If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s revisionism. Whatever happened in the past should be reported that way as time goes on. To change something is to be giving a false statement about how things used to be.

For some reason, I’d missed the controversy of the recent re-release of Apocalypse Now on DVD (and soon to be released on Blu-ray). The issue is that it was originally filmed and presented in the theatres in a 2.35:1 aspect ration. But, when the latest DVD was released, the directory of photography, Vittorio Storaro, decided that it should be cropped to 2.0:1. This caused major waves among film purists, who insisted that by doing this the original framing and presentation as seen in the theatres was no longer possible to experience.

Storaro defended his action by saying that he’d intended it to be seen in 2.0:1 all along, and was putting it out as it should be. However, in frame by frame comparisons of the original and the re-release there are some scenes that have suffered. Further, as people who argue with him in outrage for having “crippled” his movie, the question is raised: Why in the world would the original film have been screened in 2.35:1 in the first place if that’s not how it was intended to be shown? Storaro has no response to this – at least none that I’ve read about.

The film The Last Emperor, which he also photographed, has just now received the same cropping treatment for its Blu-ray release by Criterion. Criterion has defended their publication of the film in this version, saying that it’s how Storaro and director Bertolucci wanted it released. But that doesn’t appease film aficionados who don’t care about what these people want from a current version – they just want to see the movie as it was originally presented in the theatres.

To further complicate matters, Storaro has been known to say that he doesn’t like watching widescreen movies on regular TV sets – because he finds the black bars annoying. For “home viewers” he would rather present them with an aspect ratio that helps eliminate this “issue”. He also doesn’t believe that typical home AV equipment lends itself to a good viewing experience of exactly the same thing you’d see in a theatre. So, when he says that both Apocalypse Now and The Last Emperor were intended to be shown in 2.0:1, rather than 2.35:1, his critics are saying that’s garbage. All he’s really trying to do, they say, is push his own values of what he’d like to see at home on other people. They all doubt that if he were to screen these movies again in a theatre that he would do so in anything other than the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

While I understand that a photographer (and director) may have certain wishes with respect to their own material, I have to say that I’m in the camp of his critics. I don’t have a standard TV, I have a high definition widescreen TV that’s fully capable of giving me a theatrical experience as it should be. And, personally, even if I did only have a “crappy” 10 year old standard resolution TV, I do happen to be one of those aficionados who would still want to see things in exactly the same way they were presented in the theatre when originally released. Even if my experience wouldn’t be the same, being able to view all of the picture would be more important to me. I don’t like having what I should watch being dictated to me. I don’t care if it was shot in widescreen, full screen, or whatever – so long as when I watch it, I get to see it as it was presented originally. (The only exception would be if there was a clear case where it was actually presented in the wrong aspect ratio in error. Something that I haven’t heard of happening – although I imagine it would be possible – and which I don’t believe was the case here.)

I have the same problem with Steven Spielberg editing the guns worn by police officers in E.T. to make them into walkie talkies, or with George Lucas making even more sweeping edits of the Star Wars films, such as making it so that Greedo shoots first, rather than Han Solo. These are just examples of directors changing their minds after the fact – and while it may be what they’d like to see now, it isn’t how things were done, or they wanted to see them, at the time. People talk of directors’ cuts. In some cases, movies are released in a way that directors aren’t happy with at release time. I have no problem with seeing a re-release of what their vision was at the time – but, for budgetary or production reasons, were unable to bring to the screen. So long as there is still a theatrical version that’s also available. And, also, so long as that really was what they’d wanted back then – and not what they’ve since changed their minds about now.

Storaro, in 1998, proposed a new film format called “Univisum” that is 2.0:1. It’s, apparently, an attempt to standardize things between small screen TV and big screen movie theatres to a standard that can “work” equally well on both. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but I don’t like the fact that he’s now going back in time and “re-writing” what he had wanted to do with his films shot in a different format – or the fact that he’s trying to have everybody else live with this revisionism when buying these films to watch at home.

For my part, I probably would buy the Blu-ray of The Last Emperor. (Which, after all, may be the only aspect ratio version ever to be released.) But I’d be cognisant of it being a somewhat “crippled” version, and not quite what it was when it was first released. If / when a “corrected” version came out, I’d buy that version and then get rid of the edited version.