Rivoli Theatre
1620 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10019
1620 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10019
50 people
favorited this theater
Showing 601 - 625 of 1,004 comments
The ads I posted yesterday for West Side Story, The Wizard of Oz, Marty etc. were copied from microfilm in 1972, the year I began college. The location of the New York Times microfilm collection in the library basement of Seton Hall U. was probably the best thing I learned the whole time I was there! I taped them to pieces of oak tag and hung them on my bedroom wall, and they were still taped to the oak tag 33 years later. They were only collecting dust where they were, so it was better to post them here and share them with people who’d really appreciate them, like you guys.
Most of my other posts are from the Hackensack Public Library’s microfilm collection – I’ve been going there on my days off – but a few of them are from an actual New York Times Arts and Leisure section from 1968 that I still have intact (because of “2001: A Space Odyssey”).
Bill,I would like to second Porter’s remarks, the ads are a treasure
What great memories they stir up!
Hey Bill Huelbig, Whats the history of some of these ads you are listing for us? Some are real pieces of old newsprint, have you been saving them for years. Some have tape marks, did you have them on the wall at some point? They are the ones I like best they are nice and sharp and the paper has yellowed and I find them very evocative. Sometimes I feel like I am scanning the pages of the NY Times again when there was a choice of great films to see every day. Try doing that today. Thanks and keep up the good work!
I agree with Vincent todays film director’s can’t compare with the master film director’s from Hollywood’s Golden Era. Due to Hitler’s Nazi Germany the great European directors fled Europe to make there films in Hollywood at the height of the studio system.It was a rare time that produced quality mass audience films of all types. The Hollywood of today produces few quality films each year and todays A list films such as Batman Begins,Spiderman2 and War of the Worlds would of been the B films during the studio sytsem.brucec
From October 1961 – opening night of “West Side Story”:
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Oh my goodness I must have a mental block. However I never mispell Minnelli.
Ha ha! Is it a typo again? It’s Scorsese, –sese, not –cese. I’m glad we like a lot of the same films, especially Visconti’s Rocco and Il Gattopardo. They’re incredibly great.
The Scorcese mispelling was a typo but you got me on the Coppola.
I’ve always felt Scorcese had great taste in movies as an audience. We love a lot of the same films and I appreciate his attempt to evoke Minnelli, Cukor, Wyler, Visconti, and Ophuls in Innocence. But due to their cultural upbringing they had a style and taste which from what I’ve seen can no longer be recreated. That’s why everything to me in period films seems like Masterpiece Theater-weightless and dull.
Cukor could make Pat and Mike or MFL, Minnelli Gigi or Some Came Running, Ophuls Liebelei or Madame De, Visconti Rocco or Leopardo,
Wyler Carrie or Ben Hur. By the way they were also lucky with the craftsmen amd women they had working for them.
Yep, they were film giants. Is there a person alive today you could compare to them?(I’ll give you Bergman.)
I don’t want to be a pain in the butt, and I misspell things too, but I get annoyed at the frequent misspellings by many folks of the last names of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. I guess it bothers me because I am an Italian American. So that leads me to recommend to you Martin Scorsese’s “family film” entitled Italianamerican if you haven’t seen it. It’s a hoot.
One of the things that shocked and still shocks me about “Candidate” is that brain splattering scene. This is a film made in 1962! The late great movie critic Pauline Kael called “The Manchurian Candidate” one of the most exciting American films of the 60s.
As for “Oliver”, in my opinion, it’s the very last of the great movie musicals. Remarkable that it’s kind of forgotten but it really is an excellent film. Dramatically speaking, it’s better than “The Sound of Music”. “Music” is pretty thin material if you look very closely at it. “Oliver” has a much more compelling storyline and characters. The mood and music are perfect.
Scorcese did a fine, fine job with “The Age of Innocence”.
Well I guess we agree to disagree on the Scorcese and Coppolla front as I find their films as exciting as somebody else’s unpleasant home movies.(Recently flipped on a channel and saw what I thought was a particularly dull and unimaginative Masterpiece Theater episode and it was Scrocese’s Age of Innocence one of the most beautiful of american books!)
But we agree on Manchurian Candidate. A terrific film and I was as surprised as you to see that ad.
By the way only a year separated Oliver and Midnight Cowboy.
I could never figure out what Sinatra meant when he said he pulled it from circulation after JFK. The film was shown at least twice on network TV (which is where I saw it) – on CBS in the ‘60’s a few years after Kennedy’s death, and again on NBC in the early '70’s. The '70’s showing included the gory shot of the brains splattering the wall, which somehow got past the NBC censors.
Here’s another double ad from 1965 that I posted on the Capitol page:
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Hey Vincent, don’t go knocking the 70s Scorcese and Coppolla. Yes, today their creativity is pretty much gone but back then, they literally (IMO) saved film. I don’t think I would be as big a movie fan or even on THIS site if it were not for them. They created some of the most exciting and original film making of all time. I’m not a big fan of Altman, though. I find his films phony and overly self reverential. “Kids” today talk about Scorcese and Coppola as Gods. They do not know much about Altman.
The issue that may be dragging you down about the 70s American “New Wave” is how dramatically different it was from the films released just a few years before. As bad a critic as he is, Jeffrey Lyons once made an interesting point that there was barely a four year difference between “The Sound of Music” and “Midnight Cowboy”, two films as different as night and day.
But like you, I LOVED that ad that RobertR posted. What I found surprising was that “The Manchurian Candidate” (hands down, the absolute BEST political thriller EVER made!) was in re-release. I thought Sinatra had pulled it out of circulation after the Kennedy assasination.
I love the block ad Robert posted of SOM and Magnificent Men. I assume its from the summer of ‘65. And to think at the same time I saw MFL next store at the Criterion.
Boo to the nouvelle vague americane of the late 60’s and early 70’s.
It ruined movies forever.
Now tell me honestly all the movies of Coppolla, Scorcese and Altman put together are they worth How the West was Won in 3 strip Cinerama?
Old Rudolph Valentino ad from the Rivoli for sale:
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“The Sugarland Express (1974) flat” (Michael Coate, July 6, 2005)
“Actually SUGARLAND EXPRESS was in scope, not 1.85.” (bufffilmbuff, Jul 7, 2005)
I don’t remember typing in “flat”! I certainly know “The Sugarland Express” was scope. I’ve seen it; I’ve reported it as scope in magazine articles and reviews on which I contributed; and, even if I mistyped it, it should be obvious I knew it was scope because in that post’s summary I correctly claimed nine as the number of scope films directed by Spielberg.
So…which Cinema Treasures guy edited my post to make me look bad??!! Or better yet, how ‘bout I use the excuse of my niece messing around on my computer, and she was the one who actually made that Spielberg post and somehow, as if by magic, my name ended up on it!
Sept 65 Fox did a block ad for it’s two roadshows “Sound of Music” and “Magnificent Men in Flying Machines” which was at the Demille.
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Weren’t all Speilberg films shot(or at least directed)flat?
This was another argument against scope for Spielberg. He disliked
pan n scan for VHS, he went on record stating how much he hated the format. There was a bit of a war with “Raiders” when he fought the format from being used. He later gave in.
Actually SUGARLAND EXPRESS was in scope, not 1.85.
Sorry I made a typo with anamorphic which is of course the scope lens
Gerald, you have opened a deep wound for me with that one. When a theatre is designed, the projection lenses should be choosen to fit the screen. This is done by choosing the proper focal length which is determined by the distance from the projector to the screen (“throw”) and on the screen size, in far to many theatres not enough care in taken in this area. What you are describing is a theatre which simply threw a lens in the projector that closly fit the size of the screen. The proper method is, once you have determined the proper lens focal length, a test film (loop) should be run to properly fit the aspect ratio. These test films, provided by SMPTE or your lens provider, are projected on the screen and guide you in the proper aperature plate cutting to fit the image to the screen perfectly. Some theatres simply put a white light (no film) on the screen and cut the plates to match the screen with no regard to the lose of image or cropping caused by this method. Every new theatre must buy properly fit projection lenses, one for flat and one for scope. The anamprphic attachment is a one size fits all and is attached to the prime lens, but the prime lens MUST be the proper focal length. I am sure someone on this site might be able to explain the technicalities of all this better than I can but that is the jest of the problem you have described.
Mention should be made of the unconscionable practice of some theatres to pretty much ignore proper ratio on ‘Scope films. They have to use the correct lens, yes, but they crop the right and left sides of the image simply because there is not enough screen space. There is a theatre here in Providence notorious for doing it all the time. In New York, I believe the Little Carnegie, yes the Little Carnegie, used to do that. Death in Venice, when shown there, was cropped on the right and left. It was not shown in proper 'Scope (Panavision.) Then too, some theatres show 'Scope in the correct ratio, but at the same width as 1:1.85 presentations. If there is masking, you can see it drop. This, of course, defeats the purpose of 'Scope, which is meant to increase width, while not sacrificing height.
“23 films
Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) – FLAT” (PeterApruzzese)
22 ¼ :)
Spielberg said:
“ … whereas 1.85 more closely approximates the way the human eye really sees …”
Heck, I thought Cinerama did that the best.