ART HOUSE THEATER DAY

September 23 brings the 3^rd annual Art House Theater Day, and when I first learned of it, I smiled. Memories of long-ago days and nights spent in the art houses of San Francisco and Berkeley came to mind. It was in these funky little theaters nestled in the Bay Area’s nooks and crannies that I was introduced to the films of Powell & Pressburger, Fellini, Chabrol, Lina Wertmuller and other filmmakers from outside the U.S. It was in these ragtag movie houses that I watched “revival” screenings of films like Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? and John Cassavetes’ Husbands for the first time. Back in the day, art houses that presented foreign, indie and classic American films flourished around the US, in all major cities and university towns.

The Rafael, My Local Theater

The Rafael Theater in San Rafael, California, began life as the Orpheus Theater in 1918, long before the Golden Gate Bridge connected Marin County to the city of San Francisco. A first-run movie house, the Orpheus was razed by fire and resurrected as the art moderne Rafael in 1938.

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused significant damage to the building and the Rafael closed for ten years. In 1998 reconstruction began. The theater was gutted and renovated and reopened in 1999. Today it is a three-screen art/indie/revival house operated as a non-profit by the California Film Institute and has been renamed the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Theater.

The Mill Valley Film Festival, which runs from October 7 - 17 this year (2010) and will honor such luminaries as Annette Bening, Edward Norton, Sam Rockwell, Ryan Gosling and Julian Schnabel, screens many of the festival films at the Rafael.

In the last few years I've seen quite a variety of films at the theater - La Vie en Rose (Marion Cotillard won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance and attended the Rafael premiere), Starting Out in the Evening (featuring a remarkable performance by Frank Langella), Francis Coppola's Tetro (a film that brought Luchino Visconti to mind) and the Swedish sensation, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Most recently I attended a screening of the silent version of Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1930) with accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra (click here for my post  about it) and a free-to-the-public presentation of Hitchcock's North by Northwest (click here for the post).

A few years ago the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night was screened on the exterior of the Rafael. The street was closed to traffic and filled with people sitting and standing and singing along with John, Paul, George and Ringo.


Some of the Rafael's illustrious guests...

Barbara Hale



Ray Harryhausen

 

Helen Mirren

Francis Ford Coppola