Movie theater

A movie theater (American English),^[1] cinema (British English),^[2] or cinema hall (Indian English),^[3] also known as a movie house, picture house, picture theater or simply theater, is a business that contains auditoria for viewing films (also called movies, motion pictures or "flicks") for public entertainment. Most are commercial operations catering to the general public, who attend by purchasing tickets.

The film is projected with a movie projector onto a large projection screen at the front of the auditorium while the dialogue, sounds and music are played through a number of wall-mounted speakers. Since the 1970s, subwoofers have been used for low-pitched sounds. Since the 2010s, the majority of movie theaters have been equipped for digital cinema projection, removing the need to create and transport a physical film print on a heavy reel.

A great variety of films are shown at cinemas, ranging from animated films to blockbusters to documentaries. The smallest movie theaters have a single viewing room with a single screen. In the 2010s, most movie theaters had multiple screens. The largest theater complexes, which are called multiplexes—a concept developed in Canada in the 1950s—have up to thirty screens. The audience members often sit on padded seats, which in most theaters are set on a sloped floor, with the highest part at the rear of the theater. Movie theaters often sell soft drinks, popcorn and candy, and some theaters sell hot fast food. In some jurisdictions, movie theaters can be licensed to sell alcoholic drinks.

History[edit]

Precursors[edit]

Movie theatres stand in a long tradition of theaters that could house all kinds of entertainment. Some forms of theatrical entertainment would involve the screening of moving images and can be regarded as precursors of film.

In 1799, Étienne-Gaspard "Robertson" Robert moved his Phantasmagorie show to an abandoned cloister near the Place Vendôme in Paris. The eerie surroundings, with a graveyard and ruins, formed an ideal location for his ghostraising spectacle.

When it opened in 1838, The Royal Polytechnic Institution in London became a very popular and influential venue with all kinds of magic lantern shows as an important part of its program. At the main theatre, with 500 seats, lanternists would make good use of a battery of six large lanterns running on tracked tables to project the finely detailed images of extra large slides on the 648 square feet screen. The magic lantern was used to illustrate lectures, concerts, pantomimes and other forms of theatre. Popular magic lantern presentations included phantasmagoria, mechanical slides, Henry Langdon Childe's dissolving views and his chromatrope.^[10]^[11]

The earliest known public screening of projected stroboscopic animation was presented by Austrian magician Ludwig Döbler on 15 January 1847 at the Josephstadt Theatre in Vienna, with his patented Phantaskop. The animated spectacle was part of a well-received show that sold out in several European cities during a tour that lasted until the spring of 1848.^[12]^[13]^[14]^[15]

The famous Parisian entertainment venue Le Chat Noir opened in 1881 and is remembered for its shadow plays, renewing the popularity of such shows in France.

Earliest motion picture screening venues[edit]

The earliest public film screenings took place in existing (vaudeville) theatres and other venues that could be darkened and comfortably house an audience.

Cinema Odeon auditorium in Florence

Interior of Hoyts cinemas auditorium in Perth, Australia, with stadium seating with cup holders, acoustic wall hangings and wall-mounted speakers.

Tennispalatsi, one of the major Finnkino multiplex movie theatre places, in Helsinki, Finland

First-run theater: A theater that runs primarily mainstream film fare from the major film companies and distributors, during the initial new release period of each film.

Second-run or discount theater: A theater that runs films that have already shown in the first-run theaters and presented at a lower ticket price. (These are sometimes known as or "cheap seats".) This form of cinema is diminishing in viability owing to the increasingly shortened intervals before the films' home video release, called the "video window".

dollar theaters

or arthouse: A theater that presents more alternative and art films as well as second-run and classic films (often known as an "independent cinema" in the UK).

Repertoire/repertory theater

An or sex theater specializes in showing pornographic movies. Such movies are rarely shown in other theaters. See also Golden Age of Porn. Since the widespread availability of pornographic films for home viewing on VHS in the 1980s and 1990s, the DVD in the 1990s, and the Blu-ray disc in the 2000s, there are far fewer adult movie theaters.

adult movie theater

theaters can show conventional movies, but the major benefits of the IMAX system are only available when showing movies filmed using it. While a few mainstream feature films have been produced in IMAX, IMAX movies are often documentaries featuring natural scenery, and may be limited to the 45-minute length of a single reel of IMAX film.

IMAX

Movie theaters may be classified by the type of movies they show or when in a film's release process they are shown:

Advertising: Some moviegoers complain about commercial advertising shorts played before films, arguing that their absence used to be one of the main advantages of going to a movie theater. Other critics such as have expressed concerns that these advertisements, plus an excessive number of movie trailers, could lead to pressure to restrict the preferred length of the feature films themselves to facilitate playing schedules. So far, the theater companies have typically been highly resistant to these complaints, citing the need for the supplementary income. Some chains like Famous Players and AMC Theatres have compromised with the commercials restricted to being shown before the scheduled start time for the trailers and the feature film. Individual theaters within a chain also sometimes adopt this policy.^[83]

Roger Ebert

Loudness: Another major recent concern is that the dramatic improvements in and in subwoofer systems have led to cinemas playing the soundtracks of films at unacceptably high volume levels. Usually, the trailers are presented at a very high sound level, presumably to overcome the sounds of a busy crowd. The sound is not adjusted downward for a sparsely occupied theater. Volume is normally adjusted based on the projectionist's judgment of a high or low attendance. The film is usually shown at a lower volume level than the trailers. In response to audience complaints, a manager at a Cinemark theater in California explained that the studios set trailer sound levels, not the theater.

stereo sound systems

Copyright piracy: In recent years, cinemas have started to show warnings before the movie starts against using cameras and during the movie (camming). Some patrons record the movie in order to sell "bootleg" copies on the black market. These warnings threaten customers with being removed from the cinema and arrested by the police. Some theaters (including those with IMAX stadiums) have dogs at the doors to sniff recording smugglers. At particularly anticipated showings, theaters may employ night vision equipment to detect a working camera during a screening. In some jurisdictions this is illegal unless the practice has been announced to the public in advance.^[84]

camcorders

Crowd control: As movie theaters have grown into multiplexes and megaplexes, crowd control has become a major concern. An overcrowded megaplex can be rather unpleasant, and in an emergency can be extremely dangerous (indeed, "" is the standard example of the limits to free speech, because it could cause a deadly panic). Therefore, all major theater chains have implemented crowd control measures. The most well-known measure is the ubiquitous holdout line, which prevents ticket holders for the next showing of that weekend's most popular movie from entering the building until their particular auditorium has been cleared out and cleaned. Since the 1980s, some theater chains (especially AMC Theatres) have developed a policy of co-locating their theaters in shopping centers (as opposed to the old practice of building stand-alone theaters).^[85] In some cases, lobbies and corridors cannot hold as many people as the auditoriums, thus making holdout lines necessary. In turn, ticket holders may be enticed to shop or eat while stuck outside in the holdout line. However, given the fact that rent is based on floor area, the practice of having a smaller lobby is somewhat understandable.^[86]

shouting fire in a crowded theater

Media related to Cinemas at Wikimedia Commons

(Bloomington, Illinois newspaper)