Aren’t these numbers self-explanatory? You want background information? Oh okay:

1.66:1 All my fave arty European films are shot in this. It’s the standard widescreen shape for Europe. The nearest format to the Golden Mean.

1.37:1 Standard academy format from the beginning of the talkies era until cinemascope came in.

2.35:1 The original cinemascope shape.

1.85:1 The US and UK widescreen standard. Those yanks just had to go slightly wider than the Europeans didn’t they – and of course we just followed them.

2.76:1 The widest we ever got. Squeezed onto 65mm film then unsqueezed to a super-wide screen. The 1950s version of Ben Hur is one of the few films shot in this shape.