When I was in Queenstown in July of 1996, I was looking for a movie to see and I came here. It seemed like the sole cinema in town. I didn’t really want to see the movie that was playing, “From Dusk Till Dawn,” with Harvey Keitel and Quentin Tarantino, but I went anyway…a 10:30 P.M. show. I had to walk up a narrow flight of steps to get to the theatre. The place seemed carved out of an existing building. A friendly young lady greeted me. All seats were assigned, and about the only one left was up in front, left side, nose under the screen. Seemed like a popular place with the younger crowd. I took a photo of the cinema’s entrance and part of the interior. Entrance Interior
I caught a film at this nice theatre during Auckland’s International Film Festival in July of 1996 when I was touring Australia and New Zealand. (I’m from New England.) The movie was “Carmen Miranda: Bananas is My Business.”
By some strange reason, every time I visited the Pacific Film Archive (I’m from the east coast), they were showing films by Ernst Lubitsch. I saw some rare German silents of his there as well as of original nitrate prints of things like “Trouble in Paradise” and “Heaven Can Wait.” This is one of the few places in the U.S. still able to safely and legally show original nitrate archive prints. They sparkle and glow on the screen as acetate prints never really did. In the days before home video, I once arranged to have private screenings in their study center of 16mm prints of some rarer films by Roberto Rossellini which were in their collection. They were very accomodating. The PFA is a great archive and a superbly programmed showplace.
Ron, I think the Harvard Film Archive is excellent too, inspired perhaps by the work of the PFA which had been going strong for decades before the Harvard one achieved the standard that it has now or owned the state-of-the-art facility that it has now.
Here is a Showbill program booklet distributed at the showings of the Italian film “Big Deal on Madonna Street” (“I soliti ignoti”) for its first-run engagement beginning in November of 1960. One-front cover Two-credit page
BoxOfficeBill, I think I have one for “I soliti ignoti,” a.k.a. “Big Deal on Madonna Street” at the Fine Arts. I’ll find that and post in on the Fine Arts page. I don’t have too many but someone gave me a small batch of Showbills for Italian films, knowing my interest in them.
I posted a Showbill for the opening program of the Carnegie Hall Cinema in May, 1961: Visconti’s “White Nights.” You might want to check it out: Carnegie Hall Cinema
Here are two pages from the classy “Showbill” program booklet distributed for the Carnegie Hall Cinema’s opening attraction in May, 1961: Luchino Visconti’s “White Nights,” starring Marcello Mastroianni and Maria Schell. One: cover page Two: first page of credits
The images can be enlarged.
I suppose this super-long-run phenomenon would have been less controversial if the cinemas of that time were multi-screened. Having other screens would have allowed more frequent changes of programs while continuing with this blockbuster. A recent example of this is “Gloomy Sunday,” the Hungarian film which was a hit at the West Newton Cinema (Newton, Massachusetts) and played for over a year, while other screens had regular changes. I believe the same thing happened there with “Cinema Paradiso.” Decades ago at the Central Square Cinema in Cambridge, “King of Hearts” became a cult hit and ran for something like four years on one of the two screens. Some pranksters one night re-arranged the wording on the marquee to voice their disapproval. (Don’t recall what the resulting wording was.)
Very interesting, Ron. Think any folks at local Spanish-language radio stations or publications might remember its name during those days? I will probably go to my grave thinking this place was called the “Olympia” at one time. And, who knows? You may uncover some proof that it was. Could it be that it was the name of a flower shop I was remembering? Perhaps I should have posted my memory on “flowershoptreasures.org.”
Joe, good comment about the true nature of the Apollo. Unlike a recent comment writer, I would not refer to the Apollo as the “granddad of porn”…a ridiculous term. Willy-nilly, it was closer to being the granddad of the Walter Reade or the Film Forum. I’m certain too that Scorsese saw many movies there, given his voracious appetite.
We were born the same year, by the way, and seem to have shared the same tastes, judging by his great documentary on the Italian cinema “My Voyage to Italy.” No doubt all of the films he discusses in his movie played the Apollo at one time or another. Many of the virtually lost foreign films he was instrumental in having re-issued (I think of “The Proud and the Beautiful”) had played there in second run, as with the Thalia on 95th Street which the Apollo most closely resembled.
Almost every foreign film that had opened elsewhere in New York played there, regardless of previous performance or subject matter. Some, like Germi’s “Un maledetto imbroglio” (“The Facts of Murder”), Rossi’s “Amici per la pelle” (“The Woman in the Painting”) and the omnibus film “The Witches,” with episodes by Pasolini, De Sica and others, actually premiered here and were reviewed by the New York Times after their Apollo opening. They showed many minor shelved films that could not even get into the major houses and that their distributors wanted to realize some revenue from before issuing to the non-theatrical 16mm market.
From “Devil in the Flesh” to “The Divided Heart”, across the spectrum of subject matter, the Apollo was one of America’s greatest, if not the THE greatest, showcases for international cinema! To have seen everything they showed would be to be cinematically enriched beyond measure.
The Apollo also showed many imported genre films, from policiers to British comedies, to adventure films, to human dramas of various kinds. And while they certainly did not shy away from saucier imports, they also showed many films that had no such “sexploitable” angles.
I am sure I stand alone on this, but for me “stadium seating” is an over-rated amenity. Sure, it ensures you can see the screen from wherever you are seated, but there are other ways to achieve that—-by a proper rake and a properly positioned screen. In most theatres with stadium seating you have to enter from the side, move all the way to near the front, then climb steps back up to the best seating area. I prefer walking into a theatre from the rear toward the front and not having to deal with unnecessary steps. Of course the balconies of old movie palaces were by their very nature “stadium seating.”
Here is the old postcard I found of the Palace. The film on the poster appears to be “Young Woodley” from 1930 and stars Madeleine Carroll and Frank Lawton.
Was this place ever known as the Cinema Festival? I have an ad from the 1960s for the Bertolucci film “Before the Revolution” playing at the “Cinema Festival” at 1206 St. Catherine East. 1206 & 1204 sound like they might be the same place. If not, what was the Cinema Festival?
Ron, very nice consolidation of facts. I just checked on the first time I went to the Beacon Hill Theatre by consulting a diary entry from May 9, 1963. I was a student at Providence College and drove up to Boston to see the Italian film “The Four Days of Naples,” about the citizen uprising against the Nazi occupation of the city. I noted the place as “the comfortable and pleasant Beacon Hill Theatre.”
I saw “Days of Heaven” at Cinema I in 70mm and was immediately overwhelmed by the imagery and eerie nostalgia of this stupefying masterpiece. What a truly beautiful film! Nestor Almendros' photography is a feast for the eye. And that musical score by Ennio Morricone based on a motif from Camille Saint-Saëns' “Carnival of the Animals: The Aquarium” was pure inspiration and utterly haunting. I kept going back to see it in Providence, where I am from, at the Cinerama I & II where it was also shown in 70mm. I read at the time that Bernardo Bertolucci had been extremely impressed by the movie. Although I like both “Badlands” and “The Thin Red Line” a great deal, I don’t believe Malick has surpassed this one.
I remember seeing the name Olympia above the marquee, as opposed to on the florist shop, unless my mind is playing disconcerting tricks with me. I have no other evidence but that memory. From all the accumulated recollections on these pages it seems likely that the “Olympia” (real or imagined in error) and the Puritan were the same.
Only the Olympia Flower Shop separated it from the corner of Massachusetts Avenue. I used to notice the theatre often as I drove by on Massachusetts Avenue going toward the Symphony Hall area at Huntington or onward toward Cambridge. 1960s, 1970s. Too bad I never photographed theatres in those days.
MoMA did a Powell retrospective in the 1970s. I attended a large number of those, including the ones you mention above and even some of the early British “quota quickies.”
I was particularly impressed with the silent Italian diva series in late 2000. They showed marvelous prints of rare movies made with legendary stars such as Francesca Bertini, Leda Gys, Pina Menichelli, Lyda Borelli, Mercedes Brignone, Carmene Boni, Italia Almirante Manzini, and others…even Eleonora Duse in her sole film “Cenere.” Live piano accompaniment was provided for each of the films, even mandolin and voice for a couple of pictures, as I remember. A terrific souvenir boooklet was available for sale.
I’m sorry. I’ve looked at a list of their programs for the past year. I do not discern any narrow viewpoint. I see instead a mouth-watering array of an enormous variety of films from the U.S. and from many lands. These represent many different viewpoints, political philosophies, and directorial sensibilities. I do indeed see a “diverse program of good movies.” For the life of me, I really can’t see what you would like them to add…or omit. Did they show “Fahrenheit 9/11” without providing a pro-administration program or something like that? What specific types of films, what titles do you have in mind that are not being programmed? What agenda do they have? I remember seeing programs of the Circle, because I used to know the person who programmed it for a time. They were good programs but not of the breadth and depth of the AFI offerings. I urge readers to click on their site link above and see for themselves.
“Lefty-tilt?” I see some left-oriented documentaries on past programs, but I also see right-leaning Sam Fuller’s “The Big Red One” praising the American soldier in the hell of combat. I’m from Providence. I wish I had easy access to a fantastic movie facility of this type with its enormously varied, informed, and vital programming. Treasure it, value it, don’t trash it. Pray for more of them. Indeed, crusade for a proliferation of them! We sorely need an AFI Silver Theatre in every city across our nation.
Here is a photo I took of the Regent in July of 1996 on a rainy day in lovely Dunedin.
When I was in Queenstown in July of 1996, I was looking for a movie to see and I came here. It seemed like the sole cinema in town. I didn’t really want to see the movie that was playing, “From Dusk Till Dawn,” with Harvey Keitel and Quentin Tarantino, but I went anyway…a 10:30 P.M. show. I had to walk up a narrow flight of steps to get to the theatre. The place seemed carved out of an existing building. A friendly young lady greeted me. All seats were assigned, and about the only one left was up in front, left side, nose under the screen. Seemed like a popular place with the younger crowd. I took a photo of the cinema’s entrance and part of the interior.
Entrance
Interior
I caught a film at this nice theatre during Auckland’s International Film Festival in July of 1996 when I was touring Australia and New Zealand. (I’m from New England.) The movie was “Carmen Miranda: Bananas is My Business.”
By some strange reason, every time I visited the Pacific Film Archive (I’m from the east coast), they were showing films by Ernst Lubitsch. I saw some rare German silents of his there as well as of original nitrate prints of things like “Trouble in Paradise” and “Heaven Can Wait.” This is one of the few places in the U.S. still able to safely and legally show original nitrate archive prints. They sparkle and glow on the screen as acetate prints never really did. In the days before home video, I once arranged to have private screenings in their study center of 16mm prints of some rarer films by Roberto Rossellini which were in their collection. They were very accomodating. The PFA is a great archive and a superbly programmed showplace.
Ron, I think the Harvard Film Archive is excellent too, inspired perhaps by the work of the PFA which had been going strong for decades before the Harvard one achieved the standard that it has now or owned the state-of-the-art facility that it has now.
Here is a Showbill program booklet distributed at the showings of the Italian film “Big Deal on Madonna Street” (“I soliti ignoti”) for its first-run engagement beginning in November of 1960.
One-front cover
Two-credit page
Here is a newspaper ad for opening day, May 28, 1961.
BoxOfficeBill, I think I have one for “I soliti ignoti,” a.k.a. “Big Deal on Madonna Street” at the Fine Arts. I’ll find that and post in on the Fine Arts page. I don’t have too many but someone gave me a small batch of Showbills for Italian films, knowing my interest in them.
I posted a Showbill for the opening program of the Carnegie Hall Cinema in May, 1961: Visconti’s “White Nights.” You might want to check it out:
Carnegie Hall Cinema
Here are two pages from the classy “Showbill” program booklet distributed for the Carnegie Hall Cinema’s opening attraction in May, 1961: Luchino Visconti’s “White Nights,” starring Marcello Mastroianni and Maria Schell.
One: cover page
Two: first page of credits
The images can be enlarged.
I suppose this super-long-run phenomenon would have been less controversial if the cinemas of that time were multi-screened. Having other screens would have allowed more frequent changes of programs while continuing with this blockbuster. A recent example of this is “Gloomy Sunday,” the Hungarian film which was a hit at the West Newton Cinema (Newton, Massachusetts) and played for over a year, while other screens had regular changes. I believe the same thing happened there with “Cinema Paradiso.” Decades ago at the Central Square Cinema in Cambridge, “King of Hearts” became a cult hit and ran for something like four years on one of the two screens. Some pranksters one night re-arranged the wording on the marquee to voice their disapproval. (Don’t recall what the resulting wording was.)
Very interesting, Ron. Think any folks at local Spanish-language radio stations or publications might remember its name during those days? I will probably go to my grave thinking this place was called the “Olympia” at one time. And, who knows? You may uncover some proof that it was. Could it be that it was the name of a flower shop I was remembering? Perhaps I should have posted my memory on “flowershoptreasures.org.”
Joe, good comment about the true nature of the Apollo. Unlike a recent comment writer, I would not refer to the Apollo as the “granddad of porn”…a ridiculous term. Willy-nilly, it was closer to being the granddad of the Walter Reade or the Film Forum. I’m certain too that Scorsese saw many movies there, given his voracious appetite.
We were born the same year, by the way, and seem to have shared the same tastes, judging by his great documentary on the Italian cinema “My Voyage to Italy.” No doubt all of the films he discusses in his movie played the Apollo at one time or another. Many of the virtually lost foreign films he was instrumental in having re-issued (I think of “The Proud and the Beautiful”) had played there in second run, as with the Thalia on 95th Street which the Apollo most closely resembled.
Almost every foreign film that had opened elsewhere in New York played there, regardless of previous performance or subject matter. Some, like Germi’s “Un maledetto imbroglio” (“The Facts of Murder”), Rossi’s “Amici per la pelle” (“The Woman in the Painting”) and the omnibus film “The Witches,” with episodes by Pasolini, De Sica and others, actually premiered here and were reviewed by the New York Times after their Apollo opening. They showed many minor shelved films that could not even get into the major houses and that their distributors wanted to realize some revenue from before issuing to the non-theatrical 16mm market.
From “Devil in the Flesh” to “The Divided Heart”, across the spectrum of subject matter, the Apollo was one of America’s greatest, if not the THE greatest, showcases for international cinema! To have seen everything they showed would be to be cinematically enriched beyond measure.
The Apollo also showed many imported genre films, from policiers to British comedies, to adventure films, to human dramas of various kinds. And while they certainly did not shy away from saucier imports, they also showed many films that had no such “sexploitable” angles.
I am sure I stand alone on this, but for me “stadium seating” is an over-rated amenity. Sure, it ensures you can see the screen from wherever you are seated, but there are other ways to achieve that—-by a proper rake and a properly positioned screen. In most theatres with stadium seating you have to enter from the side, move all the way to near the front, then climb steps back up to the best seating area. I prefer walking into a theatre from the rear toward the front and not having to deal with unnecessary steps. Of course the balconies of old movie palaces were by their very nature “stadium seating.”
Here is the old postcard I found of the Palace. The film on the poster appears to be “Young Woodley” from 1930 and stars Madeleine Carroll and Frank Lawton.
Was this place ever known as the Cinema Festival? I have an ad from the 1960s for the Bertolucci film “Before the Revolution” playing at the “Cinema Festival” at 1206 St. Catherine East. 1206 & 1204 sound like they might be the same place. If not, what was the Cinema Festival?
Ron, very nice consolidation of facts. I just checked on the first time I went to the Beacon Hill Theatre by consulting a diary entry from May 9, 1963. I was a student at Providence College and drove up to Boston to see the Italian film “The Four Days of Naples,” about the citizen uprising against the Nazi occupation of the city. I noted the place as “the comfortable and pleasant Beacon Hill Theatre.”
Bill Huelbig, you might want to add your link for that interesting “Days of Heaven” booklet to the Cinema 1, 2, 3 site.
I saw “Days of Heaven” at Cinema I in 70mm and was immediately overwhelmed by the imagery and eerie nostalgia of this stupefying masterpiece. What a truly beautiful film! Nestor Almendros' photography is a feast for the eye. And that musical score by Ennio Morricone based on a motif from Camille Saint-Saëns' “Carnival of the Animals: The Aquarium” was pure inspiration and utterly haunting. I kept going back to see it in Providence, where I am from, at the Cinerama I & II where it was also shown in 70mm. I read at the time that Bernardo Bertolucci had been extremely impressed by the movie. Although I like both “Badlands” and “The Thin Red Line” a great deal, I don’t believe Malick has surpassed this one.
I remember seeing the name Olympia above the marquee, as opposed to on the florist shop, unless my mind is playing disconcerting tricks with me. I have no other evidence but that memory. From all the accumulated recollections on these pages it seems likely that the “Olympia” (real or imagined in error) and the Puritan were the same.
Yes, I am almost positive it was.
Only the Olympia Flower Shop separated it from the corner of Massachusetts Avenue. I used to notice the theatre often as I drove by on Massachusetts Avenue going toward the Symphony Hall area at Huntington or onward toward Cambridge. 1960s, 1970s. Too bad I never photographed theatres in those days.
MoMA did a Powell retrospective in the 1970s. I attended a large number of those, including the ones you mention above and even some of the early British “quota quickies.”
I was particularly impressed with the silent Italian diva series in late 2000. They showed marvelous prints of rare movies made with legendary stars such as Francesca Bertini, Leda Gys, Pina Menichelli, Lyda Borelli, Mercedes Brignone, Carmene Boni, Italia Almirante Manzini, and others…even Eleonora Duse in her sole film “Cenere.” Live piano accompaniment was provided for each of the films, even mandolin and voice for a couple of pictures, as I remember. A terrific souvenir boooklet was available for sale.
I’m sorry. I’ve looked at a list of their programs for the past year. I do not discern any narrow viewpoint. I see instead a mouth-watering array of an enormous variety of films from the U.S. and from many lands. These represent many different viewpoints, political philosophies, and directorial sensibilities. I do indeed see a “diverse program of good movies.” For the life of me, I really can’t see what you would like them to add…or omit. Did they show “Fahrenheit 9/11” without providing a pro-administration program or something like that? What specific types of films, what titles do you have in mind that are not being programmed? What agenda do they have? I remember seeing programs of the Circle, because I used to know the person who programmed it for a time. They were good programs but not of the breadth and depth of the AFI offerings. I urge readers to click on their site link above and see for themselves.
Rivjr, the “A” in AFI should NOT mean that American films are to be shown exclusively…any more than the Paris Cinémathèque Française should be showing French films to the exclusion of others. They DO show plenty of American films in all genres from many eras. They are cinémathèque/archival houses that are SUPPOSED TO BE concerned with film as an art form and an international entertainment medium. Others like them include the Harvard Film Archive, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Pacific Film Archive and a few more.
How can you say that “they specialize in non-very-good- foreign product”? This current calendar lists films by Luis Buñuel (“The Miky Way” and “Viridiana.”) They have upcoming programs of works by Tavernier, Tarkovsky, Demy. In the past year or so they have shown films by Truffaut, Olmi, Godard. Hardly minor. Anyway, even if they were showing some not-very-good foreign product, that too is the mission of showcases like this place, that is, to display a catholicity in programming with the flawed along with the famous. One person’s turkey may be another person’s masterpiece. Henri Langlois of the Cinémathèque Française understood this when he opted to preserve EVERYTHING, to show EVERYTHING…not just the “known masterpieces.”
“Lefty-tilt?” I see some left-oriented documentaries on past programs, but I also see right-leaning Sam Fuller’s “The Big Red One” praising the American soldier in the hell of combat. I’m from Providence. I wish I had easy access to a fantastic movie facility of this type with its enormously varied, informed, and vital programming. Treasure it, value it, don’t trash it. Pray for more of them. Indeed, crusade for a proliferation of them! We sorely need an AFI Silver Theatre in every city across our nation.