I first saw a 70mm projection of Lawrence of Arabia almost ten years ago, and it’s been one of my favorite movies ever since. But because I first saw it on a big screen, I can’t bring myself to watch it at home. So when Lawrence of Arabia was in theaters last week as part of a limited rerelease, I was there too. Of the eight people I asked to go with me, three showed up. That’s a pretty good yield for such a long movie.
I don’t go to the movies very often. Yesterday’s Lawrence of Arabia screening was only my fourth in the last year. Twenty years ago, the average American saw five movies a year, and someone my age saw about ten. These days, my four screenings are more than double the national average.
People complain that movie tickets are expensive, and they are. Those four tickets cost me about sixty dollars. But movie tickets aren’t getting more expensive, not really. In my lifetime, movie tickets have stayed about the same price, adjusted for inflation. At the same time, other forms of entertainment have gotten less expensive. Televisions have gotten better and better — and cheaper and cheaper. At the same time, streaming media is cheap and easy. And this is to say nothing of modern piracy. For the price of those four tickets, I could’ve bought myself an entry-level projector and six months of HBO Max.
The truth is that I feel uneasy in movie theaters. I’ve never really enjoyed sitting quietly for long stretches of time. Maybe it’s a little worse for me, a member of a generation derided for its dwindling attention span. Some of it is from the pandemic, I’m sure, the long shadow of death by crowd. And some of it might fall from that other American rash. Darkness. Strangers. Chokepoints. When I went to see The Batman, it was as if the sound engineers had worked long nights to make sure that every gunshot came from the back of the theater.
All this is to say that it takes a lot to get me in the door. I only see a movie in theaters if it’s one of those movies you’re supposed to see in theaters. Real cinematic experiences, or in other words, slogs. So it’s been with each of the four movies I saw this year: Lawrence of Arabia (227 minutes); Dune: Part Two (166 minutes); Killers of the Flower Moon (206 minutes); and Oppenheimer (180 minutes). These are serious movies, challenging movies, and sitting through them can feel like a serious challenge. People will only go to the movies for an event — guilty as charged — and I guess we want to get our money's worth.
Anyway, that three-person yield was hard-won.
“It’s three hours and forty-two minutes,” one of my friends had protested, “I’m reading the IMDb page right now.”
“Did you read about the seven Oscars?” I said. “Besides, there’s an intermission.”
“That makes it longer.”
“No, that makes it shorter.”
“They count that in the runtime?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I mean that makes it feel shorter.”
The friend went on to say they hadn’t ever seen a movie with an intermission, didn’t even know movies could have intermissions. I’m no snob, but this admission betrayed a serious lack in this individual’s cultural education. Gone with the Wind (238 minutes), Seven Samurai (207 minutes), Ben-Hur (212 minutes), Spartacus (197 minutes), Cleopatra (251 minutes), and Barry Lyndon (185 minutes) all have intermissions. Even Monty Python and the Holy Grail (92 minutes) has one.
Intermissions used to be common in movies. At the very beginning, this was the time that reels were changed, but they obviously have other value. Bollywood movies are still structured around intermissions. Concerts and plays have intermissions. Most sporting events have breaks between the first and second halves, the second and third periods, or the top and bottom halves of the seventh inning. Recreation without rest becomes something else entirely.
Why don’t you take a rest for thirty seconds and then come back to this? You’ve earned it.
At some point between the end of the first half and the beginning of the last third, in agreement with the action, the screen should fade to an intermission card. If a director is bold enough to burn the card into the film, it can become part of it. (Kurosawa famously spent about 450 feet of reel on the Seven Samurai intermission, and it’s a profound addition to the film.) Very few people smoke these days, but an intermission should be long enough to leave the theater, smoke a cigarette, and return to your seat. People can keep time themselves and, if possible, a five-minute warning can be played in the lobby.
I’m not sure why movie intermissions haven’t made a comeback. So far as I can tell, they’d be profitable. An intermission would make seeing a movie more of an event, that gilded spectacle that studios aim for. It would let movie theaters ransom more of those concessions — $11 for a Diet Coke. And it would give distributors a new space to cram coming attractions, although I’d prefer them not to.
The choice to include an intermission is rooted in the ancient knowledge that people can’t pay attention to something for more than two hours. They have existed, in varying forms, throughout history and across cultures, and provide some psychological relief from the endeavor of experience. Intermission offers the audience a chance to process the action of the piece, a brief resumption of disbelief, and a few moments’ rest out of narrative time. This is tied to a somatic element, an opportunity to feel and occupy and use your body once again, to stretch and amble, to quench thirst and satisfy cravings. In this sense, offering an intermission marks the manners of a good host, attention to the comfort of your guests.
Those amblings drift in the peripatetic way. Here is a chance to speak about what you have seen and wonder after what you will see. Movies make for bad dates, I’ve heard it said, since they prohibit the one staple of any good date. You show up. You sit quietly. You leave. Here then is a chance to speak with your date or your friends or your family. Talk about the movie or something else entirely. Now is a fine time to look at your phone. The time — after all — is yours. And then, when the bell chimes, you can make your return.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.
Well done; you managed to massage the virtues of intermission without mentioning bodily fluids. Or at least not blatantly. 😀