Yes--
Vampyr was originally exposed in the camera as a full academy film. Then during processing, the soundtrack, which was of course recorded seperately, was exposed onto the left hand edge of the frame. What you mean by different "prints" I'm not sure.. but if you're asking whether or not the silent versions of the film did NOT have the left hand side of the film impinged upon by the absence of the soundtrack, the answer is YES. People in 32 watching
Vampyr in an unwired theater, watching a silent print, would have seen things on the left hand that we do not on the sound prints we look at today.
You pretty much answered your question, r e zooming in. Shepard/Image and MK2 (and CC on the early Clairs
Le Million, Under the Roofs.., etc etc.. any time academy is recreated out of a 1.19 film) zoomed in to the already cropped image to create an academy shape to fill the screen. A heartbreaking example of this is the MK2 sourced
City Lights (in R1, distrib by WB).
But as to the original processing of
Vampyr: If Dreyer shot the film with one camera (and I have no information either way) then the lab obviously printed--extrapolated from the original camera neg-- an interneg from for each version of the film, one "open matte" without the sonorization on the left, and one with the sound. Then just bang out prints for markets as needed. In this case it gets more complicated because of the multiple language markets having their own dialog sountracks, so each sound market probably had their own interneg.
In the case of
The Man Who Laughs, two cameras were used, and it looks like the prints meant to be sonorized were shot with a camera in a bit more of an oblique position and the compositions arent as tightly composed.. whereas the prints (or export negs, as they did that to save duties: send a neg to a regional distrib, rather than a load of prints.. then prints could be struck from the single neg shipped; this saved huge on duties) that were used for silent exposition (at least the prints sent to Italy) look like they were meticulously composed by Gil Warrenton, and have more of that Germanic look to them. So the sound version for
Man Who looks like it wasn't as tightly set-up.. because they knew the image would be compromised/sliced by the soundtrack-- whereas the silent version's camera was closer in on the action.
One thing we also have to remember when thinking what was on the directors mind, and which he "composed" for-- sound or silent-- is that these guys hated sound. They thought it was a gimmick, that it was cheap little fad that would go nowhere, and that it sucked the painterly, literary quality from filmmaking, so it doesn't surprise me that Leni & Warrenton composed their "sound" neg images almost as throwaways (at least in the case of
Man Who). Add to this the fact that very few theaters at this time were wired for sound-- i e the overwhelming majority of prints were going to be silent-- you have a filmmaker regarding the sound version as a sort of tiny special edition, versus the overwhelmingly vast number of silent prints that would be produced.. it's not surprising the silent version was considered the "official" version in their mind.. or at least the one that the real image-composition went into, with the lighting corresponding to the angle represented by the proximity of the silent camera, and the sound camera feeling a bit off (for a wonderful exposition of the print to print differences for the Leni film, see Kino's
Man Who Laughs essay on the dvd extras; I cant recommend this disc enough).
Totally silent prints of
Sunrise exist in archives as well, though I have no idea whether or not they were shot with a different camera or not. One of my frustrations with the present editions of the film is that no captures of this version are ever shown. I'd love to see what the full frame images of the film looked like.
But this was what was crowding my thinking on the Vampyr bet: what the "official" AOR of the film was. I knew that the film was composed in 1.33, by Dreyer and Mate who were longtime silent era veterans.. and this was their first film with versions that would be sonorized... and that like
Prix de beaute etc etc they knew there was going to be a huge number of silent 1.33 prints (perhaps even a majority vs sonorized, I have no info either way) that the production/post-production was servicing. Not to mention the general artistic perceptions regarding sound by quality filmmakers at the time (not all leapt headfirst with searing brilliance into the sound medium like Lang).. though I don't know what Dreyer and Mate thought about sound at the time. But many filmmakers looked at it like a fad or gimmick they prayed would pass quickly-- sort of like the way CGI is regarded nowadays.
An interesting question would be "what was the first 1.33 sonorized film
without the Vitaphone process?" i e what was the first movietone-style optical sonorization type film which benefited from the advance in cameras/stock.. and conversely "what was the last 1.19 film?"
I rarely use imdb, so I'm not good w the search feature, but is there a way to get the list ,linked in matts post, i e
matt wrote:Sunrise and The Blue Angel are two available DVDs that I know of, but basically, any film that was shot silent in the late '20s and early '30s and then had an optical soundtrack added or that was shot using cameras built for silent shooting will be 1.19:1 (or thereabouts). Now, whether these will be presented on DVD accurately is another question.
Here is IMDB's listing of films in the 1.20:1 ratio.
to sort by year instead of alphebetically by title?