The newest episode of Inside the Arthouse just dropped and it’s a fascinating one. Hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge discuss the centenary of arthouse film with professor, historian, author and Academy Film Scholar Ross Melnick. It’s a lively conversation about the amazing history of arthouse film — Where it started, how far it’s come, and where is it today. Laemmle, third generation arthouse theater owner, adds his perspective, as the trio explores the last century considers the future of arthouse.
Here’s a taste from the beginning of their conversation:
ROSS MELNICK: The history of arthouse theaters is about a hundred years old. It really starts around 1925 with Simon Gould and the film guild and the beginning of what were then called “little cinemas.” So the little cinemas grew out of what was called the “little theaters.” Little theaters were performing arts theaters across the country. There were almost 5000 of them.
RAPHAEL SBARGE: Like vaudeville, kind of?
ROSS MELNICK: No, actually, literally for performing arts. For plays and performances that were avant-garde, experimental, off of the…mainstream. And there’s a growing movement in the ’20s to kind of push away from mainstream narratives and create theaters, legitimate theaters, that were for live performances. This is across the country. And so, inspired by little theaters, little cinemas grew, sometimes even in previously legitimate houses, to start showing films that were also experimental, avant-garde and, in this case, often foreign. They were sort of growing out of an interest in foreign films and if you — with the risk of boring you, let me take you back just a few years earlier, which is that World War I happens between ’14 and ’18. And when it’s over there’s a huge anti-German sentiment in the United States.
GREG LAEMMLE: Massive.
ROSS MELNICK: Massive, to say the least. And no one wants to show German films. The only person that’s willing to show a German film is himself a German-American. A guy named Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel, who most people know as Roxy and who, of course, is the person who created Radio City Music Hall. He founded it. He ran the Roxy, the Capitol, the Strand, the Rialto, the Rivoli. All the major movie houses or many of the major movie houses in New York were run by Roxy. And when Roxy, underneath Samuel Goldywn — we’ll come back to Samuel Goldywn and later we’ll talk about a different company that his progeny ran — but when Roxy ran the Capitol Theater, he was really interested in this movie called Madame Du Barry. It’s an Ernst Lubitch film. 1919. Roxy saw it and said, “I’m going to bring this movie here.” And he took that nine-reel film, and he cut it to six. He made new inter-titles…and he released it as Passion. The Capitol Theater in New York was 5,300 seats.
RAPHAEL SBARGE: Oh, my God.
ROSS MELNICK: So it’s the largest theater in the United States. It was also a trade industry darling…and Roxy was running it and thought, “I’m going to bring this film.” So it broke the unofficial German boycott, the anti-German boycott, and suddenly there was this massive hit of a foreign film.
Watch the whole conversation here: