“I AM big. It’s the PICTURES that got small.”

Friends have been telling me for years that the Landmark Loews Jersey Theater is “great” and that I really check it out.  And I said, “yeah, I will”,  but didn’t.  It’s like when I go to a movie in a theater myself, and come back and tell my friends that movies were made to be seen in theaters, and then after a couple of weeks I forget that myself and go back to watching them on TV.

But then, the organizer of our Book Club Meetup became pregnant; she temporarily handed over the reins of it to me; “Room 237” opened in NYC; I learned that having one Meetup gets you a second one free, so why not a Stanley Kubrick Meetup?

And then once you have a Kubrick Meetup, you can no longer not go to anything Kubrick.  You HAVE to go.  So, “Paths of Glory” was playing at the Loews.

Like with all “great” experiences, it was unexpected.  Like Kubrick movies.  No one could possibly “expect” them.

Journal Square, coming out of the PATH Station, is bleak.  The theater, right across the street, seems so too.  Well, if you are like me, and don’t actually notice anything above street level.

But the moment I stepped inside, shivers ran up my back and I was suddenly happy.

It was like stepping into the entry part of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine — just wow.  Wow.  Then you see beyond that, something much much bigger.  In this case, it was the place where they were going to show the movie.

When the lights go down, it gets really dark — “real country dark” — but you’re still aware of being in a vast place.  There are many rows of heads stretching down in front of you, like pebbles on a beach.  

And then when the screen lights up, it’s like that moment in the planetarium when you cross over from twilight, and there’s an the eerie feeling that they have lifted the roof off and there is nothing between you and the night sky.

While I’ve seen “Paths of Glory” many times, I realized, after a few minutes, that I had never actually seen a 35mm print of it in a theater, and that I’d almost never seen ANY film on a screen as big as this.

And there were some other realizations thereafter:

Even in the new “stadium seating” multiplexes, today’s screens seem nowhere near as big as they were at the old single-screen movie houses.  You no longer think, “it’s SO big!!!” This screen gets you back to that sense of wonder and awe.  And you forget what kind of seat you are sitting in.

Having one gigantic monophonic speaker directly behind the screen, the big sound coming directly FROM the image, and having some echo all around you, like you are in a big cave or cathedral — that’s a lot different, too, from the side stereo speakers and acoustic tiling we’ve gotten used to.  It was kind of uncanny.   Added something extra to the cavernous Chateau scenes.  Also, when Gerald Fried uses some kind of BIG drum during the Night Patrol scene —a drum that makes some kind of deep note — never noticed it in previous viewings, and never heard anything like it before.  It is what I imagine that “Boom Doom”in the Mines of Mordor would have sounded like.

Paths of Glory is very “talky”.   Somebody is always making a speech.  The words remained the same size as they were for me in past viewing on TV, and kept the same weight and meanings.  The images, though, and the editing, become much more significant, more suggesting, having changing connections to each other, depending on what you notice in the moment.   And you are really “in the moment”, immersed in the images, as if you are in the ocean trying to keep your head above the waves, rather than watching them from the beach.

The old “square” picture framing — “Academy Ratio”? — different from the standard wide screen of today — there’s a lot to be said for it, the emphasis on Tall vs. Wide.  The compositions are more effective, with more tension between elements.

This is lost on small screens: Light / Shadow / Texture /Scale.  They may be there, but you just don’t notice them.  The quality of light, or the import of a gesture.  Like looking at a large format photo print, compared to a 35mm.  It feels like a “deeper” reality.

Editing:  the way one image succeeds another.  Your mind hangs onto to this, like Tarzan swinging from vine to vine.  There’s nothing else to grab onto!   Editing, Kubrick said, was the one thing unique to film-making, and his favorite part of making a movie.  Contrast / Juxtaposition/ Rhythm.  These provoke many associations, from which you can make your own connections, different every time.