going on on a daily basis. But, you know, I loved it. Cause it was a really. It's a massive camera. And because the magazines are horizontal, you can almost put your cup of tea on it. You. It was great.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Ryan says they were able to work out some of the kinks.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

It's called VistaVision. So you think you're going to get all this landscape photography, but the landscape in Begonia is the face. You know, just looking at the iconic bald Emma Stone with antihistamine cream all over helped kind of like make that even more sort of like super real. It sings off the screen and the results are so gorgeous.

[Aisha Rascoe]

It sounds like a lot of work went into shooting with this format. Have you seen one of these VistaVision cameras?

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Yeah, actually a few of them, in fact. And my editor and I were lucky enough to be invited to visit actor Giovanni Ribisi at his home in Los Angeles. Remember, he starred in Avatar and other films. He was on the TV show Friends. Ribisi also happens to be a very passionate enthusiast about this division. He even fired up his refurbished camera for us.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

Okay, ready?

[Aisha Rascoe]

And here we go. Okay, so there's that sound we've been hearing about.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Yeah, it's the same camera he lent to Paul Thomas Anderson to shoot one battle after another. You know, it's rather small, the size of a toaster. Maybe not like the big cameras that Hitchcock used, but it does have the horizontal magazines, the canisters holding the film. And Ribisi said his camera was probably made in the 1990s for the visual effects of one of the Spider man movies. He Frankenstein together with different lenses, a different viewfinder, and other parts. And he told us a funny story about how he tracked down and bought this camera.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

It was kind of like a. Almost like a back alley drug deal where I went with a bag of cash and we just traded.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

You know, we were only going to be at his house to record the sound of the camera. But Ribisi was so excited that we spent hours and he even used his camera to shoot a bit of footage of me interviewing him next to his swimming pool. I had a lot of questions. So what's so great about VistaVision? Why do you want to use this format?

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

You know, honestly, I think that there's just something that is very emotional about it when you watch it. There's just it has this sort of analog feel to it that there's just nothing else is like it.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Is it like listening to a vinyl record as opposed to something visible?

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

You could make that analogy. And if you want, I wanna talk about nostalgia. This is one of the things that kind of breaks my heart because people don't really know how to build these things anymore.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Do you think the nostalgia factor and the beauty of this format is enough to bring people back to the theaters?

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Well, that's really hard to say. I don't know. Many theaters are continuing to fight for their survival and they're just trying all sorts of things to try to get people back. Many of them host live events and retrospectives and film festivals. Some cinemas have pickleball courts or huge video arcades and bars in the lobbies. They have specially made popcorn buckets to match the movies. And they have those comfy recliner seats in the theaters where you can order food and drinks. The industry seems to be doing whatever it can to survive, to compete not just with home streaming, but with TikTok and other social media apps and every other way that people are being entertained.

[Aisha Rascoe]

So, I mean, it's a gamble.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Yeah, we'll have to see. But probably those cinephiles who, like old tech will appreciate VistaVision. There's that nostalgia factor. And, you know, even though most people in the audience won't even realize a movie they're watching was made in VistaVision, they might feel that it was shot with a lot of thought. And now, Aisha, VistaVision Films, they just keep getting made. There's a new movie out right now that was made with the format Wuthering Heights, the Romance, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.

[Aisha Rascoe]

Heathcliff.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Greta Gerwig also shot her new movie Narnia in VistaVision. And Alejandro Gonzalez, Signarito's cinematographer, shot the new Tom Cruise movie in VistaVision.

[Aisha Rascoe]

I mean, it makes me think about, you know, the craft of moviemaking. Like, even though, you know, you may not know all the moving pieces, what transports you is the art and the craft of moviemaking. And it seems like there are a lot of people who are trying not to lose that, that there is something special about being in the theater, that there is something special about that experience.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Yeah, it's true. This is about people who respect the craft of moviemaking and they relish the experience of going to the movies with an audience. I know I do. And, you know, Aisha, I wanted to leave you with this idea, something that every one of the cinematographers I talked to said, and that is that they have a real appreciation for shooting movies on film, not digital. I think back to what Lowell Crawley told me about what it feels like to record on film.

[John Dykstra / Lowell Crawley / Giovanni Ribisi (various interviewees)]

There's something about the fact that every frame is different, is made up of a different collection of silver halides. You know, like there's something very analog and organic about this process that for me is a magical process that creates better images for me, you know, up

[Mandalit Del Barco]

it's that magic of the silver screen.

[Aisha Rascoe]

That's NPR culture correspondent Mandalit del Barco. Thank you so much for bringing us this story.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

Thank you.

[Aisha Rascoe]

And a big happy birthday to Mondalit. It is today. You can also see Mondalit in VistaVision. As Mondeleep mentioned, the actor Giovanni Ribisi used his camera to shoot a bit of footage of Mondeleet interviewing him. You can find that video part of NPR's Tote Talk series on NPR's Instagram and TikTok accounts. This episode of the Sunday Story was produced by Raina Cohen and edited by Jenny Schmidt. It was fact checked by Will Chase. The engineer for this episode was Jimmy Keeley. The rest of the Sunday Story team includes Justine Yan, Andrew Wombo and Liana Simstrom. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. I'm Aisha Roscoe. Up first is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.

[Mandalit Del Barco]

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[Aisha Rascoe]

on average they report six MIDI Health

[Mandalit Del Barco]

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