Great news that I ought to have blogged about earlier: the visionary theater manager Nelson Page and his sound and vision ace Pete Apruzzese are, after a brief hiatus, back in charge at Suffern, N.Y.‘s Lafayette Theater, a beautiful old-time movie palace built in the late ’20s and maintained in palatial splendor, complete with a fully-functioning and truly mighty Wurlitzer organ. Which means, among other things, that the Saturday morning special screenings of classic films—Big Screen Classics, as the series (which operates at three theaters, in fact) is called, is also back. I revisited the site yesterday, Holy Saturday to us Catholics, for a particularly apropos screening: Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 rethink of his silent 1923 The Ten Commandments.
More about the movie in a moment. First, I want to rhapsodize a bit about the house itself, which I wrote about for the first time here. It’s one of the few movie emporiums wherein one feels thrilled to be just sitting there before the lights go down. Look in front of you, and there’s the gorgeous curtain. Look behind you and there’s the lovely chandelier. It’s just a spectacular atmosphere. And when the Wurlitzer’s really going—you can see its percussion array in a nook stage left—the atmosphere is like nothing else out there. Just transportive.
I also hugely admire Nelson’s attention to detail. During the actual screenings, he has the sound from the movies piped into the rest rooms, so incontinent viewers can somewhat follow what’s going on. I haven’t been in a theater that sported such a feature since the old Palace in Dumont, New Jersey in the mid-’60s, and even now I think I might be mixing that house up with a long-gone theater in Fort Lee. With typical wit, Nelson doesn’t just pipe the audio into the men’s room—he’s got the speaker secreted in the body of an old-school radio, a nice touch.
In short, it feels like a privilege to watch a film at the Lafayette, and I implore those of a similar bent to mine to make an effort to check it out, even for a showing of the new Clash of The Titans, which is the theater’s first-run feature at the moment.
But it was a special treat to see Commandments there. The critic J. Hoberman once pronounced, “Bluntly put, to not get Bresson is to not get the idea of motion pictures,” and while I thoroughly agree with that notion, I also think it applies equally to DeMille, who some might conceive as Bresson’s directly opposite number. DeMille’s is a cinema of utmost and utter spectacle (something Bresson actually had an appreciation of, as witness his admiration for Goldfinger), and what’s interesting to note when watching this VistaVision-shot film, in glorious color and such, is how very much it resembles a silent picture. DeMille stages a number of sequences practically as tableaux, having some characters hold poses when not in action (I was particularly struck by the frozen mournful attitude of Nina Foch’s Bithiah, Moses’ adoptive mother, as the Pharaoh Seti (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) pronounces the banishment of Moses). The cutting is not fast. The camera doesn’t move a whole lot, and when it does, the director makes you feel it; as, for instance the way the camera backs up as the mist of pestilence creeps into the labyrinthian dwelling place of the Hebrew slaves, while John Derek’s Joshua make his way to the house of Moses.
All pretty great stuff, I think. And as screened at the Lafayette, pretty wide:
Yep, that’s a 2.20 aspect ratio, wider than VistaVision’s 1.85. This version is the full “roadshow” length, but the print was a “Super VistaVision” version created for a revival of the film in 1989. The studio transferred the picture to 70mm, and cropped the image for a wider frame. (This creates some issues with the title crawl at the beginning, which projectionist Pete Apruzzese had to re-rack throughout so folks could actually read the whole thing.) After the screening, Pete came out with my old friend Joseph Failla and I for a brief repast, and I asked Pete why he and Nelson had chosen to screen this particular version. He answered that it wasn’t a choice. Rather, this was the only print Paramount had for theatrical screenings. An odd state of affairs, particularly given that in 1999 the picture was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress—you’d think a studio might be proud of this fact and, you know, do part of its part. Well, now that Paramount seems to be taking a slightly more active interest in preservation and restoration (see its really terrific new DVD and Blu-ray disc of The African Queen, which Dave Kehr wrote evocatively about a few weeks ago), perhaps we shall see some positive action on the Commandments front. In the meantime, a few weeks hence the Lafayette will be screening that newly restored print of Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes that I’m sure many of you have heard about. I’m sure to be there. And I’m tempted to see Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much there in about two weeks. Heck, if Suffern weren’t such a challenging trek from Brooklyn, I’d be there every Saturday this season.
BTW, the title of this post is, of course, a reference to the famous line that Edward G. Robinson, in fact, never actually says in the film. The word his treacherous character Dathan (and every other character in the film) uses is “deliverer.” Which isn’t as catchy as “messiah,” is it.
For what it’s worth, I do know that Paramount has archived COMMANDMENTS in HiDef; that version screened for I believe the first time last night on ABC, and looked seriously beautiful. I’m not sure why they haven’t put it on Blu-ray yet, as it’s one of the studio’s perennial best-sellers. Unfortunately, with these all-digital restorations, it’s become more and more common to not strike any prints.
Ah, yet another reason to make me ponder a move to NYC.
Lovely piece, Glenn. I’ve had the privilege of seeing a handful of films there, as well, and the experience is every bit as magical as you describe. I grew up in the age of the multiplex, and it’s very unique for me to go to a theater where the movie theater itself is a part of the experience as much as the movie is. The vintage movie posters as you walk in, like the one you have pictured, is a great treat as well. Unfortunately I work Saturday in the early afternoon, and can’t go as often as I like (it’s only like a half hour drive from Fort Lee, well worth it), but when there’s something I can’t resist I’ll get our of work and go (I’m torn between “The Man Who Knew Too Much”, and “The Red Shoes” two weeks following. Unfortunately I’ll have to pick one!). I’ve seen “North by Northwest”, “King Kong”, and “Vertigo” at the Lafayette, not experiences I’d ever trade.
I’m jealous of course! Did they do SuperVistaVision versions of other films, such as the Hitchcock remake, or was Ten Commandments the only one to receive such treatment?
Lovely tribute to the theater, but I can’t get behind the “if you don’t get DeMille, you don’t get motion pictures” idea. Granted, I’m always going to fall on the content side of “form vs. content,” but that content in most of DeMille’s pictures is always an issue with me, even in his non-Biblical films. I mean, we’re talking about the director who made a not only boring but wretched movie about the circus, which in theory should be impossible.
Interesting question, Colin! It’s got a two-pronged answer. When Paramount made this version of “Commandments,” it was under the impression that it was coining the term “Super VistaVision.” In point of fact, in 1954 a man named Frank Caldwell devised a three-35mm-frame process that aspired to Cinerama-ness. It underwent a couple more name changes, but no features were produced with it.
The Harris/Katz restoration of “Vertigo” was kind of a Super VistaVision project, as the VistaVision feature was transferred to 70mm, but in this case the original aspect ratio was preserved.
@ Lipranzer: Yes, “Greatest Show” is a train wreck, train wreck aside. But consider “Why Change Your Husband?” Or “Sign of the Cross.” Or “Four Frightened People…”
Or his 1927 King of Kings, which I watched the other day. It is indeed the polar opposite of Bresson, and I for one am glad of that fact.
That all looks great. The only cinema in Melbourne I think that compares is the Astor cinema, which William Friedkin raved about while he was down here screening a new print of SORCERER. Before reading the blog proper, the messiah title made me think it was going to be about Verhoeven’s new JESUS OF NAZARETH hardcover.
A restored Blu of COMMANDMENTS would be very nice.
Glenn -
Thank you for the write-up about our show at the Lafayette, glad you enjoyed the presentation.
THE FUTURIST! has seen quite a few films at The Lafayette.
A very memorable viewing was last year or the year before …
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH. IT was splendid.
He, also,saw HOUSE OF WAX in 3D, PSYCHO (during their fabulous Halloween weekend festivals), FRANKENSTEIN (1931), THE BIRDS and Cocteau’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. It is ALWAYS pure fun and a mental escape. Bravo, Commander Kenny! This was a surprising and great piece.
Glad to hear the Lafayette’s back in operation.
As it happens, I’m the perpetrator of “SuperVistaVision,” which I coined off of SuperScope, which was pretty much the same concept. It turned out there already was an anamorphic negative, prepared in part because DeMille took so long to shoot the film that the studio felt they needed a back-up plan. We printed up several test sections, including the Red Sea, and it all looked spectacular, so I bit the bullet and went with it. (For an additional fillip, I had them print DeMille’s intro in 1.33, then mask the Paramount logo to that size and then open up the matting as the music came in. It was a great effect and usually got applause.) Yes, there were a handful of cropped shots (notably Hardwicke’s pointed crown), but in a nearly four-hour movie, it was a more than acceptable trade-off. As for the opening credits, the heraldic borders match the CinemaScope frame line (deliberately, no doubt), so if they had to reframe, they’re probably overscanning.