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This chapter examines the auteurist films of the 1950s and determines what norms emerged in light of the new aesthetic challenges that widescreen presented. The 20th Century Fox debuted CinemaScope in 1953, and a new era of filmmaking and exhibition practices was born. The focus here was on adaptive aesthetics within film style. The chapter examines four influential auteurs—Preminger, Ray, Tashlin, and Sirk—and how they experiment with widescreen aesthetics in terms of close-ups, landscapes, camera angles, and movement. It discusses the use of such mechanics in opening sequences, interior conversation setups, outdoor vistas, and with complex camera movements.

This chapter provides an analysis of the sequences found in the openings of the inbound and outbound calls, using Zimmerman's (1984, 1992) model as a point of departure. The calls in question are nonemergency calls, that is, they are calls in which a telephone agent aims to sell a specific commodity, in this case a holiday unit, to a (prospective) client. Given the more negotiable nature of the institutional setting examined and the fact that, in most cases, there is, or has been, an existing relationship between the client and the company, the participants' orientation to pattern the interaction as quasi-formal or informal should not come as a surprise. The chapter is divided into two main parts. The first presents the analysis of the inbound calls; the second analyzes outbound calls. In both cases, the in-house rules for receiving and placing calls are discussed before offering the structural account of the calls themselves. The chapter concludes with a summary of findings.

This chapter focuses on the location and the first scenes of Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963). The Damned was Losey's first feature film in CinemaScope, though not, as most sources claim, his debut with the format; his short for Hammer, A Man on the Beach (1955), was shot in CinemaScope. Perhaps this previous experience gave Losey the confidence to take such full advantage of the possibilities offered by this ratio in the opening sequence. Losey chose Weymouth and Portland Bill as the locations partly because of his love of the Dorset of Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys. He referred to Portland Bill in an interview as 'a place where the British were developing germ warfare and also undersea warfare' — not quite accurate, as others have pointed out.