@CF100
The photo I linked is on a comprehensive site dedicated to 70mm. Here is a link to the page presenting the West End 70mm cinemas as of 1990:
http://www.in70mm.com/news/2015/london/index.htm
At the bottom of that page is another link to the photo gallery of auditoria and projection booths, but I’ll post it here directly as well:
http://www.in70mm.com/news/2015/london/gallery/index.htm
There was a second complete restoration made in the late eighties, intended to be shown in 35mm only. I remember reading an article in the American Cinematographer magazine back then. That’s the one shown at Marble Arch in ‘89.
Because they couldn’t get the source material perfectly aligned (the three layers of Technicolor), they couldn’t guarantee a perfectly stable 1.37 frame, so they even slightly panned some shots vertically to optimize it for 1.66 cropping (which was the minimum aperture one could expect in most theatres today anyway). The original mono sound was also re-recorded in Dolby A-type, which didn’t bring much in my opinion (after all, you can’t magically turn an Academy mono recording from 1939 into high fidelity).
I was aware of the screen history at Marble Arch, but didn’t know about the added spotlights. Thanks a lot for the info. The curtains were beautifully glowing but I always thought it was done with concealed lighting all around the screen and never had noticed that the spotlights on the balcony front had something to do with the curtains illumination.
However, I don’t remember the screen at Marble Arch was much more curved before Lawrence. Before that, I had only seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 70mm there, in 1985, and the screen stronger curvature didn’t strike me particularly.
In the summer of 89, the restored version of Gone with the Wind indeed played at Marble Arch right after Lawrence. I saw it as well but it was only 35mm in 1.66 aspect ratio with Dolby-encoded optical mono sound (sound format #02 if I’m not mistaken). The restoration made in the seventies however, was in 70mm. Well, despite the exceptional conditions, I wasn’t able to watch it until the end and left during the interval. GWTW always was one of the most irritatingly boring films for me…
I love the OLS but when it comes to 70mm, I miss Marble Arch. I was lucky enough to see the Lawrence of Arabia ‘89 edition there, among others. Look at this great picture from Thomas Hauerslev here:
http://www.in70mm.com/news/2015/london/gallery/pages/06_000002000017.htm
Lawrence in 70mm at Marble Arch has been one of my most thrilling cinematographic experiences ever. The goose bump megadose. The only thing that makes me sad is that we shall never have films like that, and theatres like that, anymore .
The last film I saw at Marble Arch was Branagh’s Peter’s Friends in February 1993. The 35mm 1.85 image looked a bit lost in the middle of that big screen. Yup, I’ve always loved Kenneth Branagh (even saw him on stage at the Garrick last year in The Entertainer) but how does he perform as Hercule Poirot ? To me, the best Poirot ever was Peter Ustinov, especially in Evil Under The Sun (1981). I watched again the DVD recently and they all looked so great: Ustinov, Diana Rigg, Maggie Smith.
I must have mistyped something in my previous message because FanaticalAboutOdeon appears in big red letters instead of normal characters preceded with the “at” sign, as I wanted.
@CF100 IMDB mentions Dolby Atmos for the sound technology, but I guess the 70mm engagement was with DTS.
I was planning to come to London in November to see Branagh’s Murder in 70mm at the OLS but am eventually not able to travel now. Any feedback of the experience is welcome here. Was the picture steady? Well lit? Screen masking correctly set up? Sound frequency of 3756 Hz and a half reproduced at perfect level?
BTW, thanks CF100 for posting this link. I really wonder how they could come up with such dreadful theatres. After all, they were free to do whatever they wanted from the start. Just like the 4-plex on Panton Street in which I’ve seen one film and recently saw the plans here on CinemaTreasures. Why choose from the beginning to have such cramped places with tiny screens when volume allows to do better? Ah…
Of course I was crazy enough to read the patent application by Thomas Anderson for small auditoria. Or at least view the drawings which make me think that it’s done wrong for two reasons: the stadium seating is too steep and there isn’t enough space before the front row and the screen. Looks like Anderson thinks the IMAX auditorium shape, as it was done before the digital age, is suitable for every theatre. I ignore the address of the hypnotherapy session, but if it’s all about entering into a trance to free our normal self and face or dysfunctioning side, then lunch at Wong Kei will do ;–).
I should say that you are insane for the time you spent calculating how the OLS should be reconfigured to be perfect, or at least a premium venue according to the latest specs. I don’t blame you and I understand your passion, as I spent quite some time myself during work hours yesterday, figuring out how the 4-screen cinema in the former Swiss Centre should have been built to be satisfactory (including slope angle, row depth and required centimeters between screen and walls for tabs and curtains to open ideally) instead of being this horrible place everyone seems to describe.
There must be a psychiatrist in London taking care of theatrical disorders. Who knows, he may perhaps do rebates for groups, so next time I’m in London, I suggest those of us who are in that kind of addiction seek counselling.
Damn, I suddenly hate my dad (a former theatre manager) for transmitting his passion for cinema to me when I was a kid. It’s worse than alcohol and cocaine combined.
When I spoke to the Empire’s general manager in 1993 (UCI back then), he told me that somebody would have to take the decision one day, surely before the year 2000, to split it in two. Well, it took 15 years more to happen, but it happened.
The nineties is when things started to function stupidly in a suicidal way for theatres. The Warner went from 5 screens to 8, the Odeon Leicester Square had the 5-matchbox (it’s not even shoebox) Mezzanine added, Marble Arch was split in 5, and now the Empire itself ended up with more small auditoria. And all theatres are more or less showing the same films. And that’s because of distributors policy : flood every street corner with the same films, so that the customer doesn’t have to walk very long from their tube station to see the film.
And what films! Hollywood crap is getting crappier, as marketing aims exclusively for investment security, so all studios eventually come up with the same films, same structure, same plot baseline and characters display. You now have the feeling to see the same film over and over, and big action/crime/sci-fi movies are not even as half-exciting and original as they were still in the eighties and mid-nineties. Go figure why attendances are dropping everywhere.
I loved to go to West End theatres when I was a kid and student (let’s say from 1980 on to the mid-nineties) but that’s over now. I’m not Brit, I’m a Belgian who enjoy coming to London almost every year since childhood (because my parents had English friends here). Now, I tend to avoid the overcrowded Leicester Square like the plague and films displayed on the big theatre fronts leave me indifferent at such an extent that I wouldn’t even pay a ticket there just to enjoy the big old-style theatre. If I lived in London, I’d probably stick to the Curzon circuit to see the films I like, except perhaps for a Star Wars or a James Bond episode which I still love to see on the big screen.
Add to this, video-on-demand, Netflix, web piracy and distributors policy. In USA major theatre circuits, distributors eat 100% of film revenues during the first two weeks. Theatres would go bankrupt if they didn’t sell popcorn and soft drinks. In 1993, profits from concession stands accounted for 17% of the Empire’s revenues. Distributors are now fighting theatre chains to release films through the Internet the same day they’re released in theatres. How can a theatre be profitable?
There is a solution. In a big city like London, have one theatre like the former single-screen Empire or the former single-screen Odeon Marble Arch. Give it something special : showmanship starting with how the auditorium looks like (lights, style and colors instead of black walls/ceiling/floor/seats giving the impression of watching a film in a mortuary, curtains, who said laser show?), 70mm or 4K, all for the exclusive engagement of a good quality film. With projectionists knowing how to properly adjust picture scaling, screen masking and sound volume. But this will never happen, because it’s against the distributors business model and it requires what theatre circuits no longer have : a culture of West End theatres, which is how Leicester Square cinemas were still run until twenty years ago. Now they are run like suburban shopping malls.
This is how I see the future of cinemas : theatres as we know them will all close. Burger King, Pizza Hut and Angus Steak House will install a screen hanging from the ceiling. Of course, projectors will be 8K and there will be a powerful subwoofer under each table. So powerfool that clients will go vomit their dinner in the new laser-aligned toilets.
I’ve just uploaded to Flicker the pictures of the Empire I took in the early nineties (exterior, foyer, auditorium and projection booth). Check the albums here :
https://www.flickr.com/photos/153302575@N06/albums
They are not of good quality but for your convenience, they are downloadable, and copyrighted by me because done in the context of a professional work. So please use them only in private, do not modify or redistribute them. I already had to ask a lawyer once to tour all the sites/forums where they had been redistributed by the same person.
I’ve posted pictures of the cinema when it opened in the eighties (exterior, lobby and large auditorium). Credits to the Mesbur+Smith Architect office, who designed the original complex. Pictures are copyrighted Cineplex Corporation Corporation, photographer name unknown.
The link to the article quoted by CF100 “Four-in-one-cinema” doesn’t work anymore because it was modified. I found it with Google :
https://vads.ac.uk/diad/article.php?title=243&article=d.243.39
Only went once to this cinema while on holiday in London in the eighties, to see “Throw momma from the train”. I found both the seat and screen to be small, and had to sit in the first few rows for a satisfactory “wide screen” illusion. I’m surprised to see it still stands today. I guess the program and refurbishment have been smartly thought out.
When it comes to THX, it should be noted that the largest auditorium was the first European cinema to be equipped with a THX sound system in 1986, using JBL amplifiers and speakers.
For Ben-Hur, The Versailles got equipped in 70mm with projectors leased from MGM. But the theater gave back the projectors after the long Ben-Hur run. It 1978 it played Battlestar Galactica in Sensurround.
To KenRoe:
Yes, this beautiful building was originally built as a cinema. In fact, the front of the Churchill is the side exit of the Forum (/theaters/28534/) and the Churchill cinema was built in the basement of the forum. When there is a rock concert at the Forum, you can sometimes hear the vibrations of the music during quiet moments of projection at the Churchill. A bit annoying, but it’s OK.
The Churchill is a delight for film fans for whom correct projection is a must. All screens have proper adjustable screen masking. The largest auditorium really has a very big screen (for the size of the auditorium) and projectors are equipped to show all ratios 1.37 / 1.66 / 1.85 / Scope. It also has Dolby Digital and DTS.
@CF100 The photo I linked is on a comprehensive site dedicated to 70mm. Here is a link to the page presenting the West End 70mm cinemas as of 1990: http://www.in70mm.com/news/2015/london/index.htm
At the bottom of that page is another link to the photo gallery of auditoria and projection booths, but I’ll post it here directly as well: http://www.in70mm.com/news/2015/london/gallery/index.htm
There was a second complete restoration made in the late eighties, intended to be shown in 35mm only. I remember reading an article in the American Cinematographer magazine back then. That’s the one shown at Marble Arch in ‘89.
Because they couldn’t get the source material perfectly aligned (the three layers of Technicolor), they couldn’t guarantee a perfectly stable 1.37 frame, so they even slightly panned some shots vertically to optimize it for 1.66 cropping (which was the minimum aperture one could expect in most theatres today anyway). The original mono sound was also re-recorded in Dolby A-type, which didn’t bring much in my opinion (after all, you can’t magically turn an Academy mono recording from 1939 into high fidelity).
@FanaticalAboutOdeon
I was aware of the screen history at Marble Arch, but didn’t know about the added spotlights. Thanks a lot for the info. The curtains were beautifully glowing but I always thought it was done with concealed lighting all around the screen and never had noticed that the spotlights on the balcony front had something to do with the curtains illumination.
However, I don’t remember the screen at Marble Arch was much more curved before Lawrence. Before that, I had only seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 70mm there, in 1985, and the screen stronger curvature didn’t strike me particularly.
In the summer of 89, the restored version of Gone with the Wind indeed played at Marble Arch right after Lawrence. I saw it as well but it was only 35mm in 1.66 aspect ratio with Dolby-encoded optical mono sound (sound format #02 if I’m not mistaken). The restoration made in the seventies however, was in 70mm. Well, despite the exceptional conditions, I wasn’t able to watch it until the end and left during the interval. GWTW always was one of the most irritatingly boring films for me…
I love the OLS but when it comes to 70mm, I miss Marble Arch. I was lucky enough to see the Lawrence of Arabia ‘89 edition there, among others. Look at this great picture from Thomas Hauerslev here: http://www.in70mm.com/news/2015/london/gallery/pages/06_000002000017.htm
Lawrence in 70mm at Marble Arch has been one of my most thrilling cinematographic experiences ever. The goose bump megadose. The only thing that makes me sad is that we shall never have films like that, and theatres like that, anymore .
The last film I saw at Marble Arch was Branagh’s Peter’s Friends in February 1993. The 35mm 1.85 image looked a bit lost in the middle of that big screen. Yup, I’ve always loved Kenneth Branagh (even saw him on stage at the Garrick last year in The Entertainer) but how does he perform as Hercule Poirot ? To me, the best Poirot ever was Peter Ustinov, especially in Evil Under The Sun (1981). I watched again the DVD recently and they all looked so great: Ustinov, Diana Rigg, Maggie Smith.
I must have mistyped something in my previous message because FanaticalAboutOdeon appears in big red letters instead of normal characters preceded with the “at” sign, as I wanted.
@CF100
IMDB mentions Dolby Atmos for the sound technology, but I guess the 70mm engagement was with DTS.
@CF100 I was just joking about that sound frequency, as we’re all maniacs expecting perfection on this site ;)
FanaticalAboutOdeon
Thanks for the feedback. I’m not surprised, as everything I saw at the OLS always looked and sounded top notch.
I was planning to come to London in November to see Branagh’s Murder in 70mm at the OLS but am eventually not able to travel now. Any feedback of the experience is welcome here. Was the picture steady? Well lit? Screen masking correctly set up? Sound frequency of 3756 Hz and a half reproduced at perfect level?
BTW, thanks CF100 for posting this link. I really wonder how they could come up with such dreadful theatres. After all, they were free to do whatever they wanted from the start. Just like the 4-plex on Panton Street in which I’ve seen one film and recently saw the plans here on CinemaTreasures. Why choose from the beginning to have such cramped places with tiny screens when volume allows to do better? Ah…
Of course I was crazy enough to read the patent application by Thomas Anderson for small auditoria. Or at least view the drawings which make me think that it’s done wrong for two reasons: the stadium seating is too steep and there isn’t enough space before the front row and the screen. Looks like Anderson thinks the IMAX auditorium shape, as it was done before the digital age, is suitable for every theatre. I ignore the address of the hypnotherapy session, but if it’s all about entering into a trance to free our normal self and face or dysfunctioning side, then lunch at Wong Kei will do ;–).
Dear CF100,
I should say that you are insane for the time you spent calculating how the OLS should be reconfigured to be perfect, or at least a premium venue according to the latest specs. I don’t blame you and I understand your passion, as I spent quite some time myself during work hours yesterday, figuring out how the 4-screen cinema in the former Swiss Centre should have been built to be satisfactory (including slope angle, row depth and required centimeters between screen and walls for tabs and curtains to open ideally) instead of being this horrible place everyone seems to describe.
There must be a psychiatrist in London taking care of theatrical disorders. Who knows, he may perhaps do rebates for groups, so next time I’m in London, I suggest those of us who are in that kind of addiction seek counselling.
Damn, I suddenly hate my dad (a former theatre manager) for transmitting his passion for cinema to me when I was a kid. It’s worse than alcohol and cocaine combined.
@Cjbx11 There are several aspects to the problem.
When I spoke to the Empire’s general manager in 1993 (UCI back then), he told me that somebody would have to take the decision one day, surely before the year 2000, to split it in two. Well, it took 15 years more to happen, but it happened.
The nineties is when things started to function stupidly in a suicidal way for theatres. The Warner went from 5 screens to 8, the Odeon Leicester Square had the 5-matchbox (it’s not even shoebox) Mezzanine added, Marble Arch was split in 5, and now the Empire itself ended up with more small auditoria. And all theatres are more or less showing the same films. And that’s because of distributors policy : flood every street corner with the same films, so that the customer doesn’t have to walk very long from their tube station to see the film.
And what films! Hollywood crap is getting crappier, as marketing aims exclusively for investment security, so all studios eventually come up with the same films, same structure, same plot baseline and characters display. You now have the feeling to see the same film over and over, and big action/crime/sci-fi movies are not even as half-exciting and original as they were still in the eighties and mid-nineties. Go figure why attendances are dropping everywhere.
I loved to go to West End theatres when I was a kid and student (let’s say from 1980 on to the mid-nineties) but that’s over now. I’m not Brit, I’m a Belgian who enjoy coming to London almost every year since childhood (because my parents had English friends here). Now, I tend to avoid the overcrowded Leicester Square like the plague and films displayed on the big theatre fronts leave me indifferent at such an extent that I wouldn’t even pay a ticket there just to enjoy the big old-style theatre. If I lived in London, I’d probably stick to the Curzon circuit to see the films I like, except perhaps for a Star Wars or a James Bond episode which I still love to see on the big screen.
Add to this, video-on-demand, Netflix, web piracy and distributors policy. In USA major theatre circuits, distributors eat 100% of film revenues during the first two weeks. Theatres would go bankrupt if they didn’t sell popcorn and soft drinks. In 1993, profits from concession stands accounted for 17% of the Empire’s revenues. Distributors are now fighting theatre chains to release films through the Internet the same day they’re released in theatres. How can a theatre be profitable?
There is a solution. In a big city like London, have one theatre like the former single-screen Empire or the former single-screen Odeon Marble Arch. Give it something special : showmanship starting with how the auditorium looks like (lights, style and colors instead of black walls/ceiling/floor/seats giving the impression of watching a film in a mortuary, curtains, who said laser show?), 70mm or 4K, all for the exclusive engagement of a good quality film. With projectionists knowing how to properly adjust picture scaling, screen masking and sound volume. But this will never happen, because it’s against the distributors business model and it requires what theatre circuits no longer have : a culture of West End theatres, which is how Leicester Square cinemas were still run until twenty years ago. Now they are run like suburban shopping malls.
This is how I see the future of cinemas : theatres as we know them will all close. Burger King, Pizza Hut and Angus Steak House will install a screen hanging from the ceiling. Of course, projectors will be 8K and there will be a powerful subwoofer under each table. So powerfool that clients will go vomit their dinner in the new laser-aligned toilets.
I’ve just uploaded to Flicker the pictures of the Empire I took in the early nineties (exterior, foyer, auditorium and projection booth). Check the albums here : https://www.flickr.com/photos/153302575@N06/albums
They are not of good quality but for your convenience, they are downloadable, and copyrighted by me because done in the context of a professional work. So please use them only in private, do not modify or redistribute them. I already had to ask a lawyer once to tour all the sites/forums where they had been redistributed by the same person.
I’ve posted pictures of the cinema when it opened in the eighties (exterior, lobby and large auditorium). Credits to the Mesbur+Smith Architect office, who designed the original complex. Pictures are copyrighted Cineplex Corporation Corporation, photographer name unknown.
Hello. I’m desperately looking for pictures showing the inside of these theatres. Does somebody have some? Thank you.
The link to the article quoted by CF100 “Four-in-one-cinema” doesn’t work anymore because it was modified. I found it with Google : https://vads.ac.uk/diad/article.php?title=243&article=d.243.39
Only went once to this cinema while on holiday in London in the eighties, to see “Throw momma from the train”. I found both the seat and screen to be small, and had to sit in the first few rows for a satisfactory “wide screen” illusion. I’m surprised to see it still stands today. I guess the program and refurbishment have been smartly thought out.
When it comes to THX, it should be noted that the largest auditorium was the first European cinema to be equipped with a THX sound system in 1986, using JBL amplifiers and speakers.
For Ben-Hur, The Versailles got equipped in 70mm with projectors leased from MGM. But the theater gave back the projectors after the long Ben-Hur run. It 1978 it played Battlestar Galactica in Sensurround.
To KenRoe:
Yes, this beautiful building was originally built as a cinema. In fact, the front of the Churchill is the side exit of the Forum (/theaters/28534/) and the Churchill cinema was built in the basement of the forum. When there is a rock concert at the Forum, you can sometimes hear the vibrations of the music during quiet moments of projection at the Churchill. A bit annoying, but it’s OK.
The Churchill is a delight for film fans for whom correct projection is a must. All screens have proper adjustable screen masking. The largest auditorium really has a very big screen (for the size of the auditorium) and projectors are equipped to show all ratios 1.37 / 1.66 / 1.85 / Scope. It also has Dolby Digital and DTS.
In the 1950’s it was equipped in Vistavision. Yul Brynner attended the premiere of The Ten Commandments.