We live in perilous times for anything made out of brick and mortar. With the coronavirus pandemic having prompted a nationwide series of shutdowns and shelter-in-place requirements, Americans have learned to go about the business of their lives without the benefit of a whole host of physical spaces. Schoolhouses, cultural institutions, and houses of worship are at the forefront of our sense of loss of shared space.
Any return to normalcy will be marred by the continued absence of whatever doesn’t come back from hiatus — our favorite restaurants or bars, say. To that list, I would add that inimitable icon on the American landscape, the movie theater.
At first glance, the movie theater is surely a less essential place than a school or library or church. Yet, in its assorted incarnations since the dawn of film exhibition, the movie theater has more than proved its worth. Has there ever been an institution where more Americans have congregated to share common laughter, tears, or screams?
Of course, we ought to remember that the coronavirus is not what first imperiled the movie theater. The virus will rightly be blamed for numerous negative changes in society, from store closures to the squelching of our comfort with public celebrations, but let’s face it: We have been unfaithful, ungrateful moviegoers for some time now. According to a January article in the Hollywood Reporter, American movie theater attendance in 2019 sank 4.6% from the previous year. Our superhero “cinematic universes” are great and all, but they face stiff competition from streaming titans such as Netflix and Amazon.
Yet, if the movie theater emerges enfeebled in a post-pandemic world, we will have lost an edifice as valuable, in its way, as the concert hall, art museum, or any other space whose aim is to deliver cultural goods to the broadest possible public. Indeed, that is the purpose of the movie theater. From the early 20th-century nickelodeons, primitive theaters that earned their nickname from the then-standard admission of 5 cents, to the 1920s-era movie palaces that presented features amid faux splendor, the movie theater has been in service to a very democratic idea: If Charlie Chaplin does something funny, or if Cary Grant says something suave, it is better for many to see or hear it than just a few.
In some ways, the movie theater has always reflected the impermanence of Hollywood: Just as the old stars were often required to alter their names (just ask Grant, aka Archibald Leach), the movie theater has undergone cycles of transformation. In The Parade’s Gone By …, silent film historian Kevin Brownlow writes of the efforts of theaters to add sound to pictures that, technically speaking, had none. “During the twenties, some theaters were equipped with gigantic organs, capable of accompanying the film with more volume and less manpower than an orchestra,” Brownlow writes. “They were capable of an added attraction; they could supply a wide range of sound effects — thunder, gunfire, or the whistle of a locomotive.”
The gussied-up grandeur of movie palaces can be intoxicating, especially since they sprang up in spots not ordinarily known for their glitz — Sioux City, Iowa (home to the Orpheum Theatre), or Atlanta, Georgia (home to the Fox Theatre). Few films better capture the glamour of moviegoing of decades past better than Woody Allen’s marvelous comedy-drama The Purple Rose of Cairo, in which the Depression-era heroine Cecilia (Mia Farrow) is a faithful ticket-buyer at a movie palace. For Cecilia, and for us, the familiar procedure of buying a ticket at the box office and settling into a warm, upholstered seat is a respite without equal.
Movie theaters take on the character of the movies they exhibit. The cramped quarters of many art-house theaters are the ideal conditions under which to view films that require our attention; watching a rigorous foreign-language drama can feel like homework, so why should we be too comfortable? By contrast, the ample distractions of drive-in theaters make them the ideal spots to view B-movies or exploitation pictures, neither of which demands our undivided attention.
The modern-day multiplex offers the aesthetics of a cheap casino (red carpet, twinkling lights) and the physical dimensions of a suburban big-box store — think Circus Circus crossed with Best Buy. Yet, for all its tawdriness, the multiplex was tailor-made for the era of big-budget blockbusters. Movies that were meant to be viewed with a large, eagerly expectant audience, such as Jurassic Park or The Lord of the Rings, were seen that way thanks to the generous seating capacity of nearly all multiplexes.
The movie theater is not without its flaws, especially as it has undergone its most recent evolution, presumably to stifle the ascent of streaming services.
During my late teens and early twenties, I was a devoted, even obsessive, theatrical moviegoer. In 2002, the year I turned 19, I saw 133 movies in theaters of all kinds, including multiplexes, art houses, and even a real-life movie palace that has been preserved in my own hometown (though no drive-ins). Toward the end of that decade, though, my moviegoing began to wane seriously. These days, I am lucky if I have seen 20 movies in theaters by the end of a given year. Audiences seem rowdier and less attentive, and rising ticket prices make a mockery of the idea that theaters were ever referred to as “nickelodeons.” Worst of all are changes to the actual buildings. Many theater chains require patrons to sit in so-called stadium seating — massive, La-Z-Boy-like chairs designed under the mistaken assumption that the best way to view a film is in a supine position — and tolerate in-theater dining, during which bad food and drink have been known to ruin good movies.
Is it any wonder home viewing has taken off? In your living room, the behavior of your fellow moviegoers, having joined you by invitation only, is likely to be a bit easier to regulate. Same goes for snacks. You become your own theater manager, and your choice of programming is seemingly infinite: Current releases have become available to stream or purchase with increasing rapidity, and the list of past cinematic riches that are a click away is ever-expanding.
Yet the prospect of the permanent crippling of the movie theater fills me with no joy. A month of shelter-in-place viewing has persuaded me that to watch a movie alone is as pitiful as riding a roller coaster solo. Forget the awkward seating and dine-in setup: Such annoyances are a small price to pay for the privilege of experiencing a movie in the company of 50 or 100 other souls. Orson Welles once said, pointing to a movie screen in a theater, “This damn thing is dead.” Then, referring to the audience, he added, “The only living thing are the people sitting out here.”
Hear! Hear! If the movie theater comes out on the other side of the pandemic, I plan on buying tickets — and I hope several million of my closest friends do, too.
Peter Tonguette writes for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Humanities.
