GIANT CINEMAS

Evening Star, Issue 19778, 31 January 1928, Page 8

GIANT CINEMAS

“HOT AND COLD RUNNING.” For gorgeonsness, comfort, and size the picture theatres in the _ United States bear away all palms, writes Iris Barry, in the ‘Daily Mail.’ Everyone has heard of “Roxy’s” in New Y T ork, that vast block of masonry, not without beauty, which houses a small town within itself besides an auditorium seating 6,000, and sweeping out like a great fan from a stage which is huge, but looks small. There are cafeterias, lounges, a broadcasting station, a sumptuous flat, practice rooms, floor above floor; the orchestra, a really good one, includes 116 performers. The attendants, groomed to the last fraction in courtesy, number scores. No one can escape a visit to this huge cinema without being shown—and with what pride!—tho carpet in the foyer, woven in a single piece and said to be tho largest carpet so made. Not far away is the Paramount building, tho foyer of which towers up in severe marble arches and the upper atmosphere of which blazes with illumination from a forest of chandeliers that strike gleams on the polished surface of the high ball. It seems the custom to deprecate the existence of these mammoth cinemas; just ns in Hollywood the inhabitants almost apologise for the quite astonishing “Chinese” theatre recently opened there. But in actual fact these gargantuan and wildly exuberant styles are their own; and the Paramount in Now’ York would probably not strike a visitor from the planets as more startling than Versailles must have been in its inception, or tho “ Chinese ” in Hollywood as more fantastic than the royal pavilion at Brighton. Besides, as cinemas, they are very comfortable and show films magnificently. Of course, films unadulterated arc hardly ever to be found in the United States. A great many cinemas show a vaudeville programme with a film tacked on to the end of it. The rest do less magnificently what Mr Rothapfel, of “Roxy’s,” docs and stage an immense prologue to the picture along with musical interludes. This is rather annoying to anyone who wants to see films, as it may be necessary (as it was for the writer when visiting the “ Oriental ” at Chicago) to waft hours before any motion picture makes its appearance; and the tableaux vivants, ballets, orchestral interludes, jazz bands, and what not that are provided are not all first rate. It is rather annoying, too, not to be allowed to smoke. ... Films for more critical audiences are also shown at smaller picture theatres specialising in Continental pictures, revivals of worth-while films of all kinds, experimental or travel films, and oddities. . , But at least these new cinemas do deserve their nickname of “ cathedrals of motion pictures,” even though it may be true, as one of the weekly magazines gibes, that they exist only to provide half-wits with “ hot and cold running entertainment.”