“Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again.” —Pauline Kael

I admit I see more movies than I read books. I thought I’d change that a few years ago and got off of Facebook and stopped playing Words with Friends to have fewer feeble excuses for the disparity. Until recently it didn’t change anything but I have begun reading books— long ones. Of course I’m still going to the movies and getting my share of popcorn but is it just me or have films gotten longer? The Master of Suspense may have had the answer…

“The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.” —Alfred Hitchcock.

I’ll chalk my perception up to less endurance…

I love movies and there was actually a single night in my life when my appreciation of them was transformed. It was during my freshman year at college. The Dartmouth Film Society showed many films that hadn’t been made in America and on that particular evening the double feature was from France and Italy— Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim and Federico Fellini’s 8½.

I wasn’t aware of either movie beforehand and only slightly familiar with the names of their directors. On top of that there was a short film preceding the two features that introduced me to the photographs of Eugene Atget and the music of composer Erik Satie. I had never heard of either of them.

In the dictionary “mind blowing” is defined as something having a hallucinogenic effect. Its etymology has Timothy Leary’s name stamped all over it but I didn’t need LSD to be blown away by Marcello Mastroianni’s portrayal of a movie director on the verge of a nervous breakdown in 8½.

It revealed something that I had never known movies could do— actually take me inside of somebody’s head and in this case it was Mastroianni as a standin for Fellini’s own that I watched imploding on the screen.

Marcello Mastroianni in Federico Fellini's 8½

Movies changed for me from then on and when I lived in New York City for two years after college, I proceeded on an all-out movie binge. It was my own film school before actually attending one at UCLA a decade later.

From Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy to Jean Vigo’s Zero for Conduct I undertook a sweeping retrospective of cinema history and one time foolishly, even tried to absorb four movies at four different locations on the same day. I don’t remember which Ingmar Bergman film it was that put me over the edge but I was lucky I didn’t jump in front of a bus that night.

There were three places in New York where I spent many evenings. They were what were called “repertory” movie theaters and showed old films— all kinds of old films.

The Elgin was at 19^th Street and 8^th Avenue in Chelsea and a subway ride down from the Upper West Side where I shared an apartment with some other recent college graduates who weren’t interested in joining me in my movie mania.

The Elgin is known as the movie theater that invented the midnight screening which began when it showed Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo. If you’ve seen this movie, then you’ll probably agree with me that it makes The Rocky Horror Picture Show— a midnight screening staple and now the longest running theatrical release in motion picture history —look like Ding Dong School.

I owe the Elgin for introducing me to Buster Keaton. As big a silent movie star as anyone back in his day, Keaton’s work had been virtually forgotten, tied up in legal battles and even misplaced until his genius was rediscovered and the films re-released. The Elgin held the first retrospective of Buster Keaton’s work in decades in 1970 and at the first movie I saw I was in stitches and awe and came back for more night after night.

Buster Keaton in The General

The New Yorker theater on Broadway at West 88^th Street was where I marveled at Toshiro Mifune's performance in Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. It was the original uncut three hour and 27 minute version that included an intermission projected on the screen as part of the film.

Toshiro Mifune in The Seven Samurai

And it also was on the way to the New Yorker one night that I ended up in an emergency room. In a hurry to make the beginning of Zoo in Budapest with Loretta Young I ran across the street in front of a bus and got whacked by a Volkswagen that was running a red light. I landed on the hood of the car and fell off. To the driver's everlasting credit he stopped, picked me up and rushed me to the hospital. I was lucky but still have never seen Zoo in Budapest.

The jewel in the crown of my beloved movie theaters was the Thalia just off Broadway on 95^th Street. Of the three movie houses I surely spent the most time in the Thalia, which was later the location for a brief scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.

The Thalia showed two movies a night and rotated one of the two out the next day adding a new one in its place. That gave me two chances to catch any single film. The Thalia showed pretty much everything from director Marcel Carne’s Children of Paradise to a feature length collection of animator Chuck Jones’ Bugs Bunny cartoons.

One night waiting outside for a show I saw a beautiful girl also waiting by herself. I wanted to start a conversation but had no idea how. Of course “hello!” would have been a logical place to begin but it failed to register as an option. My opportunity vanished entirely when her date showed up.

A few nights later outside the Thalia the identical situation arose. A different beautiful girl stood waiting by herself. Another painfully shy inability to seize the moment and opportunity by me. And then THE SAME GUY arrived and escorted her inside!!!

The Thalia at 250 W. 95th St.

All three of these theaters have since been demolished or repurposed. Today, the dream I used to have of being able to see movies on my own screen at home has been a reality for a long time. But I’ve learned that the excitement of discovering cinema’s past or partaking of its present isn’t the same watching a DVD (how quickly we forget) or a recording off Turner Classic Movies or one streamed from Netflix by myself.

In the dictionary moviegoer and moviegoing are one word. As a baby boomer I grew up when going to the movies meant just that— you went. Seeing Walt Disney’s Pinocchio and Snow White when I hadn’t yet started elementary school was a scary way to begin but an experience I probably shared with millions of others.

The Majestic Theatre in Mt. Penn, Pennsylvania

The Majestic was my neighborhood movie theater and it may have been unique because it shared the building with a fire station. It wasn’t unusual for sirens to suddenly blare and drown out even the Guns of Navarone.

I could ride my bike to its matinees on Saturdays to see cartoons and Westerns. That was until one day the posters outside the entrance had pictures of scantily dressed women whose faces looked like they might be in pain. My childhood Saturday mornings then became ones I spent in front of our television.

Now, I’m fortunate that here in Maine I have a neighborhood movie theater in the family— literally. It was Jo’s grandmother’s idea to build it in Rockland in the 1920s. Ida Dondis was the force behind it for over a half century. After she retired Jo’s father took over for a while and when we moved here in 2010, Jo became the founding chair of the Friends of the Strand Theatre after leading the effort to turn it into a non profit. Her sister Lynn has now succeeded her on its board.

The Strand celebrated its 100 year anniversary in 2023 and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of its “historic, cultural and architectural significance.” I call it the “anchor store” of Rockland’s Main Street.

Yes, movie going is partially about the popcorn— it always tastes best at the movies —but for me it’s certainly about being together with an audience in the dark to watch a film. Books are a solitary endeavor. It appears movies increasingly are becoming so too but it’s sad that we are withdrawing into our solitary cocoons and endangering the movie theater experience.

We have so many screens we constantly look at now but a half century ago there was only one inside the theaters at the Thalia and the New Yorker and the Elgin. I blended in with the others as I laughed at Buster Keaton’s pratfalls in Sherlock Jr. and wasn’t embarrassed when I teared up at the end of Kurosawa’s Ikiru.

There still appear to be at least a few small town movie theaters operating around the country that call themselves the Strand. I’m lucky enough to have one just a few miles down the road.

The Strand Theatre in Rockland, Maine