Paris Cinema

I think it was a Sack theatre in 1967 when I saw “The Graduate” there.

The Paris also had a time as a softcore/high class porn house in the late 70s early 80s. I remember a fairly long run for ‘The Naughty Victorians’ and also ‘Autobiography of a Flea.’ Likely others too.

I can tell you with certainty that the Beacon Hill was indeed one of Boston’s prime art houses in the 1950s and 1960s and, I believe, earlier, with many of the top foreign films playing here. I remember movies like the French version of “Gigi” playing here in the early 50s. I was too young to come to Boston to see it at the time, but I used to like to check out movie ads in the Boston papers. I believe the first movie I ever saw here was Nanni Loy’s “The Four Days of Naples” in 1963. I came up from Providence as a college student just to see that. I too saw “Casanova” here, but I don’t remember it as being reserved seat at the time. The other art houses in the period of the 1950s and 1960s were the Kenmore Cinema (torn down to build I-90), the Exeter Street Theatre, and the Telepix (later Park Square Cinema), the West End Cinema (1960s).

The Copley Place Cinema closing?
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving theatre.
Badly designed and done strictly so Sack Theatres (or whatever they were called at the time) could control the art house movies. When it opened it was widly reported that they had raised the price for art house films. distributors could get paid more for running there than traditional art houses in Boston. All part of the chain attempting to control the city. They all ready had the only regular theatres in town, so it was only art films & revival houses as alternatives.
Anyone remember the Beacon Hill triplex as an art house?

Chains often buy theaters to control a market – to prevent others from having that power – rather than because they like a theater for its size and style. They also know how hard it is to build a new theater in an urban area, so they figure by buying and controlling the local market, nobody will challenge that for a long time, which is true in Boston – look how long it took for the Fenway and Boston Common theaters to open after years of closing houses left and right. It also makes the chain more powerful to film distributors – “you want your film to play Boston, you deal only with US”. I am not saying this is at all right, but it is one of the reasons why.

Also, distribution changes and release patterns have drastically changed in the last 25 years, not to mention the population changes in Boston. There was a terrific article in the Phoenix a few years back that recalled how Boston went from a city for masses of ‘regular’ people (many large theaters, huge cafeteria style restaurants, dozens of local and corner markets) to a city for more upscale and particular people (small botiques, smaller stylish restaurants, many small screens for special tastes at theaters rather than one for everybody). The population of Boston proper has dropped from a high of over 800,000 in 1950 to 550,000 today, yet there is a huge housing crunch, all because these neighborhoods used to be teeming with families and are now occupied by young professionals. On my residential street alone, there are at least 70 apartments… years ago, each apartment would have two parents, a couple of kids, an aunt or uncle or grandparents… now, one or two young professionals live in each unit… that’s at least one hundred less people on my street who USED to go to stores, restaurants, and MOVIES. And that’s one street.

Times have changed and unfortunately, the theaters are one of the victims.

The NYC Paris has a very unique history as it was owned for decades by the French company Pathe. For that reason, a connection between the Boston and NYC Paris theaters is probably unlikely.

I agree that the Boston Paris was neglected by Sack/USA. For example, despite its reputation as a prestige house in the 70s and 80s, management never bothered to install a stereo sound system at the Paris, even when Dolby had become commonplace.

A great single screen house.
At one point in its history it was owned by the same group that owned the Welles who tried to bring a sense of fun to it including an ‘Paris goes ape’ film marathon the year the horrible King Kong remake came out.
Mostly it was neglected by the Sack chain that owned it afterwards.
It’ll always be in my memory because when he was filming Bostonians in town, Christopher Reeve came by to see Zelig and stayed around to talk a bit afterwards.

The facade was all glass, looking into the lobby, which did indeed have benches. You had to walk through the entire lobby to get to the doors into the auditorium. Originally part of the Embassy Theatre chain (Joseph E Levine), along with the Kenmore, Park Sq, West End and (I believe) The Abbey. Showed Euro art films in its early days as I recall. “The Graduate” had a very long run there in the late 60’s. Had the Eiffel Tower on it’s signage.

Ian’s correct – the final film to screen at the Paris was indeed ‘Sommersby’, in the spring of 1993. The theatre – which, for a time, was where a vast majority of Woody Allen’s films were booked first-run in Boston – was completely demolished within two months' time.

I remember seeing some terrific or terrifically interesting movies here over the years. Among the first I saw in the theatre’s opening years were Antonioni’s ZABRISKIE POINT, with the doomed star Mark Frechette meeting patrons in the lobby before the evening show, Pasolini’s THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT MATTHEW, Rossif’s TO DIE IN MADRID, Loren and Mastroianni in De Sica’s YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW. It was a comfortable roomy place.