Memorable movie hall experiences .....

A not that long ago experience -- at first showing of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Indiana Jones is facing the tall guy in the Egyptian marketplace. The stage has been set for an epic battle with the weapons being the bullwhip vs. the scimitar. Instead, the practical-minded Indy just takes out his pistol and shoots him.

The audience broke out into applause! I have never heard that kind of reaction -- neither before nor since.

(Just) some of the thousands of films I have seen on the big screen during their first run.

THE PARTY (1968) - My mother nearly wet herself she was laughing so much. She told me the tears were running down her legs

WHERE EAGLES DARE (1968)

BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)

LOVE STORY (1970)

M*A*S*H (1970)

THEY CALL ME TRINITY (1970)

DIRTY HARRY (1971) - I was 11-year's-old, what a rush. 

VANISHING POINT (1971)

SOUNDER (1972) - It remains one of the most emotionally affecting films I have ever seen. 

DELIVERANCE (1972) - Can you even imagine seeing the "squeal piggy squeal" butt rape scene at 12 dude? 

WHAT'S UP DOC (1972)

THE GODFATHER (1972)

THE COWBOYS (1972)

THE GETAWAY (1972)

AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973)

PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID (1973)

PAPILLON (1973)

BLUME IN LOVE (1973)

DON'T LOOK NOW (1973) - My dad took my two brothers and I to see it when my mom was away. I don't think he realized how much sex there would be in it - but he couldn't tear his eyes from the screen (while covering my 7-year-old brother's eyes during some parts) and telling us we mustn't tell mom we watched it. 

THE OUTFIT (1973)

A BRIEF VACATION (1973)

THE GOFATHER: PART 11 (1974)

CONRACK (1974)

THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974) - The first film I went to with a girl. Her name was Jennifer Quinn, she had blue-green eyes, creamy, olive-colored skin, long brown curly hair that cascaded all over face, she wore a pink dress with white polka dots on it and open toed sandals on her tanned feet, her toe naiils were painted red, and she was gorgeous. It was a hot summer's day outside, but it was cool in the cinema, we held hands right through the movie. She kissed me twice, and I thought I was in heaven.     

CHINATOWN (1974)

THE GODFATHER: PART 11 (1974)

ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE (1974)

THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT (1974)

NASHVILLE (1975)

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (1975)

DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975)

BARRY LYNDON (1975)

THE DAY OF THE LOCUST (1975)

JAWS (1975)

ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976)

TAXI DRIVER (1976)

CARRIE (1976)

1900 (1976) - The FULL VERSION - Shown in two parts with a 15-minute interval inbetween (at one of only 6 screenings allowed in my country - right place, right time).

STAR WARS (1977)

ANNIE HALL (1977)

THE DUELLISTS (1977) - The last film I saw with my late grandmother on my mother's side (shortly before her death) - she loved it so and I'm really glad the last film she saw was a wonderful one. 

THE GETTING OF WISDOM (1977)

THE DEER HUNTER (1978)

HALLOWEEN (1978)

APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)

MY BRILLIANT CAREER (1979)

THE BLACK STALLION (1979)

MAD MAX (1979)

THE STUNT MAN (1980)

THE ROAD WARRIOR (1981) - First film I ever saw while tripping on acid. It was quite a blast.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) - Another film I saw on acid.  Did I freak out; thought it was far too violent for that particular batch of blotting paper. 

THE FOX AND THE HOUND (Disney - 1981). A beautiful film, and hands down one of the very best experiences I have had in a cinema while tripping on acid. 

THE LONG RIDERS (1980)

THE SHINING (1980)

PLATOON (1986)

FULL METAL JACKET (1987)

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988)

PS. many of the sevntiesd films films mentioned above had age restrictions, but almost none of the cinemas enforced them, and my parents were open minded - if a cinema did get shirty about me being young, I simply asked my dad to buy the tickets for my brother and I.  

But perhaps best of all was that because the ruling National Party did not allow television in SA until 1976, the cinemas showed re-releases of older films all the time. Thus I saw the likes of GONE WITH THE WIND, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, THE GREAT ESCAPE, LILLIES OF THE FIELD, WATERLOO BRIDGE (1940), STRAW DOGS,  LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, DR ZHIVAGO, WOODSTOCK (at the 3 Arts in Cape Town - billed as the biggest screen in the Southern Hemisphere), PEYTON PLACE, Truffaut's THE 400 BLOWS, BREATHLESS ("À bout de souffle") FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, MY FAIR LADY,  COOL HAND LUKE, THE BLUE MAX, FROM THE TERRACE, EAST OF EDEN, GIANT, BEN HUR, RAINTREE COUNTY, A FISTFULL OF DOLLARS, FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE ,THE GOOD, The BAD and The UGLY, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (and a whole slew of inferior but lurid and thrilling spaghetti westerns) , BULLITT, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, tons of black and white westerns, the Johnny Weissmuller-starring TARZAN flicks and many, many more on the big screen (at a time when screens really were big) .   

Each of these big screen experiences remains etched in my mind as vividly as if if they were yesterday. 

PS. Something died in me when the movies went digital. But I still love movies madly and see as many as I can, and I will always have the glorious memories of seeing films shot on film the way they were meant to be seen in some very beautiful old cinemas with names like The Grand, The Astra, The Metro, The Embassy, The 20th Century and The Savoy. 

www.offi.fr/theatre/theatre-ranelagh-3057.html

I was taken to the first film that I remember In the early 50's. I consider myself fortunate to have had grand movie palaces, neighborhood theaters and great TV movie programs like Saturday Night at the Movies. When I hit college, retro film series, art house theaters and theaters like the Thalia in New York that showed many different films a day, curated by students of art and communication were the rage and Cincinnati, my home town, had plenty of these.



But my best film viewing experience in theaters came when I was in Paris. There were the grand theaters in the Champs Elysées, and the Relais theaters, tiny little theaters near the Sorbonne that showed 10 different classics a day. It was a great chance to see wonderful films on the big screen.

The best was the Theatre Ranelagh in the 15th, across from the Eiffel Tower, seen in the link above You got there by walking through a little residential neighborhood full of lovely Art Deco buildings . The Theater had a limestone exterior, but the inside was all red velvet and beautiful woodwork with intricate carving. The usher looked like Rasputin, tall and emaciated with a tiny black beard. They showed newsreels and shorts ,then the lights came up and they came around selling the most delicious Eskimo pies , grand marnier ice cream covered in velvety dark chocolate. Then the lights would go down as the feature came on. The first film I saw there was I married a Witch. It seemed a perfect film for this magical theater. It's still going as a concert venue.

The audience broke out into applause! I have never heard that kind of reaction -- neither before nor since.”

I, too, saw “Raiders” during its initial theater release and I and the audience I was in reacted the same way. As the years went by, though, I would sometimes wonder if my response to that causal killing was entirely appropriate. I even met some other people who had also laughed and applauded, then later felt a little queasy about it. Seeing it on video later, I noticed that when the swordsman was killed, the film’s people on the street also laugh and applaud so it might be that Indie had freed them from a street predator or gangster. Or – maybe I’m overthinking the whole thing.

I saw GWTW for the first time New Year's Day 1968 at the Carthay Circle, where it first showed in LA in 1939. When Clark Gable's appearance at the bottom of the staircase came on the screen the audience burst into applause.

Around 1977, I saw "Casablanca" on the big screen in a revival house.  Obviously most in the audience had only seen the butchered version that had been shown on the Million Dollar Movie which never showed the hiding of the letters of transit in Sam's piano. There was an audible OMG from the crowd seeing it for the first time.

Seeing someone I knew on the big screen for the first time was also a bit of an experience.  My parents took me to see "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" Because a girl in my dancing class was playing the young Baby Jane. Needless to say, I found the film a bit disturbing, but I was only 8 years old. It did take a while for me to realize that Julie was only playing a character and was not destined to be a monster.

 

Most of my childhood filmgoing in the '50s - '60s took place in neighborhood theaters around Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley where I grew up, some of which still had "Crying Rooms:" small, closed-off mini-auditoriums at the back of the house with maybe a dozen or so seats, their own speakers and a big picture window through which the screen could be seen, designed for parents with vocal infants so other patrons wouldn't be disturbed. They were rarely in use for that purpose, and by the late '60s - early '70s, my friends and I found them ideal for enjoying films while smoking substances other than tobacco. At those times, their soundproofing also came in handy for when we got giggly and rowdy as the show progressed.

Occasionally, the folks would take us over the hill to Hollywood for "events" like The Wonderful World Of the Brothers Grimm or How the West Was Won in Cinerama at the Warner Theater (which had been built in 1928 but converted for Cinerama) or, later, to the newly built Cinerama Dome for something like It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World...which wasn't actually shot in Cinerama; HTWWW had been the last film produced in the process, and so no true Cinerama film ever premiered at the one theater in Los Angeles that had been designed specifically for it.

Audience applause was something entirely unheard of - after all, the people on the screen couldn't hear it and those who made the films weren't there - and the first such experience I ever had was with Woodstock in 1970: you just couldn't help yourself. By the '80s - '90s, L.A. audiences were applauding everything.

In the '70s, L.A. was full of revival theaters, film festivals and special programs presented by museums, universities and the like and, at a time when most of those involved in the pictures' making were still living, many would enlist their participation for discussions with audiences: I remember attending such screenings with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra, Stanley Donen, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Gene Kelly, Eleanor Powell, Ernest Lehman, Julius Epstein and too many others to possibly recall.

The city's great film festival was the annual FILMEX (Los Angeles International Film Exposition), a two-week affair that always opened and closed with the premieres of major new films. At the '74 premiere of The Three Musketeers, the lobby of Hollywood's Paramount (now Disney's El Capitan) was so crowded that movement was possible only in a body, as with the "group hug" at the end of the final MTM episode: if the crowd didn't move, neither did you, and when it did, you did. I found myself being squeezed through the doors to the auditorium, um, chest-to-chest with Raquel Welch. Presently, as Rosalind Russell and Mayor Tom Bradley were onstage making some civic-minded remarks, they got streaked.

FILMEX' big central feature each year was a 50-hour marathon: Epics one year; musicals another; Sci-fi; Oscar winners; westerns; horror and so on. When the festival moved to Century City's Plitt Theaters in '75, the venue was ideal: extra-wide, extra-cushy, high-backed seats that reclined; if a film came up in which you weren't interested and you didn't feel like going to get coffee or a nosh, you could just lie back and have a two-hour nap before the next one. Some people even came equipped with pillows. And yeah, some instead went down to their cars in the labyrinthine, multi-level underground parking structure and...well, we'll let that go.

I'm glad I was still in my 20s then; I could never survive it now. Even so, most viewers were pretty punchy by the time the concluding films rolled around. No matter what they were, they began resembling midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

It was a great time to be young and in love...with classic films.           

   

I humbly bow and thank you, Bat.

Hi spiderwort - curious as to why you deleted your reply agreeing with me about the digital viewing experience not being the same as seeing films shot in 35 mill?