Once Upon a Time in Hollywood brings together the panoramic image of its characters with series, commercials, and films that are part of their work. Changes in texture and format make it possible to recognize the different screens that organize their lives.
A city surrounded by circulating images
Rick Dalton makes a living appearing in images that other people watch from their homes or in a theater. The film introduces that relationship from the start, when a television interview lets us get to know the actor and his stunt double. The audience receives a presentation made for another audience within the fiction. The questions, framing, and behavior of the interviewees belong to a recognizable form of professional promotion.
That opening sets up a rule that continues throughout the film: images can change status without the same characters ever leaving them. Rick can be a man worried about his career, the lead in an old series, or a performer trying to remember a line on a new set. The visual texture and aspect ratio help distinguish those spaces, even though the film also plays with the delay of certain revelations.
The main narrative uses anamorphic 35mm for the most part, while the recreation of certain television materials relies on black and white and a framing closer to the televisions of the period. There are also materials in smaller formats. That documented variety keeps this tribute from being described as a homogeneous surface of nostalgia. The film brings together different ways of recording, presenting, and consuming images, each tied to a specific situation.
The interest does not end with the grain simply looking old. An opening sequence organizes expectations for a series; an interview sells a personality; a commercial turns an actor into a spokesperson for a product. The film recognizes those functions and folds them into the experience of its characters. Hollywood appears as an industry that manufactures both fictional scenes and ways of making audiences remember and recognize its performers.
Television preserves and limits Rick's image
Bounty Law lets Rick keep existing as a recognizable hero even after his professional standing has changed. The television material preserves a version of him that circulates outside his present. That persistence can be useful because it gives him fame, but it also ties him to a type of character he struggles to move beyond. The home screen keeps alive a success that no longer guarantees the next job.
When Rick and Cliff watch an appearance of his on television, the film also shows a form of professional camaraderie. Both know the work behind the image and can enjoy the result. The device does not function as a neutral window onto a distant world: it gives the characters back something they helped produce. The scene brings leisure, pride, and judgment of the craft together in the same domestic space.
The recreations of commercials expand that relationship with public exposure. In the Red Apple commercial, Rick has to sustain a voice and expression suited to selling the fictional brand. The difference between the promotional performance and his reaction outside it makes the effort visible. A familiar face does not convey spontaneous emotion simply by looking into the camera; it may be carrying out a task with which it has an uneasy relationship.
It is worth distinguishing between the theatrical release versions and their extra materials. The commercial associated with Rick's credits is not the same as all the fake ads shot for the project. Other segments circulated as extras or accompanied a re-release. Bringing them together without that distinction would produce an imagined film in which all the materials appeared in the same cut. The television tribute also exists around the feature film, but each piece retains its own form of presentation.
The medium takes part in a memory of work
The cinematography of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood allows those materials to relate to one another without seeming identical. The change in proportions can make it feel as though we are watching a broadcast or a fragment of another work, while the return to the main frame restores breadth to the space inhabited by Rick, Cliff, and Sharon. The visual difference organizes levels of representation that the viewer can follow even without knowing the names of the cameras or the film stocks.
The use of celluloid does not mean the film lacks digital processes. Production documentation describes a workflow that combines negative, prints, and digital finishing. That coexistence is important for understanding Tarantino's defense of celluloid without turning it into a myth of technical purity. The choice of medium expresses an aesthetic and practical preference; it does not automatically eliminate all later tools of editing, color, or compositing.
The film also distinguishes between looking at an image and belonging to it. Sharon enters a theater and watches her own work alongside spectators reacting to the performance. Rick depends on others continuing to recognize his face. Cliff helps create images that rarely present him as a star. The different formats and screens help represent that uneven distribution of recognition within the same industry.
The tribute thus takes on a concrete dimension of craft. Opening sequences, commercials, and television clips remind us that cinema and television are built through performances, repetition, formats, and circulation. Celluloid gives that world its texture, but the people give it its conflict. Rick can remain forever a hero from a series and, at the same time, fear the next day: the image endures while the career still has to keep finding work.
More context in the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood guide.