Saturday night at the Aero

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The restored Aero Theatre -- the westside flagship for the American Cinematheque -- is a single-screen venue on an affluent, relatively quiet Santa Monica boulevard. Nice people run it and nice people -- a mostly older crowd -- are always there. An Italian ice store is just down the the street, an antique furniture store that Mary Steenburgen is a co-proprietor of sits next to it. The whole quiet-community atmosphere is like a Valium. The vibe at the Arclight or the Bridge or the Monica Plex on Second Street is fine, but the Aero feels like yesteryear.

Aero theatre marquee -- Saturday, 8.18.07, 7:25 pm

Last night's experience was very much like seeing a movie on a quiet summer night in a small town in the '60s or '70s. The Aero is a remnant of the modest- sized, personably-managed theatres that you could find in every last small town in America before the plexing boom of the '80s.

On top of which the sound and projection standards at the Aero are superb, and they're always showing good films there. On a wisp of a whim Jett and I went there last night to see Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, and the show was all but sold out. Madeleine Stowe, whom I'll always have a thing for because of her performance in Stakeout 20 years ago, and her actor husband Brian Benben and their daughter sat right next to us.

And it was nice to see a still-pretty-good Hitchcock film with a good crowd that laughed and "oohed" and "aahed" from time to time. There's a moment on the Casablanca-to-Marrakech bus in the beginning when James Stewart asks an Arab-French gentleman named Louis Bernard (Daniel Gelin) why a Muslim man has gotten so upset with his son for accidentally pulling off his wife's veil ("It was just an accident") and Bernard replies that "Muslims aren't very comfortable with accidents," or words to that effect. That got a kind of murmuring dark laugh.

The downside is that The Man Who Knew Too Much didn't look anywhere near as good as it does on the digitally remastered DVD that came out in February 2006. Not even close. Or at least, not from where we were sitting in the fourth or fifth row. The print was fairly new and scratch-free, but it wasn't that much of a treat. Maybe if we had sat in the rear rows.

Almost all color movies from the '50s and '60s look somewhat underwhelming -- grainy, fuzzy, under-saturated, not detailed enough -- by today's standards when you see them in a theatre. The last time I saw an older color film that looked really exceptional was when I saw Gone With the Wind at the Academy theatre two or three years ago. The digitally remastered, 4K-projected Singin' in the Rain that played there was supposed to be pretty good also.

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on August 19, 2007 at 10:34 AM

comment #1

buckzollo says ...

Off topic maybe, but wanted to share. I am at a BBQ yesterday, small deep in the valley family thing (not mine,the hostess'). I recognize but can't place an obivous actress. I search for the hostess to confirm, but she is not avail. I see my wife talking to a woman I had previously had a nice exchange with and using my perceived discretion moved in to ask my wife: "hey that woman over there is an actress, who is she?" The other woman chirps up: "oh that's my mom Eva Marie Saint." Duh! Ranks just behind eagerly asking an overweight woman at a wedding reception when she is due.

Posted by buckzollo at August 19, 2007 11:59 AM

comment #2

gruver1 says ...

Wells to Zollo: Was the woman who said "that's my mom" named Laurette by any chance? Reddish hair, freckles, etc.?

Posted by gruver1 at August 19, 2007 12:02 PM

comment #3

buckzollo says ...

uh..yes. Lovely ladies! EMS = living legend/ national treasure. Welcome to self-inflicted semi-private cum public humiliation.

Posted by buckzollo at August 19, 2007 12:10 PM

comment #4

Marty Melville says ...

The look of these fifties and sixties films can be frustratingly erratic... I wonder if it's simply the care that goes into re-striking the new print or the studio being forced to work with whatever they have.
Case in point, the prints for CRACK IN THE WORLD (1965) and QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1967) at the American Cinematheque in Hollywood this past week were terrific... and in the case of QUATERMASS better than terrific. QUATERMASS was newly struck, had rich color, fine detail and very little grain... it could stand screen-to-screen with any contemporary film.
On the other hand, like Jeff, I've seen revivals of Hitchcock films that look blurry and chalky.

Posted by Marty Melville at August 19, 2007 12:13 PM

comment #5

Fassler says ...

I live up the street from the Aero! BEST MOVIE THEATER EVER!!!

Posted by Fassler at August 19, 2007 12:33 PM

comment #6

Wrecktum says ...

Unless the old print is dye transfer processed, there's no way the colors are going to pop, no matter how well preserved the original elements.

Posted by Wrecktum at August 19, 2007 12:55 PM

comment #7

J. Huff says ...

I'm just glad people remember who Hitchcock is. Just this morning, I was thinking about how little love there seems to be for the man considering his talent. Too populist, maybe.

Posted by J. Huff at August 19, 2007 1:12 PM

comment #8

Walter Sobchak says ...

Love the Aero! Last time I went it was because some loony left-wing hippy (on this very forum) told me "Skidoo" was possibly the greatest film ever made. (okay, it was a lot of fun, I admit...but it was no "Lord Love a Duck")

Early color scoped movies have a lot of grain that don't hold up well on a big screen, especially to our modern eyes. This is true even with great prints. I believe that's a big reason why many of them were shot in 70 (65) mm.... to compensate.

Few years back I saw "Lawrence of Arabia" and "The Guns of Navarone" at the Cinerama Dome... (part of a week-long Columbia Pictures celebration... anyone else remember that? ...tres cool)

"Lawrence..." (70mm scope) looked fantastic, (F.F. Coppola seemed impressed...he was sitting in front of us...how cool is that?) but "...Navarone" (35mm scope) had a lot of grain, even though the print was quite good and clean... Of course the place you really notice it is right before and during the dissolves and when there are process shots...

....which is why Spielberg wanted to shoot the process shots for Close Encounters in 70mm... so they wouldn't stick out from the rest of the film

Posted by Walter Sobchak at August 19, 2007 1:34 PM

comment #9

DarthCorleone says ...

The Aero is great. It has hosted several of my best theater experiences since moving out here.

Posted by DarthCorleone at August 19, 2007 4:12 PM

comment #10

Mr.ROACH says ...

Mr. Wells doesn't mention when he lived just minutes from the Aero, way back in the day. It was a wonderful theatre experience all the way back in the seventies, and already had a 'retro' feel to it then.

Posted by Mr.ROACH at August 19, 2007 4:18 PM

comment #11

malibugigolo says ...

The Aero is a great place. I checked out Chaplin's THE KID awhile back and came away impressed. One of the reasons I may be moving south.

Posted by malibugigolo at August 19, 2007 5:51 PM

comment #12

le corbeau says ...

I always thought Eva Marie Saint was way cool ever since she sent Mad magazine a picture of herself reading the issue in which The Sandpipers was parodied and saying she looked forward to the next time she was in it (which as some historian of the magazine noted, she never was).

By the way, anybody who's really into old movies in 35mm in the LA area should check out Cinecon, coming up on Labor Day:

http://www.cinecon.org/

Posted by le corbeau at August 20, 2007 7:08 AM

comment #13

kammy says ...

The Aero is indeed great! I drive from Palmdale (60 miles away!) just to catch the movies there (and, of course, the Arclight.) Missed the Hitchcock films this past weekend, though -- will try to catch REAR WINDOW and THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY this coming Saturday.

(BTW, wasn't DONNIE DARKO partly filmed at the Aero?)

Posted by kammy at August 20, 2007 8:10 AM

comment #14

Cadavra says ...

I ran into Benben a few months ago in an elevator. We ended up talking on the sidewalk for nearly half an hour. Always enjoyed his work and could never understand why he never became a big star.

Posted by Cadavra at August 20, 2007 11:43 AM

comment #15

christian says ...

going through a stack of old vhs tapes i came across a night's worth of hbo programming from the 90's: the sharon stone episode of LARRY SANDERS and then DREAM ON...i'm keeping it!

Posted by christian at August 20, 2007 12:06 PM

comment #16