One of the few remaining single screen theaters in New York City, the Paris Theater will celebrate its 60th anniversary on Sept 13th. Going to the Paris Theater is like a trip back in time. There is no “pre-show” entertainment i.e. advertisements. Curtains still open and close after each screening, classy courteous staff and some of the most comfortable seats of any theater anywhere. An amazing feat for an “old” theater in these days of multiplexes. Located on 58th Street in Manhattan, just off 5th Avenue, the Paris Theater has been a centerpiece for foreign films, art films and one in a while a more commercial Hollywood film. In its hey day the theater specialized in French films like “Paris 1900”, Louis Malle’s, “The Lovers”, Roger Vadim’s “And God Created Woman”, “The Tall Blonde Man with the One Black Shoe” and “A Man and a Woman” which played for over one year straight. Other films included Bergman’s The Seventh Seal”, Pietro Germi’s “Divorce, Italian Style”, Tony Richardson’s, “A Taste of Honey”, Luis Bunnel’s “Viridiana”, Elia Kazan’s America, America and William Wyler’s “The Collector.”
Merchant-Ivory films like “A Room with a View” and “Remains of the Day” generally the kind of films that did mediocre business always filled the house at the Paris. Never one of the hip independent theaters to go to in New York, the Paris Theater always attracted a more sophisticated older audience. They left the hipsters to the IFC or the Angelika theaters downtown.
In the early 1950’s, Catholic protesters marched outside the Paris Theater when Roberto Rossellini’s controversial film “The Miracle” played. The story of a peasant woman seduced by a stranger she believes to be St. Joseph and imagines the child she carries is the baby Jesus. The protesters were effective in having the film withdrawn. A court fight ensued and the Supreme Court came down on the side of the film saying that movies were entitled to guarantees of free speech. This decision rocked movie censorship and was the slow beginning of the end of film censorship.
Here is a list of some of the films I saw at this wonderful theater. “Goodbye Columbus”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “Tropic of Cancer”, “The Molly MacGuires”, “Friends”, “Deep End”, “Cousin Cousine”, “Violette”, “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands”, “Emmanuelle”, “Get Out Your Handkerchiefs”, “A Room With a View”, “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont” and “The Namesake.”
Here is an article that appeared in the New York Times recently.
Film Fact: You can catch a glimpse of the Paris Theater in the 1969 film “Cactus Flower.”
I love old theaters like this. We had one in Ft. Wayne (it was actually 2 screens though) that was old and big and beautiful. It still had its classic style with the huge theater and the curtains. But they never put any money into it, so the seats were old and uncomfortable. Sadly, they tore it down several years. A even sadder, they never did anything with the land. It’s just a big, empty lot now.
That’s a shame. The local theater where I spent most of my youth was the Loew’s Oriental and it is now a Marshalls Dept store. I don’t think that much of an improvement over your empty lot. Either way too many old theaters have been destroyed replaced by cold multiplex box like structures.