Aspect Ratios: How the Screen Shapes the Movie

Today, I had the pleasure of reading FilmmakerIQ's lesson on aspect ratios. As a freely available course, along with video resources, it's an incredible contribution to the cloud of online film theory. Something about the end of the first article caught my eye, though. After a flash course in the ever-changing shape of the cinema screen, their conclusion was a note to digital filmmakers: You have every aspect ratio at your disposal. Use them wisely.

Not quite as epic, is it?

For some movies, this is simple enough; Pacific Rim probably wouldn't fare well in "Academy 1.37", and Citizen Kane: IMAX Edition  might have been too boggling an experience for 1940s filmgoers. However, for movies with fuzzier genre specifications, different aspect ratios mean different ways of using the screen.


Recently, I've seen two films that rely heavily on aspect ratios. These are Michelangelo Antonioni's L'avventura and Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light. Though these movies differ greatly, they share an important device: noncommunication and framing.

What is noncommunication? Well: not communication. In classic film, devices like two-shots or shot-reverse-shot editing allow characters to act, connect, and share information. This is so natural that it's rarely noticed, and viewer thoughts about dialogue tend to concentrate on words and actions. This is communication.

L'avventura - These two are in love, apparently.

When characters in L'avventura and Winter Light, speak, though, they seldom look at each other. This creates dissonance, and viewers feel that there is something preventing them from meeting each other's eyes. In addition, Bergman and Antonioni forgo typical devices, like shot-reverse-shot editing. This is noncommunication.

L'avventura and Winter Light use this in different ways. L'avventura is about a group of wealthy Italians whose chief occupation is to lounge around on yachts. Outside their social status, they lack identities, and when they refuse to make eye contact, it's because they contain nothing worth communicating. Winter Light, on the other hand, is driven not by emptiness, but by fear. It follows a pastor who is losing his belief, and when his gaze slips away from his congregation, it is because he fears he will betray his faithlessness. It's revealing, then, that Winter Light's original title translates to "The Communicants".

Winter Light - These two are also in love, apparently.

This is where the aspect ratios come in. L'avventura is shot in a widescreen 1.77:1. The huge width gives Antonioni much more space than a classic ratio, and when frames his uncommunicative characters, they are often physically distant. They shout from different planes, across the frame, separated by screen space and
boredom. Winter Light  on the other hand, is in a much smaller, nearly-square 1.33:1. Bergman uses this to
his advantage with claustrophobic two-shots. Characters are squeezed so close together you wonder how they could possibly ignore each other; they're practically breathing down each other's necks.

This climaxes when Ingrid Thulin gives a six-minute long speech directly to the camera, in one uncut close-up, without blinking. In 1.33:1, she fills the entire screen, and Bergman uses this to contrast the rest of the the film's hesitant dialogue. It is shocking; the pastor, who has refused to look at her, is finally forced to listen.

Just try to ignore that face.

Both Winter Light and L'avventura, in all their existential fear and boredom, were released in the early 1960s. This was a time when audiences were as receptive to old narrow screens as they were to new wide ones, and Ingmar Bergman could've released Winter Light in 1.77:1 just as easily as Michelangelo Antonioni could've released L'avventura in 1.33:1. However, both directors chose their aspect ratios wisely.

In 2013, with HD sensors, digital letterboxing, and online platforms that support multiple ratios, filmmakers have these options and more. Since most of us are not making Hollywood epics, though, the Academy ratio, ultra-widescreen, and everything in between might not be so simple. Films like L'avventura and Winter Light help shed light on our options.