One thing most movie lovers tout is seeing a movie on the big screen. Now, I understand plenty of people don’t want to go to a theater, spend a fortune on tickets, popcorn, and a drink just to see the glow of cell phones and hear people rudely talking while someone kicks your seat from behind. I don’t want that experience either and, for the most part, never get it because I see almost all my movies exclusively at the earliest matinee of the day, during the work week. But in a perfect world, where everyone in theaters behaved and we all enjoyed the big movies together, seeing a movie on the big screen really is an unbeatable experience. That’s why when I used to live in Silver Spring, Maryland, home of the AFI Silver, the best movie theater I have ever been to, bar none, I used to see classic movies at the AFI that I had already seen on the small screen a dozen times. Why? Because I knew the experience would be different. Better. Unfortunately, that hasn’t always been the case. Sometimes, the overwhelming expectations we bring to certain big screen viewings of classics can have a slightly negative effect on the outcome.
Now, I have seen more classic movies on the big screen than most people because going back to when I was living in Washington, DC, to Silver Spring, I saw as many classic movie showings as I could. Heck, even as a kid my mom took me to revival showings all the time. And the great thing about living by a theater like the AFI, which regularly shows movies from the twenties and thirties and forties (sometimes the teens, too) at Saturday morning shows, and often double features, is that you stop worrying about what the movie is and just go. For years, it was simply a standing date that, on Saturdays, my wife and I would have our morning coffee then head down to see a movie. One of those movies is on TCM today which is what got me thinking about this, A Foreign Affair, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich, and John Lund. We had absolutely no expectations going in and came out loving it. It was wonderful and a real discovery for me, thinking I’d already seen all the Wilder movies worth seeing. I was wrong. Also, Dietrich is at her best.
Other times, we went in with expectations through the roof and came out disappointed. We saw Playtime, a movie I have always loved and own on DVD. I’d only ever seen it on my tv before. It’s a big tv, widescreen, and with a crisp HD image. Still, I figured seeing something like Playtime on the big screen would be a magnificent experience. Well, sadly, it wasn’t. The image was too dark, by a wide margin, and the whole thing looked like someone had smeared a dull patina over the screen. That’s happened more than once with revival showings. I once spoke to the director of the AFI Silver in his office in Silver Spring and he told me they sometimes had no choice but to present movies in less than ideal condition because it was the only print available. And more classic movie prints are in bad condition than you think. We saw Vertigo there as well and it too was underwhelming. Dark, scratchy, and in two separate places the sound became unsynchronized and the image blurred. Not because of the projector, because the print had degraded that much. Yes, the same prints that made their way around the country as restored prints just three decades earlier. In both cases, with both Playtime and Vertigo, my HDTV gave me far better imagery than the theater. But sometimes, the problem isn’t with the print at all.
Back in the eighties, I caught Blade Runner on cable about a million times. I hadn’t seen it in the theater when it came out but fell in love with it on tv. When it got a ten year anniversary showing at the Uptown Cinema in Washington DC, one of the biggest screens in the country, and one of the last remaining movie palaces, I jumped at the opportunity to see it. I mean, come on! Blade Runner on the big screen? That’s got to be great, right?! Well, it did look good, yes, but somehow, and I realize this is most likely a personal thing with me, the intimacy of the movie worked better at home. I actually remember first seeing it on DVD as being a much more impactful experience than seeing it on the big screen. The print was fine and I’m glad I saw it that way but, honestly, I like it better at home.
Now back to the AFI. My wife and I caught The Big Sleep there a few years back and I wasn’t expecting anything, frankly. I’d seen it six or seven times before, knew it wasn’t an epic widescreen film that necessarily required a big screen, and was in fact nervous that it would be a poor print that would be especially dark, considering how much of the movie takes place in gloomy, dark, and rainy, surroundings. Well, the print was perfect, the house was packed, and the audience had a great time. Every single wisecrack and joke landed perfectly (too many people never figure out that noirs have some of the best one liners in movie history) and when the end screen came up the whole damn place burst into applause. I walked out thinking if they played the movie nationwide it’d be the biggest hit of the year. I absolutely loved it.
There are also times when expectations ran high and paid off entirely as expected. When we got tickets to Strangers on a Train with Farley Granger in attendance and doing an audience Q & A afterwards, I had no doubt it would be wonderful and it was. I met and spoke with him briefly after the show and he was genuinely kind and thrilled that so many people had come out to see the movie and meet him. He died a year later and I’ll never take for granted how lucky I was to have that experience.
Or the time we saw The Crowd with an organist in attendance playing the original organ score composed for the movie when it played in 1928. It was a great print, a great audience, a great score, and the organist was a great guy (I always walk up and introduce myself at these kind of things because I want to know everything I can about something like this and he seemed happy to answer my questions – I put up the brief interview years ago at a now defunct site).
Or A Man Escaped. Or Nights of Cabiria. Or Mon Oncle. Or dozens of B movies taken in over the years, from Flash Gordon serials to the Whistler movies. Seeing a classic movie on the big screen doesn’t have to be a monumental occasion, it can just be a trip to the theater to see whatever they’re showing. I’ve enjoyed big ones, like Citizen Kane and Napoleon, and lots of small ones, like Easy Living from 1937 or Virtue from 1932. Sometimes it’s surprising how affecting the smaller ones can be or how much less intimate the bigger ones can be. Either way, I still recommend seeing a classic movie on the big screen any chance you get, especially if you’re lucky to have a great theater like the AFI which seems to have well-behaved and respectful audiences every time I go. As for the movies in current release, I’ll stick to the matinees.