To hear every film critic tell it, movies were a hell of a lot better when they were young and impressionable. Never mind how the young and impressionable feel now. I may complain to anyone who will listen that filmmaking peaked with The Last Starfighter and RoboCop but somewhere out there is a budding cinephile who will one day probably say the same thing about Gravity and RoboCop. But if you’ll allow me to break the ranks for a moment, I think we desperately need to return to an era that pre-dates my childhood and (probably) yours, and bring back intermissions.
If you are impossibly young – like, so young that a 32-year-old seems ancient to you – I suppose I might need to explain what intermissions are. There was a time when lengthier movies like Gone with the Wind or Lawrence of Arabia used to pause in the middle to let the audience stretch their legs, go to the bathroom, smoke a cigarette (not recommended) and talk about the movie they’ve been watching.
In live theater, intermissions are kind of necessary. They give the cast and crew time to change costumes, alter the set and catch their breath halfway through the production. In movies, intermissions were originally necessary to change large reels of 35mm film, but as technology improved they evolved into merely a welcome breather, an opportunity to sell more popcorn and an effective way to make an epic feel… well, more epic.
Intermissions in movies are gone now, unless you’re watching a revival of Barry Lyndon (recommended), but the principle survives through movies released in multiple volumes like Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill or Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac, Volume I of which opened last weekend. Even if you dashed right home to watch Nymphomaniac: Vol. II on VOD immediately afterwards, even if months from now you watch them back-to-back by switching out one Blu-ray for another, what you’re getting is essentially an intermission. You’re forced to reflect for at least a few minutes on what you’ve just seen, and you are free to speculate amongst yourselves about what will happen next without committing the cardinal sin of – oh no! – talking during the movie.
What happened to proper intermissions? Most people blame movie theaters trying to cram more screenings into a single day, but let’s be honest here: most movies aren’t long enough to warrant an intermission anyway. Unless a movie is at least three hours there’s no reason to chop it in half, and no reason to sacrifice the precious minutes necessary to schedule one last screening and make theater owners more money. (Let’s face it, they need the cash.)
But if the movie is already three hours long, an extra ten minutes in the middle can’t hurt much. Besides, it’s an extra chance to bilk audiences out of concessions. Usually theaters only make money on popcorn, sodas and candy (where they make the bulk of their profits already) before the actual movie begins. But catering to the audience’s sweet tooth twice in one sitting might make up for the potential loss in ticket sales, and some audience members might even be more inclined to buy a larger soda in the first place if they knew a bathroom break was awaiting them. The added concession business at intermissions might even justify giving theater ushers those extra work hours they need to start paying off their student loans.
Then again, who cares about the theater owners? Intermissions would encourage audience interaction with the movie by forcing them to make conversation in the middle of it, and if the movie is interesting enough to warrant a three-hour running time in the first place, there will be plenty to talk about. Besides, who hasn’t been trapped in a middle of a long movie, debating whether to risk missing an important plot point or risk an embarrassing sudden explosion from their bladder?
And filmmakers, they get to put another tool back in their toolbox. They don’t have to put an intermission in the middle of their movie, but if they did, the opportunity for two-act structures will return in force, allowing them to craft bigger narratives that will feel like two motion pictures playing back-to-back. The rousing adventure of the first half of Lawrence of Arabia followed by the tragic downfall of the second. The rise of the Civil War in the first half of Gone with the Wind and then dramatic compromises that followed.
What impact could this have on modern epics? Could we treat the formation of the Fellowship of the Ring like its own movie and the perilous tale of their disbandment like another? Would you feel like you got twice your money’s worth? I think I would.
What do you think? Is there a place for intermissions in the modern multiplex? If not, why not? What do you have against intermissions anyhow?
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
