Widescreen vs. Pan and Scan: a case study
We initially bought Panorama's subtitled version of Yoji Yamada's Haruka naru yama no yobigoe (1980). Though it claimed to be a letterboxed widescreen version on its box -- it turned out to be panned and scanned. While the film was wonderful, the DVD was (shall we say) less than fully satisfactory. Consequently, I broke down and got the Japanese Shochiku DVD, which was properly formatted and digitally restored (albeit unsubtitled). A few comparison shots below (hopefully no detailed comments required):
Comments
The sad thing is that most audience wouldn't care, even if they were aware of the loss, they are content of getting more "close up's".
Yoji Yamada's work is wildly underestimated in the West. In his history of Japanese cinema, Donald Richie gave him only a single sentence. ;~}