January 1974
Step back in time to see what area movie
theaters were presenting in January 1974, the month that the Detroit Film
Theatre opened. Film titles are linked to the Internet
Movie Database.
For more information about these theaters,
see Cinema
Treasures or Water
Winter Wonderland.
DFT Opens
"The
Detroit Film Theater at the Art Institute launches its promising premier
season Friday with 'Mon
Oncle Antoine,' a quietly perceptive French-Canadian film by Claude
Jutra," wrote Detroit Free Press Film Critic Susan Stark on Friday,
January 4, 1974, the opening night of the DFT. Later in her review, Stark
added, "It is precisely the kind of movie—low-key but high quality—that
justifies the existence of a Detroit Film Theater."
Mon
Oncle Antoine (1971) was described by David Shipman in the 1982
book The Story of Cinema as "the first Canadian film widely seen
abroad." On Saturday night, January 5, the DFT presented the poignant 1952
French drama about childhood and death, Forbidden
Games. The opening weekend concluded on Sunday, January 6, with Laurence
Olivier in The
Beggar's Opera (1953).
In
reference to Mon Oncle Antoine and Forbidden Games, Detroit
News Entertainment Writer Barbara Hoover wrote (on January 4), "The Detroit
Film Theatre has chosen two gems to launch its six-month film series at
the Detroit Institute of Arts." Patrons were charged $2 for individual
tickets, and could buy 16 tickets for $15. This first month coincided
with the start of another significant era in Detroit—Coleman Young
was inaugurated as Detroit's first black mayor on January 2, 1974.
The
DFT's first month included types of films that have always attracted enthusiastic
audiences to the DFT: French films (The
Fire Within, King
of Hearts, and A
Very Curious Girl); old American movies (Zoo
in Budapest and To
Have and Have Not); documentaries (A
Sense of Loss); and little-known recent movies (Pulp).
A
comment about Pulp by Detroit Free Press Entertainment Editor
Lawrence DeVine on January 17 helped describe the mission of the DFT:
"Now it [Pulp] has been pulled from the obscurity which it so richly
did not deserve by the new Detroit Film Theater series..."
When
the DFT opened, art film lovers were served mainly by the Studio chain
of theaters. On January 4, the Studio-North at Woodward and Nine Mile was
showing François Truffaut's Day
for Night. Claude Lelouch's Happy
New Year was screening at the Studio-8 (Greenfield and Eight Mile).
The
Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe was drawing patrons
to the Studio 4 in Birmingham, while Harold
and Maude appeared for the 70th week at the Studio New Center
(3rd and West Grand Boulevard).
To see an old movie on a big screen, your options included
libraries, cinema societies in Ann Arbor, and the
auditorium at the Henry Ford Museum.
Also Showing
The Redford Theatre and the Michigan Theater marked their
46th birthdays in January 1974. It
was one of their last years as mainstream movie theaters, before they
were faced with significant challenges that they successfully overcame
in the late 1970s with ownership and programming changes that have helped
them survive into the 21st century.
The
Redford showed a variety of action movies. Martial arts twin bills included
Screaming Tigers
/ Deep
Thrust and Blood
of the Dragon / Embalmer. Walking
Tall, a popular movie of 1973, was paired with Straw
Dogs. Other Redford double features included
Black
Belt Jones / Come
Back, Charleston Blue, and The
Serpent / Pretty
Maids All in a Row. For children, a Kiddie Matinee on January 26
and 27 featured Pippi
Longstocking.
The Michigan continued its long association with the W.
S. Butterfield
Theatres chain, which in Ann Arbor also included the State, Campus, and
Wayside (3020 Washtenaw Ave.). Competing with these theaters in Ann Arbor
were the Fifth Forum, Movies at Briarwood, and the Fox Village theaters.
The first Michigan movie of 1974 was Jonathan
Livingston Seagull, followed by A
Film about Jim Hendrix, The
Laughing Policeman, and Sleeper.
Popular
first run movies in the Detroit/Ann Arbor area included The
Sting, The
Exorcist, Papillon,
The
Way We Were, The
Paper Chase, Magnum
Force, and the animated Robin
Hood.
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