Going to the movies should be a majestic experience of sight and sound; a magical time of wonder and imagination. This is how movies were made to make us feel. Our eyes should be wide with amazement at what we are seeing on screen. The sounds of the movie should fill the theater and swim around us as if we were part of whatever the scene may be. There is nothing better than the feeling of being at a theater, sitting in your seat with anticipation of the movie about to be shown, holding your bag of popcorn, and looking up, wide-eyed, at the screen, like a character in a Steven Spielberg film, watching as the auditorium goes dark and the light from the projector fills the air and illuminates the canvas. This is how a movie going experience should be. At the Uptown Theater in Washington DC, this is, in fact, how your experience will be.
I am from a small town in Illinois and the movie theaters there are, in a word, horrid. The sound is never channeled correctly, the seats are extremely uncomfortable, and most of the screens are so small that the image from the film spills off onto the curtains. My love of film goes back to my childhood and I have many wonderful memories of seeing films at the theater. Those were the days of the single theater. No multiplexes. One film played and people would fill the theater to see that one film, not to go up to the box office and try to decide which film to see. The Uptown is a throwback to those times and has been a respected and treasured movie theater since it’s opening in 1933.
As you walk up to the theater, you will see the old fashioned marquee with the title of the movie spelled out in big, red, letters, just like it used to be. They sometimes have a couple of cast member’s names or a quote from the movie displayed under the title. There is actually a box office where you buy your tickets. These days you walk up to a counter with two or three registers to purchase your tickets as if you were going to an amusement park. Here at the Uptown there is one person in the box office and they will courteously help you purchase your tickets.
When you walk inside, you will know that you are in a true movie house and that the proprietors have an honest love for the movies. The décor is like the theaters of the golden age with beautiful carpeting and perfect lighting. On the walls throughout the theater are posters of movies past. They do not crowd the walls with poster after poster like most multiplexes. They are generously placed in certain parts of the lobby, the top of the stairwells that lead to the balcony, and even one in the men’s restroom. Of course, I can’t speak for the women’s restroom. That is something you women will have to find out for yourselves.
Oh, and yes, you heard me correctly when I mentioned a balcony. The balcony is an excellent place to sit. Many moviegoers of the past preferred to sit in balconies as it was a good place to go for people who didn’t enjoy being seated under the screen and preferred looking out instead of up at the images. When a theater was crowded, a balcony would also help with the overflow. Personally I prefer to be seated downstairs but I have experienced sitting in the balcony of the Uptown and, I must say, truly enjoyed it. In 1996, the balcony was renovated and 300 stadium seats were added to further enhance patron’s movie watching pleasure.
As I spoke of before, I prefer to sit downstairs, first ten rows, towards the middle, and face to face with the screen. May I tell you that when I walked in to the auditorium for the first time, I felt as though I was transported back to a time of film going that I had only heard in stories my father told me of when he was young and used to go see the classics such as ‘Ben Hur’ or ‘Spartacus. He would fascinate me with stories of how the screens were big and curved and how he would have to move his head from side to side fitting in all of those wondrous images. The screen at the Uptown is one of those screens. It is a tall, curving, digital screen that measures 32 feet x 70 feet; the largest in the D.C. area. It is a powerful canvas on which the images of Hollywood can dance before our eyes. I was truly amazed at the clarity of the picture and of the perfectly channeled sound. I can only imagine how lucky people must have been who got to see films such as ‘Star Wars’ or ‘2001; A Space Odyssey’ on a screen of that caliber. As a matter of film history, ‘2001’ had its world premiere at the Uptown in April of 1968. What I would give to have been there for that historic occasion. A gift from the Gods of film!
There aren’t many theaters around these days that deserve the title ‘movie palace. The Uptown has earned that title and wears it like a crown of gold. Be it first run films or special events, such as the Warner Brothers Film Festival held in May of 1998 and featuring such films as ‘Casablanca’ and ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, the Uptown is and always will be the favorite place for D.C. locals to not only see but experience the movies. For me, my experiences at the Uptown have become valued memories and they have allowed me to live out instead of imagine what going to the movies was, and should be, for all of us who love and treasure the gift that is moving pictures.
