With their ability to transport audiences to fantastical places and times, motion pictures have helped generations endure war, depression, occupation and oppression. Today they’re as much a means of escaping life's tribulations as they ever were.
And yet, you may find yourself wondering — as you leave the AMC or eject a DVD from your home entertainment system — why movies don’t feel like the panacea they once seemed to be.
If the portative power of movies is waning, the reason is likely in the seats and not on the screen. Today’s viewers are more passive, say the experts, pointing out that our grandparents and great grandparents dressed up, went to ornate theaters with massive projectors, live musicians, and stage lights, and actively participated in an emotional and sensory cinema experience. Visit a picturehouse in a European city like Prague and you're likely to find assigned seating and an audience that watches until the very last credit has rolled.
Today, with mostly generic commercial theaters, digitally formatted films and prerecorded music to choose from, we’re demanding fewer
theatrics from movie theaters themselves.
Sure, some theaters have bells and whistles like IMAX projectors, stadium seating and digital sound, but their housed in buildings with all the charm of your local shopping mall. To use a cinematic metaphor, moviegoers of yore were like the dashing, adventure-seeking heroes of old silent films, while today’s are like the damsels tied to the train tracks, waiting haplessly for something to happen.
Fortunately, there are still a number of cinemas in the Detroit area that can, through varying conceits, conjure up that old tyme movie magic. The area boasts a number of solid "independent," or "art," theaters — terms that tend to elicit confidence in filmgoers with their suggestion of intelligent, innovative films that reject the Hollywood studio system and the formulaic fodder it churns out for the Box Office. Simply put, these theaters can usually be trusted to cull the bad releases from the good or provide a classy return to a time when a night at the cinema really meant something.
Royal Oak’s
Main Art Theater and Bloomfield Hills'
Maple Art Theater, both operated by Landmark Theaters out of Los Angeles, are two cinema houses that offer critically acclaimed independent and foreign films in an iconoclastic atmosphere. Selections run the gamut, from politically charged biopics (like
Milk) to family dramas (like Jonathan Demme’s
Rachel Getting Married and
A Christmas Tale from French director Arnaud Desplechin) to quirky love stories (such as Danny Boyle’s
Slumdog Millionaire).
Unlike the fungible interiors of commercial theaters, they provide viewers with a more intimate, eclectic cinematic home. The décor of the Main, for example —art deco chandeliers and paper lanterns, an overstuffed couch, and an intimate gallery space for rotating artists’ exhibits — reflects a novel thinking that is also manifest in the theater’s projects (such as its summer "midnight" series and mini film festivals) and its environmental consciousness (would commercial theaters beseech patrons to return their Fiji and Odwalla bottles to the concessions counter for recycling?).
While the film offerings are chosen out of L.A., these boutique elements are "locally inspired" says Landmark CEO Ted Mundorff. "Landmark is unique in the sense that the employees are very engaged in film and in their theaters," Mundorff says. "It’s very refreshing to walk in and have a conversation with an employee in a Landmark Theater and find they know more about the film than I may. They’re very educated in the world of film, and I think that’s something that sets us apart."
For a wider array of films — old and new, foreign and domestic — and a decidedly more resplendent venue, there’s the Detroit Institute of Arts, whose 1200-seat
Detroit Film Theater has regaled area movie lovers for the past 35 years. DIA Director of Public Programs Larry Baranski, who develops each DFT season with DIA Film Curator Elliot Wilhelm, says the DFT helps viewers wisely invest their leisure time.
"There’s an assumption now that anyone can see anything they want to, through downloading and all the great new delivery systems," says Baranski, "but [these choices] create such an incredible background noise. The question becomes, where do you start?"
According to Baranski, each DFT season boasts the best offerings of the major international film festivals (e.g. New York, Toronto, Cannes), films that support current DIA exhibits (last month’s "
Un Chien Andalou," a collaboration between director Luis Buñuel and surrealist painter Salvador Dali, complemented the museum’s current "
Monet to Dali" exhibit), films that advance the DIA’s mission to illuminate other cultures (it shows the largest collection of foreign language films in Michigan), and, finally, the less precise but equally necessary task of reflecting the zeitgeist.
Baranski recalls how, at last month’s showing of a film on musician and one-time Detroiter Patty Smith, audiences "erupted into shouts of affirmation for her onscreen, railing against aspects of our current political situation." documentaries like
Our Daily Bread and
Manufactured Landscapes, both of which look at man’s manipulation of nature (food and the environment, respectively) drew large crowds of young people who, if the recent elections are an indication, nurse a keen interest in the future and the sustainability of the planet. The DFT is also the best place to catch the foreign films that often end up nominated at the Oscars.
The DIA also runs classic films that are being re-released on 35mm celluloid, being ever mindful to research original projection methods. "There’s a depth and detail that’s difficult to tease out now that more and more theaters are not using projectionists. When we present a film we research it to find out when the film was made, what format it was made in, and we get projectors we can reconfigure to present it in different ways." Regulating the speed of celluloid prints is tremendously important, notes Baranski; get it wrong, and the actors dart about the screen in a furtive manner that makes the film look silly and obscures the dignity of the movie and the relative sophistication of early filmmaking techniques.
The DFT theater, designed in 1927 by architect Paul Phillipe Cret, lends a beauty and wonder to the film experience. "Theaters once upon a time were very ornate, because it serves the purpose of altering your state of mind before you experience a film," says Baranski. "Most [commercial theaters] have all the charm of a secretary of state office, and if anything you have to get over the experience of entering the theater before you enjoy the movie."
Aesthetically speaking, Detroit's
Redford Theater, owned and operated by the Motor City Theater Organ Society, is arguably the area’s most whimsical cinema, restored in recent years to its original 1928 design as a Japanese pagoda (it was painted over during World War II for obvious if lamentable reasons) covered by a vaulted, midnight blue ceiling inset with electric "stars." The heart of the theater is a
Barton Theater organ, which is played by MCTOS members before each movie showing. Of the roughly 10,000 cinema organs that graced the nation’s movie theaters throughout the 20
th century, the Redford’s is one of about 40 that remain in their original installations.
"We’re giving people the cinema experience the way it was meant to be," says Ed Seward, head of Media Relations and Volunteer Services. "We do non-artsy-fartsy, ivory tower, academic, we-think-you-should-see-this-movie-and-this-is-why movies. We think Hollywood made these movies as products and people should enjoy them. And if art seems to fall in through the cracks, that’s wonderful."
But the MCTOS’ aversion to what it considers pretense doesn’t mean you won’t get something unique. Last month, after Paramount discovered its celluloid print of
The Greatest Show On Earth was too damaged to run, MCTOS staff persuaded a private film collector to send his print of Hal Wallis’
Three Ring Circus to the Redford as a replacement. The only Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis film never released for home theater, the showing was literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for attendees (even prompting a particularly devoted Martin-Lewis fan to fly in from Connecticut for the showing).
Movie nights at the theater have the look and feel of a social. For a mere $4, patrons are treated to pre-movie games like "Whack It" and "Spin-N-Win." The ticket prices are kept low thanks to volunteer labor (during the Friday night run of "Three Ring Circus," MCTOS President Tom Hurst and Secretary Oren Walther ran the projectors).
Finally, if your taste is for something a bit rougher around the edges, the
Magic Bag in Ferndale offers the one amenity missing from most every other theater: the adult beverage.
Sometimes the need for novelty is met just by engaging in what is verboten most everywhere else, and kicking back with a beer in a movie theater is an easy example. On Wednesday and Thursday nights the venue hosts a Brew N’ View for adults 21 and older. Some of the films are second run, but old or recent, the price can’t be beat: admission is just $2.
Other Vintage Picturehouses in Metro Detroit The Michigan Theater - SE Michigan's belle of the ball. This 1928 grand-style theater has been beautifully restored to its former glory, houses a second screening room, features a Barton Pipe theater organ and is home to the esteemed
Ann Arbor Film Festival. From its live concerts to classic films to arthouse cinema, this historic theater is well-worth the trip.
The Civic - Taken over by the City of Farmington in 1999, this forties era movie theater tends to run mainstream second-run releases but has a wonderful vintage feel and sometimes acts as a venue for outside groups.
Birmingham 8 - Originally builts as a single screen moviehouse in 1927, the "8" was sliced and diced into a modern multiplex. While it's hardly in league with most vintage restorations, it does retain some of its original charm, namely it's glorious marquee.
...and rumor has it there's a group dediacted to restoring Detroit's 1930s era
Alger Theater.
Lucy Ament is a freelance writer and regular contributor to Metromode living in Grosse Pointe. Her last article for Metromode was Retooling SE Michigan's Workforce.