Both black and white!

I bought Invasion Of The Body Snatchers when it first came out in 1988, because I was so thrilled that someone was finally going to release a movie in non-chopped format. (I remember explicitly when "Home Box Office" was first announced in 1975, my first reaction was "they cannot put actual theater movies on TV screens-they are not the right shape!". It just did not occur to me that they would do the same thing as broadcast TV did.)

Some time later, I found out that Woody Allen had somehow got MGM to release his movie Manhattan in widescreen/letterbox format back in 1985. I recently (in September 2023) decided to find a copy of that disc on Ebay, and got one for maybe US$12 shipped. That also got me to start fixing my two known-bad Pioneer players, and I watched it tonight.

I have managed to never see one of Woody Allen's many movies until now despite his many awards or nominations and long reputation as a movie maker. Well, unfortunately this movie did not do much for me. None of the characters were really likeable or interesting at all, with Woody Allen's central character being truly dis-likeable: Self-centered, narcissistic and full of himself (but maybe those are three ways of saying the same thing?).

The Manhattan disc itself was good quality, and the transfer was decent other than having the reel-change dots on it at least three times. It was a good demo of standard-definition upscaling (including zooming to fill a 16:9 screen) on my Sony 77-inch OLED TV set. No stair-stepping at all on curved lines at any angle, and good sharpness and definition without edge enhancement.

Based on the data we have right now, Japan got letterboxed releases as early as 1982?

(Japan/LD/Released in 1982)
https://www.lddb.com/search.php?adv_search=%2A&format=ld&release_op=same&release=1982&country=4&picture=2&format=ld&sort=date,asc

Eclipse, L' (1962) [FY023-34DT] (May '82)
Pied Piper, The (1972) [FY026-26VC] (Jun '82)
Last Concert, The (1976) [FY036-24HD] (Oct '82)

1.5 year before the first letterboxed home video release of Amarcord (1974) [RCA 00904] on CED in the USA, and 2.5 years before Manhattan (1979) [ML100469].

Julien

Those are some classic films, no matter who released the first widescreen I'm glad people got a clue and embraced this important issue on home theater formats.