I may be incorrect, but I recall Superman the Movie having an intermission. We saw it at an old single screen theater with a curtain that would open and close at the beginning and end of the movie.
I’m pretty sure The Great Escape had an intermission. I think it came right after Ives was killed during the Fourth of July celebration.
You need to find a theater with Coke Freestyle machines. AMC has them.
I saw “Lawrence of Arabia” at a brand-new 70mm 6-track stereophonic sound theater during its 1963 release. I was 11 years old and it was breathtaking. When the fully restored “Director’s Cut” was released in the early 1990s, I went to see it at the venerable Senator Theatre in Baltimore. When those curtains opened to that massive screen and that stirring theme began, I almost cried.
I’m surprised nobody mentioned this
~Max
I will say, in 2024 if you are struggling to cut scenes and thinking about adding an intermission, why not just release the film as part I and part II? For example,
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
- The Hunger Games: Mockingjay
- Mission Impossible 7
- Dune
- Avengers: Infinity War
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
- Rebel Moon
- Avatar: The Way of Water
~Max
The Criterion Collection Blu-ray of The Great Escape has a fade-to-black at that point that lasts about 5 seconds, but no intermission.
In the 1970s interviews, Sturges revealed that the film was made with the intention of having an intermission after the death of “Archie Ives,” but despite the picture’s length, it was shown without interruption.
When I saw Schindler’s List at the theater there was an intermission.
I take it that wasn’t a thing at all theaters?
Schindler’s List did not have an official intermission in the theaters, but when it was broadcast on television by NBC there were no commercial breaks interrupting the showing except for a single intermission (sponsored by Ford) in the middle.
When I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part II) in a theater, I had to take a pee break and missed the reunion with Dumbledore in “King’s Cross” scene.
Beyond that, ISTR that my VHS copy of My Fair Lady had an intermission in it.
It did. I saw it in a theatre when it was re-released sometime in the early 1970s, and I distinctly remember an intermission. Which my 12 or 13-year-old bladder was thankful for, after popcorn and a jumbo Coke. Especially after the jumbo Coke.
2024 movies over 2.5 hours
Horizon Chapter 1 - 181 minutes
Dune Part 2 - 166 minutes
Kinds of Kindness - 164 minutes
Count of Monte Cristo - 178 minutes
Here’s a mock-intermission tucked into the middle of Wiener-Dog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h0tXjHNjO4
2001, when first released, had an intermission. It’s indicated on the DVD copy of it now. But when I saw the movie in re-releases and on campuses, I don’t recall them ever having the intermission. There was even special music indicated for the intermission (as for most films that had them)
Fantasia, I think, had an intermission. Although when I’ve seen it in the theaters it opened with the credits, the version available on DVD actually has the credits in the middle, so you’d see them when the film started up again after intermission.
When I saw the restored versions of Lawrence of Arabia and Spartacus in theaters, back in the 1980s, they showed them with the intermissions.
As for intermissions “breaking the flow” of the narrative, you could say the same for stage plays and musicals, as well. Playwrights tried to break for the intermission with an appropriate line or musical number. Wicked ends the first half with the soaring song “Defying Gravity”. The stage play Sleuth ends its first act with Milo Tindle being shot. A Funny Thing Happened on the WAy to the Forum ends its first act with Pseudolus, about to be chopped by Miles Gloriosus’ sword, asking that he be allowed to say one word. He is. The word? “Intermission”
And those intermissions are also disappearing, at least in England:
I’m pretty sure the intermission came either just before or right after the Ascot sequence; I don’t remember which. It’s been a while.
When I was teaching EFL, I liked to show My Fair Lady to my students at least once a year.
I hate the ending of that film.
It’s not the original ending of either the movie or the play it’s based on (Pygmalion). It was tacked on by the owner of the theater where it was first staged because he thought audiences wanted to see a “happy ending.” The author (George Bernard Shaw) hated it, but it was kept in all subsequent performances and in the 1938 film adaptation with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller.
If you read the original play, it ends with Liza walking out on Higgins to attend her father’s wedding, and their parting is not at all amicable.
I still love the music written for My Fair Lady, however, and have been known to break into a rendition of “Wouldn’t it be Loverly?” or “On the Street Where You Live” at the drop of a hat.
Oh yeah, I concur.
I never made the connection between the movie and the Greek myth! Now I can’t unsee it!
~Max