Bleecker Street Cinemas

25 years ago, I lived by the schedules of theatres like the Bleecker St, The Carnegie Hall, Thalia, Elgin, and Cinema Village.
I wish I had some of those old schedules now as souvenirs.
I went at least once a week to the great double bills for my education. Showings with themes like French New Wave Tuesday or Samurai Thursday.
Weekday Matinees were the best. I lived on Bleecker and I’d run down the street to make the show on time, and be one of a handful of early spectators, and then later, coming out into the street, my mind would be spinning.
I saw so many films for the first time at the Bleecker.
‘Breathless’, ‘Blow Up’, ‘Last Year at Marienbad’, ‘8 1/5’, and I’ll never forget ‘In the Realm of the Senses.'
One snowy night in December 1979 I trudged down the street to see Pasolini’s 'Gospel According to St. Matthew’.
The last movie I saw there was Wim Wenders' ‘The State of Things’ in 1983. It was a packed house. but much has changed since then. Most Art House and Revival Theatres have been replaced by the video tape and DVD. How I wish the Bleecker was back.

Well, DeNiro might be otherwise occupied because he took control of the old Screening Room on Varick in his beloved Tribeca.

One memorable evening I spent here was in the mid 1980s when Godard’s “Hail Mary” was screening here. This film, while not the cause celebre of Scorsese’s much more high profile “Last Temptation of Christ,” caused some kerfuffle back in the day. I remember attending the other film that was playing with “HM” and leaving the theatre and having to bypass this gauntlet of strange people who were on the sidewalk praying with a great deal of intensity.

There are so many quirky places in NYC that have closed since I’ve been here. It is part of the homogenization of NYC. The Bleecker Street Cinema was one of those places, owner operated, that had personality. Now there are all the chain stores. I’m sure Duane Reade will be moving in to that space soon to provide competition to the CVS Store in the building where the Village Gate was.

I visited the Apple in 1980 during spring break. Among the week’s diversions was our accidental discovery of the Bleecker Street Theatre. A double bill was playing that day – Catch 22 and MASH. Perfect faire for a day long rain in mid March. We ducked into the theatre and emerged a half a day later touched by the shared environment. To my narrow midwestern mind it was another slice of NYC experience to add to the shell gamers of Times Square, Max’s Kansas City, CBGB’s, some off Broadway in the form of Oh Calcutta!, an evenings entertainment with Johnny Thunders and strung out friends and 4am subway rides. But the Bleecker remains poignant amid the flurry.

Gerald A. DeLuca, you’re absolutely correct. It was “Le Million” that I saw, directed by Rene Clair, not Renoir.

I remember both Carnegie Hall Cinema and Bleecker Street Cinema with great fondness. I used to go to these two theaters on a regular basis back in the late 70’s. It was great. You could see films there you could see no where else in NY. “Big Deal on Madonna Street.” “The Bicycle Thief.” “Blowup.” “Le MIllionaire (Renoir). I saw all these films either at the Bleecker or Carnegie. Lots of silent films. Chaplin. At the Carnegie I remember there was once an organist present to accompany a silent film. If memeory serves me right, Chaplin died around Christmastime 1977. Some of my family was in NY and Bleecker Street Cinema was showing a Chaplin film. We all went. At first, I would just get up and go to the movies. No lines and the theaters were only half filled at most. Price was something like either $1.25 or $1.50. A newletter was started but only a few issues ever came out. Great time in my life.

Yes, Breathless was our house cat. I ran the Bleecker Street Cinema in the early 60s (along with the late Marshall Lewis.) I would sometimes get a buzz on the house phone from the projection booth with the terse message “cat’s on the screen.:” Breathless, a jet black smallish creature, would escape from the office area and start to climb the movie screen (which like most screens at the time had small holes in it, so it wouldn’t billow in a draft. ) I would go out on the small stage in front of the screen and grab the cat, who was usally about two thirds of the way up the screen. Regulars in the audience would root for the cat to get to the top , a goal I don’t think he ever reached.
That screen also comes into play with regard to Francois Truffaut. Indeed The Bleecker Street was his favorite theater in New York, along with most of the new wave directors (Godard, Resnias, Colpi were a few of our visitors. ) At that time, The Bleecker Street was the home of The NY Film Bulletin, a small magazine I published. We were the first to present translations from Cahiers du Cinema, the French magazine that was the source of Les Politiques Des Auteurs, known in the U.S. as the auteur theory. Most people remembrer The Bleecker Street as two theaters, but back then it was only one with 199 seats. (It had been an off-broadway theatre and 200 or more seats meant higher union wages.) The space that became the other theatre was a cavernous area that we used as an office. It was also an area that became a salon for the film literati of New York. Andy Sarris, Eugene Archer, Jonas Mekas and many others would just drop in and soon heated dicsussions would get underway. The auteur theory was quite controversial at the time and not at all accepted by most of the movie establishement. Pauline Kael was strongly against and was such other leading lights st Bosley Crowther and Dwight MacDonald. When Truffaut came to New York he would often stop by the Bleecker Street. I did one of the noted interviews with him on the auteur theory in the large backroom. We were fanatical about proper projection and proper screen ratio for the three screen formats. We had evolved a system of mattes that would work by pulleys so as to change from CinemaScope to standard ratio to what was known then as VistaVision (and is now known as wide-screen.). Since we always showed double bills, if they were in different formats, we would have to go backstage and re-arrange the mattes. On one of Truffaut’s visits were showinga CinemaScope film (actually it was Jules and Jim) and the second featurre was standard format. I excused myself, telling him I had to change the screen ratio. He asked if he could come and watch. He stepped behind the screen as I worked the pulleys and as soon as finished, the film started. Truffaut was fascinated by seeing the film projected through the screeen and onto this body also by wathcing the audience watch a film. He stayed back there for quite awhile. The result of that expierence can be seen in his next film, The Soft Skin, when the lead actor goes behind a movie screen.
The Bleecker Street was owned by film-maker Lionel Rogosin (On The Bowery, Come Back Africa.) It was because of his documentary on South Africa that the theater came into existence. He couldn’t find a theater interested in showing it on his terms, so being quite wealthy, he rented an off-broaway theater which for years had been showing Lorca’s Blood Wedding. He opened Come Back Africa to respectful but not great reviews. He dug in his heels and just kept showing it. Finally he realized he had a theatre that was in trouble. He wanted to leave the country to make a film so he hired Marshall and I to run it for him. We did so on the condition that we would only have to
shoe Come Back Africa no more than twice a year.
If I had the time, I could tell dozens of stories about strange events at this theatre. The saga of the U.S. premiere of Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio’s Rising would take a few thousand words to tell. I’m supposed to be working on my website instead of this, but if anyone has any comments about The Bleecker Street or memories of visits, I’d love to hear them. Regards, rudy franchi

Loosing the Bleecker meant loosing part of the history of Greenwich Village. If any theatre should have lasted it was this one. It had that true shabby chic feel to it that a place like the Film Forum will never have.

I remember reading that French director François Truffaut said this was his favorite New York cinema. Truffaut’s 1961 film “Tire au flanc,” made in collaboration with Claude de Givray, was given its New York premiere at the Bleecker in 1963, and I don’t believe it actually received much, if any, U.S. distribution after that. Perhaps it was screened by special arrangement with Truffaut.

The Village Voice, in a June 20, 1989 article on lower Manhattan theatres ,lists the Bleecker main auditorium as seating 200 and the James Agee room as holding 78.