Luxurious Cinema Palaces in the Roaring Twenties and the Twenty-First Century: Critical Analyses of Movie Theatres by Siegfried Kracauer and Their Relevance Today

Luxurious Cinema Palaces in the Roaring Twenties and the Twenty-First Century: Critical Analyses of Movie Theatres by Siegfried Kracauer and Their Relevance Today Viola E. RÜHSE Abstract Impressive cinema palaces with exterior façades illuminated appealingly at night were significant for the big city life of the roaring twenties. The film screenings in the prestigious buildings were framed by a diverse supporting programme. Siegfried Kracauer dealt critically with the formative tendency towards theatricality in the new large cinema buildings such as the Gloria-Palast in Berlin in 1926. He also discussed the supporting programme and the aspect of distraction in the context of modern mass and leisure culture in a progressive and extraordinary way. Over the past decade, luxury cinemas have been enjoying a revival. In order to examine today’s high-end boutique movie theatres, Siegfried Kracauerʼs thoughts on large cinemas in the “roaring twenties” in Berlin provide critical impulses. In the first part of my paper, two important texts by Kracauer are analysed. In contrast to previous research, Kracauer’s arguments are also compared in greater detail with those by contemporary progressive critics not only in Germany but also in other countries, such as Joseph Roth, Kurt Pinthus, Fritz Olimsky, Kenneth Macpherson, Harry Alan Potamkin and Philip Morton Shand, among others. This also reveals the special nature, quality, and depth of Kracauer’s essays. An analysis of modern luxury movie theatres inspired by Kracauer’s train of thought follows in the second part of this paper. Keywords: Siegfried Kracauer, history of film, luxury cinemas, film palaces, Weimar Republic The first permanent cinemas at the beginning of the twentieth century were mostly small and plain. However, larger, more elegant film screening venues were already established in the second half of the 1900s in US and soon afterwards in European cities too (Altenloh 1913: 19f.)1. The increasing popularity of film was a major factor in this. In connection with the longer duration and the more sophisticated plots of films, an attachment to high M.A. Research Associate/Deputy Head of Department for Image Science, Danube University Krems, Austria, 13 Cultural Intertexts Year VII Volume 10 (2020) The Roaring (20)20s culture was also sought architecturally with more prestigious performance locations. Thus, film became more acceptable to the middle classes and was able to establish itself as a mass medium (Korte 1980: 13-89, 55-56). In the 1920s, movie theatres became even larger and could seat several thousand visitors. They were designed even more luxuriously than live performing theatres. In addition to an increase in pomp, the supporting programme became longer and more diverse (Slowinska 2005: 582). Cinema had thus unmistakably become a socially acceptable leisure activity, where people no longer “went stealthily” but rather paced through a sumptuous entrance in an “evening dress” (Magnus 1929/1930: 967). In Germany, many new film palaces were built or existing cinemas were enlarged after the end of the inflation in 1923. In Berlin, many elegant picture palaces were located around the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on Kurfürstendamm and served as first-release cinemas (A. [abbr.] 1925). Due to his training as an architect, Siegfried Kracauer was well suited to critically analyse the new picture palaces in Berlin2. Kracauer’s first short article on cinema buildings in Berlin is titled “Palaces of Film. Berlin cinemas”3. It was published with three photographs in Das Illustrierte Blatt, on 21st February 1926 (fig. 1). This weekly illustrated magazine was printed by the Frankfurter Societäts-Druckerei, i.e. the same publishing house as the Frankfurter Zeitung (FZ), where Kracauer was employed as an editor. In his article, Kracauer draws attention to a general tendency towards theatricality in the new large cinema buildings such as the GloriaPalast on Kurfürstendamm. However, in his opinion, with this theatre-like style, the architecture does not correspond to its purpose. This view is based on Kracauer’s reflections regarding the characteristics of the film medium in his previous film analyses, in which he clearly distinguished film from theatre. According to him, carefully arranged scenes, elaborate actions and intellectual transitions are characteristic of theatre. By contrast, the “spirit of film” corresponds to visibly erratic movement, a tendency to surface and improvisation, and improbable events (Kracauer 2004: 38, 46). The German print media mostly praised the new picture palaces with many superlatives (Kreimeier 1999: 123f.). For example, the UfaTheater Turmstraße is said to have been “unanimously recognized by the press as the most beautiful and modern cinema in Germany” (Anon 1925: 27). Furthermore, the Berliner Tageblatt und Handels-Zeitung confirmed that the Gloria-Palast had lived up to its claim to be the “festival theatre of the German film” (Anon. 1926b). The new picture palaces also enjoyed strong popularity and attracted a large number of visitors (Naylor 1987: 22). 14 Cultural Intertexts Year VII Volume 10 (2020) The Roaring (20)20s Kracauer refrains from such a common panegyric in his article; instead, his arguments show parallels to contributions of other advanced critics. For example, Kracauer’s media-aesthetic argument that buildings should take into account the differences between cinema and theatre had already been mentioned by Kurt Pinthus regarding the first more luxurious cinemas prior to the First World War (Kracauer 2004: 204, Pinthus 1913/1992: 366f). In the film magazine Close Up (1927-1933), Macpherson also condemned the extended supporting programme and highlighted that cinema and theatre would not go together (1927: 13)4. However, Kracauer’s remarks are not as polemical as those of the architecture critic Philip Morton Shand, who published an important monograph on early cinema buildings in 1930. Shand favoured modern architecture and therefore condemned the fact that the new film palaces echoed historical buildings as “gaudy opulence of an already bygone age” (17). He condemned the atmospheric film theatres in the US, which also influenced the Gloria-Palast. In addition, Shand compared the picture palaces to cheap novels. According to him, they were “nauseating stick-jaw candy, so fulsomely flavoured with the syrupy romanticism of popular novels” (19)5. Despite its brevity, Kracauer’s contribution is more profound in terms of architectural theory and film aesthetics compared to other critics, whereby his expertise as an architect and film reviewer becomes clear. His quality and critical perspective – which reveals parallels to other avant-garde film critics – make him quite unusual for the German press coverage at the time. Especially for the Illustrierte Blatt, with its main focus on personal and event reports, puzzles, humorous and serial novels, Kracauer’s text must be reg (...truncated)