That's the title and that's pretty much what this is.... although I balk whenever something claims to be 'definitive'. Half of this is the usual talking heads -- including Leonard Maltin, of course -- and half the movie palaces themselves in varying states of survival. To keep visual interest, a lot of the shots of movie palaces are done with a moving camera.... or, in cases where only photographs survive, a moving photo.
The talking heads are the usual assortment of impassioned, sensible, and incoherent people. The point of this moving picture is, unsurprisingly, the pictures of the lost architectural wonders of the movie palaces. Built to show movies to audiences of as many as five thousand people at a time, when the time came when they could not be filled, they lost their purpose. Today, when even the most rabid movie fans are happier sitting at home, the communal aspect of audiences has been lost. We forget that having hundreds, even thousands of strangers sitting in the dark is not threatening. That they came to laugh or cry or cheer at the same thing, and do, is what makes communities, cities, even nations. When we lose places that can happen, we lose our sense of being a people.
The talking heads are the usual assortment of impassioned, sensible, and incoherent people. The point of this moving picture is, unsurprisingly, the pictures of the lost architectural wonders of the movie palaces. Built to show movies to audiences of as many as five thousand people at a time, when the time came when they could not be filled, they lost their purpose. Today, when even the most rabid movie fans are happier sitting at home, the communal aspect of audiences has been lost. We forget that having hundreds, even thousands of strangers sitting in the dark is not threatening. That they came to laugh or cry or cheer at the same thing, and do, is what makes communities, cities, even nations. When we lose places that can happen, we lose our sense of being a people.