- William Friedkin’s Sorcerer (1977)
I found it odd that much of the anticipatory buzz surrounding the rollout of the new restoration of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer (which I discussed a few weeks back) emphasized that this would be the first time that many viewers would be able to see the film in its original aspect ratio. True, all home video releases of Sorcerer have presented it in the Academy ratio of 1.37:1, which is noticeably boxier than the film’s theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Yet Friedkin has often said that he shot his movies to work in either format, meaning that no visual information would be lost when the films converted to the dimensions of old TVs (Stanley Kubrick also employed this method from the 1970s to the end of his career). Viewers wouldn’t see more of Sorcerer on a big screen, just a more rectangular version of the movie they already knew.
