The Brattle Theater in Harvard Square
For generations of film lovers, the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square has been the place to see classic, foreign, and edgy, new-release independent movies.
Almost every city once had an independent art-house like the Brattle. But since 1953, when the Brattle took its modern form, most of them have disappeared.
The multiplex explosion, corporate economics and shifts in popular taste and in the film business have not been kind. Even the Brattle fell on hard times in the 1990s.
But people rallied to aid the theater, which became foundation-operated in 2000 and now has some 1,200 supportive members and volunteers. Strong fund raising has included the opportunity to “purchase” theater seats. Donors got a plaque with a personal message on the seat of their choice.
The theater is in Brattle Hall, an 1890 brick building at Brattle and Church streets in Cambridge. It has 225 seats -- 75 of them in the balcony – and a 20-feet-wide screen.
In a throwback to the 1930s, there’s often a double feature; two movies for the price of one.
Casablanca has had years of Harvard students -- and others -- avoiding exam-time studying to instead watch Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman outwit the Nazis but, sadly, part anyway.
“Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon have screened the most over the years,” said Brattle Creative Director Ned Hinkle. “We do an annual Casablanca screening on St. Valentine’s Day. It’s a great romantic movie that isn’t too romantic.”
”And there’s a long history between the Brattle and Humphrey Bogart,” Hinkle said.
“Students used to come see it here in the ‘60s and the Brattle is credited with helping to make Bogart into the silver-screen idol he is, posthumously. He was a big movie star, but he might not have been in the Hollywood cannon with James Dean and Marilyn Monroe if the Brattle and the New Yorker in Manhattan hadn’t focused so on Bogie.”
The Brattle is a repertory cinema. It showed earlier this year, for example, many films by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa over a two-week period. This summer, there was a two-week tribute to the late Dennis Hopper, including his Easy Rider, Blue Velvet, Giant, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Hoosiers.
Brattle management sometimes fumbles, with a small and overworked staff. Yet the theater is moving forward with small, popular changes. Wine and beer from Cambridge Brewing Company, for example, were added to the concession stand.
There have been all-night screenings and, since 1995, the yearly Bugs Bunny Film Festival. The Brattle is a frequent venue for impressive speakers connected with Harvard and the Harvard Book Store, although there’s no official university affiliation.
Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson, for example, recently spent an hour onstage talking to a full theater of enthusiastic fans about his first novel, Anthill. And pioneer zombie-movie director George Romero (Night of the Living Dead) introduced his latest film, Survival of the Dead. And, earlier this year, director James Ivory was on-stage to discuss his films.
Posted by Dan Sheridan
