The Brattle Theatre
Related: American cinema - art-house cinema - cinema
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The Bogart revival, for example, was launched at a Cambridge, Massachusetts art-house, the Brattle Theater, in 1953 when Bogart was already considered passé ... -- Land of a Thousand Balconies (2003) - Jack Stevenson, Page 31Working out of the Brattle, they founded Janus Films and turned it into one of the leading foreign film distribution companies as they “scoured the world ... -- Land of a Thousand Balconies (2003) - Jack Stevenson, Page 31
[Casablanca] has maintained its popularity: Murray Burnett has called it "true yesterday, true today, true tomorrow". During the 1950s, the Brattle Theater of Cambridge, Massachusetts began a long-running tradition of screening Casablanca during the week of final exams at Harvard University. This tradition continues to the present day, and it is emulated by many colleges across the United States. It is also credited with helping the movie remain popular while other famous films of the 1940s have faded away. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca_(movie) [Nov 2005]
Built in 1890 to house the Cambridge Social Union, Brattle Hall had been used as a church, an adult education center, a police-department gym, and a stage when Harvard grads Bryant Haliday and Cy Harvey bought it and installed a Trans-Lux rear-projection system in 1952. A few years later, Harvey decided to program a Warner Brothers wartime melodrama during final exams, and when the students in the audience stood to sing along with the ''Marseillaise," the cult of ''Casablanca" and Humphrey Bogart was born.
Harvey had studied at the Sorbonne, and he modeled the Brattle's programming on Henri Langlois's fabled Cinematheque, handpicking old classics and new foreign fare. When he and Haliday couldn't get the films from overseas they wanted, they started a company, Janus Films, to bring breakthroughs from directors such as Bergman, Francois Truffaut, and Federico Fellini into America, distributing them to other movie houses that began to follow the Brattle model. --http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2005/10/16/the_last_picture_show/?page=2 [Nov 2005]
, “Critical and Cultural Reception of the European Art Film in 1950's
America: A Case Study of the Brattle Theatre (Cambridge, Massachusetts)." Film and History 24 (1994): 49—64.
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