Intermission
On the New HMV exclusive DVD after the initermission is an audio presentation by Goodwin but no picture. Is this correct?
shareYes.
:[ Don't Stop Here, This is Bat Country :[
The movie was original released in 1965 as a "Roadshow" presentation and so had the intermission. The music you hear during the "entr'acte" you would have heard in the theatre with the curtains closed across the screen.
Of course today, few know what a "Roadshow" release was, or even remember when there used to be curtains across theatre screens!
Too bad considering the VHS version at least had the still image for you to enjoy.
shareWhile we're talking about intermissions anyone remember a film and where the intermission came? I mean an official intermission and what did you do in the intermission eg buy one of the special booklets that were issued that went with the film.
The Great Race. The Great Escape. Mayerling. Cromwell etc etc
Another great intermission point was at the end of the Don't Rain on My Parade number in Funny Girl. Following Barbra Streisand's famous shot on the bow of the tug boat, the camera pulls back in an aerial crane shot and the tug chugs out of view as the curtains closed....Great.
shareThere was an intermission in The Sound of Music right after Maria left the von TRapp residence and returned to the abbey.
Incidentally I remember when theaters had curtains across the screen. In fact, the theater in which I saw Those Magnificent Men back in 1965 had a curtain. It still exists today as a nightclub.
The intermission in 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' came just as the car was going over the edge of the cliff - a true 'cliffhanger'.
share2001: A Space Odyssey had an intermission. It was just after the scene of HAL lip reading Bowman and Poole in the pod.
share"Gone with the Wind". This too had an intermission and I was glad of it, although it didn't come soon enough and I had to miss some while I visited the loo. LOL
shareOf course today, few know what a "Roadshow" release was, or even remember when there used to be curtains across theatre screens!
Maybe the small-screen multiplexes don't have curtains, but the bigger movie houses still have them. Don't they? I haven't been out to a movie in years.
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?
Of course, the greatest intermission in history has to be 6 second break ten minutes before the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Can anyone possible argue otherwise?
shareSeveral reasons ... and only the longer films like "Ben Hur", "Lawrence of Arabia", "Mad, mad, mad, world" etc had them
The intermission allowed the projectionists time to thread up the cans for the second half of the film ... time for the usherettes to walk up and down the aisles selling ice creams and Kiora soft drinks off a tray ... time for everybody to queue up for a toilet break ... and for everybody to stand up, walk about to stretch their legs and have a cigarette (most adults smoked in the 1960s and it was permitted inside the theatres).
"Why is he taking the knife out of the cheese? Does he want some cheese?"
"The intermission allowed the projectionists time to thread up the cans for the second half of the film ..."
With the rare exceptions of the very few movies made in the 3-strip Cinerama/Cinemiracle system intermissions had absolutely nothing to do with giving the projectionist "time to thread the second half"! It was all about the "event" of the now long gone "Road Show" consept. I use to work as a projectionist myself back when theatres not only had a big single screen with a curtain, but the print itself was in reels of 15-18 minutes, or shorter with a manual change-over between two projectors! If I remember correctly this movie came in eight reels, but Ben-Hur came in no less than 16 reels! When I first started the common light source for projection was two carbon sticks with a burning arch in between, i.e. an open flame! Road Show movies like this one usually also came in 70 mm prints, more than twice as heavy as the more common 35 mm prints. An intermission was nothing but a nice break for the hard working projectionist! The next reel had already been thread in the other projector when the intermission came. Today, movies are still transported in short reels, but spliced together into one big horizontal reel on a non-rewind platter in the theatre. Due to that, projectionist showmanship today is completely extint! This is also why it's impossible today to find a multiplex theatre with no prints badly scratched!
I was always curious about this - I used to go the the cinema in the UK a lot as a child, from any early age and it was quite common to actually have a supporting film before the main one, then some cartoons and then down to the main thing.
Queues for popular films would often double round the block (this is in the days before you could buy your ticket beforehand or before anyone had smart phones or the internet...) but I often wondered what the actual purpose of the supporting feature was? To allow people more time to queue? To give the box office more time to sell tickets? It never made any sense to me? You got far less viewings in as a result.
Also, this has been a question I've always wanted to ask - Did you not get bored of seeing the same film again and again and again? Obviously as you describe, it was quite a busy job changing reels etc but still?
I lived at that time of the big films with intermissions and saw many of them.
I just don't see the point of putting them on the DVDs note them fine but if we need to take a break we just pause it.
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I think 'My Fair Lady' had an Intermission as well.
shareYes as did "the Great Race", "Fiddler on the Roof", "The Sand Pebbles" etc
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The film. "Das Boot" had an intermission when I saw it in the theatre . I can't recall if it was for the original release or the director's cut - this was a lot of years ago. I don't renember an actual "intermission" strip like in the roadshow films though. I seem to remember they just stopped the film about half way through and the projectionist yelled out from the booth that there would be a short break lol. But then, it was a long film relative to the films of it's day, and maybe patrons complained to the theatre about having to "hold it" for so long (their need for more popcorn and Coke, that is). Or maybe this was the theatre's crafty way of getting patrons to restock on the munchies and thus bring in more cash. Hmmmm....
shareI agree with the statement that Intermissions were there primarily to sell popcorn. Movie theaters normally sell concessions every two hours or so. If the film was extra long, without an Intermission, it would hurt the theaters in the pocketbook. To keep exhibitors happy, film producers included a break to keep the cash register$ ringing...
shareskeagles67 took the words out of my mouth! Why is it that every major Hollywood film these days needs to be at, near, or over three hours? They just don't have that much to say, and we end up with extra chase scenes, explosions, plot twists that make no sense and seem stuck-on or add nothing to the story...and full bladders begging for relief! I for one would welcome back intermissions on movies that truly justify being over two hours.
shareDon't you have some kids to chase off your lawn? smh
shareSupporting features/shorts/cartoons were attached to feature films as, for most people, a night at the movies was a major event. It probably grew from vaudeville/music hall, where you had a show of multiple acts. Newsreels helped bring news to people, before television, and provided visuals that radio didn't and motion that newspapers lacked. Films were around 90 to 100 minutes in length (rough average for older films); so, a newsreel, cartoon or short subject and a feature made for a nice 2 hours or so at the cinema. At the same time, it also entertained the audience as more people filed in to catch the feature.
I was born in the mid-60s and we still had the occasional cartoon before a movie into the 70s (this is the US, can't speak for the UK), but newsreels were long a thing of the past, as well as other short subjects. Now, trailers and advertisements take up most of the time that would have been filled by a cartoon. Advertisements have gotten so long that many theaters post actual start times for the film, as well as the "official" start time, when the ads and trailers begin.
The last roadshow type of film I saw was Kenneth Branaugh's Hamlet, which had a very welcome intermission. We all went running for the bathroom, came back, and realized we still had a ways to go.
"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"
^
Argot, why do you suggest 'Lawrence of Arabia' had the greatest intermission?
Probably because the theme to Lawrence of Arabia is epic and the intermission really gave you a chance to hear it in all its glory.
shareThat is one of the best movie scores ever. I recently saw this film on a big screen, but the room wasn't darkened during the intermission music. The audience was mostly people too young to have attended a film that had this back in the day and they didn't appreciate the experience of hearing the music on its own merits. I wrote to the museum afterward to tell them that they really should darken the screening room for things like this.
The Fabio Principle: Puffy shirts look best on men who look even better without them.
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