Intermissions were previously necessitated by the need to change reels in the projector. Consequently, they became synonymous with lengthy Hollywood epics like Lawrence of Arabia and Ben Hur. However, intermissions also served a function for audience members and theatre owners alike, providing the former with a brief reprieve and the latter with potential for greater revenue.
Over the years, as the cinema experience evolved, the intermission gradually became obsolete. This was principally down to technological advances, which made reel switches easier and faster, and with modern digital projectors, a non-issue. Meanwhile, the demands on multiplexes to put on an increasing number of showings simply made the breaks too time consuming. This phasing out did not occur in all territories, however, and in India the intermission remains an integral part of the cinema going experience.
Bollywood cinema has a tradition of producing longer films than Western audiences are used to seeing, and indeed it could be argued that retaining the intermission would have made epic storytelling more commonplace. The current trend of splitting franchise instalments into multiple parts arguably represents glorified year-long intermissions; these stories could be presented as a single experience were filmmakers able give audiences a much-needed breather.
Indeed, intermissions could not only inspire storytelling on a grander scale, but also more faithful adaptations, as longer stories would be made more palatable to general audiences. That predetermined bathroom break allows audience members to relax a tiny bit, so they aren't holding it in for the last hour of the movie worried they will not be privy to the best part. Along the same lines, the intermission also makes these ever expanding running times feel less daunting. While many are perfectly content to watch seven hours straight of a television show in one sitting, something about the one big chunk of three or so hours freezes people.
With an intermission, a three-hour movie could instead play more digestibly as two back to back minute episodes to align with more modern viewing habits.
Also, intermissions, in a strange way, feel fancy. They give us the impression that what we are seeing is so important that we just need a break in the middle to collect our thoughts. A brief interlude to hobnob generates a special atmosphere currently held exclusively by the traditional theater. Instead of leaning over to the person your with to ask a question about what is happening in the movie, you have designated time to hash things out and check the temperature of everyone's feelings about what you all have seen so far.
You also now have a time slot where using your phone for something becomes perfectly acceptable and not distracting to everyone else around you. For the studios, films with intermissions really only play as well as they do in a theatrical setting. At home, you'd probably just skip forward to the next section of the movie, unconcerned with that allotted intermission time and continue to pause wherever you see fit.
All these benefits require a cinema, and in an era where theatrical exhibition grows scarier, the knowledge of not being able to replicate that experience at home on a streaming service could boost those box office numbers, however slightly, and further show the future viability of that business.
In recent years, only Quentin Tarantino 's western chamber piece The Hateful Eight embraced the intermission in any kind of notable way. While stateside audiences were once encouraged to stretch their legs at the midway point of gargantuan epics like Gone with the Wind, Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, and A Space Odyssey, it is much rarer to find intermissions in modern movies. There was one in 's The Hateful Eight if you saw it on the " roadshow, " although the practice mostly died off in the mainstream with Gandhi in Meanwhile, mid-movie intervals are alive and well overseas, from Iceland to Turkey to India.
India's Bollywood films are structured in halves, and are so tightly framed around the assumption of an intermission that when they omit the break, it makes headlines. A minute break isn't an interruption when it is literally built into the movie. No one complains about intermissions in staged plays and operas, after all. That structured break is expected by the audience.
Going to the movies should be an occasion. Now that most new movies can be streamed from your couch, sometimes even on the day they come out, theaters no longer serve the mere utilitarian purpose of delivering the most recent studio features to your eyeballs.
To compete with the temptation of staying in, going to the movie theater needs to be regarded as an "event," something you plan for the sake of the experience when you could have instead chilled on the couch. The version that Sergio Leone supervised the editing of was the international theatrical version minutes long. I also note that version is considered to be a classic movie. This condensed version was a critical and financial disaster, and many American critics who knew of Leone's original cut attacked the short version.
Some critics compared shortening the film to shortening Richard Wagner's operas, saying that works of art that are meant to be long should be given the respect they deserve. Roger Ebert wrote in his review that the uncut version was "an epic poem of violence and greed" but described the American theatrical version as a "travesty". Considering how much Leone's version is praised by critics, Leone probably considered his version to be a work of cinematic art and a prestige film.
So if Leone supervised the editing of a film that was epic in length, and which he intended to be a high prestige and high quality film, it would be natural for him to include an intermission since the film qualified on two separate counts for having an intermission. I don't know which version s TK saw, and whether TK watched in theaters, or at home on commercial television, or at home on some type of home video, so I don't know what version s of Once Upon a Time in America have an intermission.
I know if I was watching any version on commercial television with regular breaks for advertisements, I would not mind the length of even the longest version so much, because I could take a break during commercial breaks. Even at home, where I could stop a home video at any point if I wanted to, and start it again later, I would appreciate an intermission as a point to do so selected by the creators of the film as the best time to pause the film and take a break without interrupting it too badly.
I note that an article says that movie intermissions are still used all over the world, and not merely in India: "Meanwhile, mid-movie intervals are alive and well overseas, from Iceland to Turkey to India. Iceland and Turkey are both more or less European countries, so I deduce from that statement that some longer European movies still had intermissions in when that article was written. If it was still common to have intermissions in longer European movies in , it would have been still common to have intermissions in longer European movies in the early s when Once Upon a Time in America was being made it was filmed from June to April Sergio Leone was an Italian born European movie director who expected intermissions in long movies.
The longest versions of the film were Leone's work, while the shortest version was cut by the American release company. By the end of filming, Leone had eight to ten hours worth of footage.
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