Dyaliscope(c.1954–1975)

Between 1955 and 1969, 108 French films were shot with DyaliScope anamorphic lenses, making it the second-largest French manufacturer of widescreen lenses after Franscope. The lenses were produced by Société d’applications techniques et d’exploitation cinématographique (SATEC) based in Saint-Cloud, near Paris, and founded by Adolphe Landau [Landeau] (1904–83) and André Fougerat in the late 1940s. A Polish émigré with communist leanings, Adolphe Landau was a film enthusiast who designed film credits in the 1930s and produced Henri Decoin’s Les Amants du pont Saint-Jean (1947), before purchasing facilities in Saint-Cloud. His brother, Igor Landau, founded the industry magazine La Technique cinématographique in 1930, and subsequently started L’Exploitation cinématographique, which would later help to publicize DyaliScope.

SATEC first gained recognition following the introduction of CinemaScope to France, in December 1953, with the launch of two projection lenses designed for cinemas that screened a variety of aspect ratios. The first of these lenses, the Périrama, was a system designed to vary the dimensions of the projected image through the use of a variable-focus lens (65–150mm, called the Périgonal), and a “photo-telecontrol” system that would automatically change the focal length of the lens, depending on the positioning of the screen covers.

The second lens was an anamorphic projection lens for films shot at 2.55:1. It was initially named Dyaligonal, but, from October 1954 onwards, was rebranded as the DyaliScope. The change of name coincided with the introduction of a “spherocylindrical block” design which made the DyaliScope a one-piece anamorphic lens – this innovation was largely responsible for the great success of the lens during the second half of the 1950s. 

But DyaliScope had a difficult start: a B/W feature film, initially titled Jésus la Caille, was slated to be shot during February 1955, in 2.55:1 using DyaliScope, but was ultimately shot in Cinépanoramic under the title M’sieur la Caille (1955); and DyaliScope’s eventual first French feature, Emile Couzinet’s Quai des illusions, shot from January 1956, was not released until 1959. So, the first French film actually released in DyaliScope (and Agfacolor) was Dimitri Kirsanoff’s comedy Ce soir les jupons volent, released June 15, 1956.

Like its domestic competitors Cinépanoramic-Franscope and Totalvision, SATEC sought to counter the CinemaScope monopoly in France by focusing its marketing efforts towards the export market. Thanks to the founder’s communistic connections, its first market was Eastern Europe: an agreement was signed in January 1955 with the Mosfilm studio, based in Moscow, USSR, which, in 1956, shot its first two widescreen films in DyaliScope (later assimilated and rebranded as Sovscope: Ilya Muromets [The Sword and the Dragon] directed by Aleksandr Ptushko, and Prolog (director, Efim Dzigan). According to French cinematographer Raoul Coutard, the Soviets dismantled and reverse-engineered the anamorphic lens in order to produce the Sovscope. DyaliScope was subsequently licensed to producers in Czechoslovakia and Poland (Krżyzacy [Knights of the Teutonic Order], 1960); and subsequently in Italy (Le fatiche di Ercole [Hercules], 1957), Japan (Nikkatsu Studios, based in Bunkyō, outside of Tokyo, shot over 20 feature films using DyaliScope lenses up to 1959), West Germany, United Kingdom (Expresso Bongo, 1959), and even in the United States (Tarzan’s Three Challenges, 1963). 

Domestically, French productions photographed using DyaliScope outnumbered those of its competitors from the start of operations in 1957 up to 1962, after which the rival Franscope became market leader. Initially used largely for low-budget comedies, thrillers and historical adventure films, DyaliScope went on to win over some of the leading young directors of the French New Wave, including Louis Malle for his Les Amants (1958) and François Truffaut, Les 400 Coups (1959). The trademark went on to achieve great success with a series of domestic box-office hits, such as André Hunebelle’s Le Bossu (1959), Jean Girault’s Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez (1964), or Alain Resnais’ L’Année dernière à Marienbad (1961) – which won plaudits from leading film critics.

The success of DyaliScope probably resulted from the fact that it was the first to incorporate a self-contained monoblock lens structure (even beating Panavision’s Auto-Panatar lenses to the market [launched 1957]) – thus setting the template for the design of modern anamorphic camera lenses.

On the projection side, DyaliScope anamorphic lenses were a great success in France, replacing the French-made CinemaScope lenses manufactured by Société technique d’optique et de photographie (STOP) as the dominant exhibition lens, as early as 1958. STOP was a company set up by Henri Chrétien in November 1927, for the manufacture of the Hypergonar lens – the designs for which were sold to 20th Century-Fox in December 1952, becoming the CinemaScope lens. STOP became the exclusive manufacturer and distributor of CinemaScope in France.

A 1960s sales brochure produced by SORO (Société de réalisations optiques), a successor to SATEC after 1963, states that, internationally, more than 30,000 cinemas had been equipped with DyaliScope anamorphic projection lenses, and more than 500 feature films had been shot using DyaliScope.