You have all probably heard this one, but I love that anecdote about a bad play about Anne Frank, where, as the curtain rose, someone at the back yelled out:

[spoiler:ba34qjn7]"SHE'S IN THE ATTIC."[/spoiler:ba34qjn7]
Ouch!

I went to the NFT for the first, and so far only, time a few months back when Los Olvidados was playing and there was plenty of reaction from the audience, especially when a chicken was killed (why do chickens always get it in films?), some audible recoiling in a moment of tension and a few 'wow's during the dream sequence. Personally I enjoyed it - it showed people were getting into it and made the whole thing more theatrical, a marked contrast with the apparent apathy I'm more used to. It seemed like a nice middle ground between silence and whooping and hollering.

Oops!

What you're describing sounds like the reactions of an audience acting as one, in tune with the film itself, which, of course, is great. My problem is when you get a few individuals noisily and selfishly distracting everyone else, and acting against the film in some way - like a few people who giggled and chatted through Floating Clouds recently. I mean, if they don't like it, they don't like it, but do they have to try to spoil things for the rest of us?

Hell, I sound like someone who writes in to Points Of View.

Of course, I wasn't disputing what you said, just relating my own experience of the place. I'm a bit saddened to hear it's not always like that though.

Sure thing. And, to be fair, there have been great audiences there as well for, say, Annie Hall, some Laurel And Hardy comedies etc. But why can't things always be perfect, dammit?

D'oh!

At the very end of the screening of Floating Clouds I attended at the NFT, a chap sitting behind me expelled a sententious 'that was shit!', nearly ruining the entire thing.

I managed to catch Naruse's Yearning on a rare trip to London about a week or so ago, and immediately thought of this thread after realising that this guy was sitting right in front of me... Speaking of audience member reactions, Ken Russell sat down behind us for the second half of Irma Vep a day earlier and promptly fell fast asleep! Afterwards, he said he loved the ending - which no doubt awoke him from slumber with quite a jolt...

If that's the same screening of Yearning I was at, then you may well be the brave soul who told him to shut up a few minutes in. And, thank heavens, he did. Wonderful film, by the way.

So that's where HerrShreck has been recently. Been missing him on the forum for ages now.

Funnily enough, that brave soul was sitting next to me. Film was indeed sublime, and the final extreme close-up of Takamine a complete knock-out...

Reinstate the draft!

(...and a John McCain ad appears at bottom)

Quite similar to the Film Forum Contempt screening I attended.

I'm glad to see Stringer Bell saved the day.

Am I alone in my preference for watching movies in empty or near-empty theatres?

I think for a movie like Prom Night, enjoying a crowd like that is the only reason to go at all. Otherwise though I'm with you

For much amusement, imagine a lively bat-shit insanely vocal crowd of teenagers at your favorite arthouse movie, except INTO it.

"DON'T YOU DARE SELL OUT YOUR YOUR PERSONAL ASSPIRATIONS AND WRITE THAT SCREENPLAY! NO, NO, NO.... Ohhhhhhhhhh! Dana, Are we going to Starbucks afterwards!?"

It works even better if it's something by Tarkovsky or Bresson.

I'm picturing teenage drinking games where you chug a beer every time there's an unopened door on-screen.

Now that's an idea...

Comedies and horrors are better in packed theatres but almost anything else is better in beautifully silent emptiness (so you can day-dream you're in you own giant screening room...)

Not at all. I love it when that happens, which is why for most films, I usually wait a few weeks for crowds to die down before I see it in the cinema (unless it's a film I know won't be in cinemas long).

Most recently, I enjoyed Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day with exactly one other person in the theater. Fantastic.

Every time I see a trailer/promo for that movie, I keep wondering if the guy in the shadows who creeps up on everyone might actually be Omar. Indeed.

For some reason I've long had this desire to be by myself in an empty theater and have made it somewhat of a "goal". The closest I've come is myself and one other person. It's always dissapointing when you think you have it and a bunch of people show up at the very last minute