How many of you fellow dopesters have had the opportunity to see a classic movie in a theater-the way it was meant to be seen?
I remember wanting to rent Lawrence of Arabia on vhs, but i am thankful i didn’t. A few months later the 40th anniversary of LoA came out in a few theaters, and i saw it in all its 70mm widescreen glory. Amazing! I think it is silly we have hundreds of awesome classic movies sitting in vaults, yet only rarely are they shown. At least, i rarely hear about it. Certain movies demand to be seen on a big screen: 2001, Doctor Zhivago, Ben-Hur, Apocalypse Now etc, etc.
I ask you: What classic movie were u vouchsafed the glory of having seen on the big screen?
I saw a reprint of Rear Window at The Castro Theatre in San Francisco.
I also so Dial M for Murder in all its 3D splendor at the same place.
The cool thing about Hitchcock movies at The Castro is the vintage Wurlitzer that pops up from the floor before the movie starts, of course with the guy playing the classic Hitchcock theme.
I was able to see literally scores of classic movies in 35mm on the large screen. The city where I grew up had a theater that specialized in revival and art films. And the arts center had classic film festivals every summer. Then I went to a university that had about a dozen different movies shown in 16mm on campus every week.
I’m old, so I’ve seens lots of them. That was the way you saw old movies before the VCR boom.
When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I spent a lot of time at the New Mayfield Repertory Cinema and the Cedar-Lee Theater in Cleveland Heights, which showed lots of classics and art films. Also went to a lot of screenings at local universities and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
My college had over a dozen different film societies, several of which screened movies in large auditoriums.
In 1982 I moved to NYC, which had lots and lots of repertory cinemas. Most of them are gone now, but I make a point of taking my kids to the Film Forum every once in a while to see things like The Third Man, Citizen Kane, Rear Window, A Hard Day’s Night, Metropolis, etc, on the big screen.
I’m not old and I’ve seen hundreds. Barely rent anything, I’m always going to one revival house or another (fortunately, there are a lot where I live).
Of course, if you’re talking
then any screening of a film made before the 50s would have to be from a **nitrate]/b] print. Now that is hard to do, but I’ve seen a few: The Red Shoes, Suspicion, Down Argentine Way, The Spanish Main plus a bunch of shorts. The difference between nitrate and acetate (safety) film? Like night and day. Absolutely Miraculous.
sadly, in OKC, the theaters which try the classics line go belly up pretty quickly. of course, they never seem to advertise enough, or else they name themselves something hip or innocuous instead of something which would, you know, ADVERTISE themselves as being a classics theater.
I saw Gone With The Wind the first time in a theatre.
The arts center here did a Bogart festival in a theatre. In The BIg Sleep the audience clapped when he shot Canino in the gut.
Unfortunately I now live a little too far away from the local seat of culture (Seattle) to do this very often; the ones I happened to catch (and treasure) were Taxi Driver and The Wizard Of Oz.
