Cinema (Movie House)

A cinema or movie house is a public site where motion pictures are exhibited to a paying public. Movie house architecture, audience composition, and filmic entertainment have changed dramatically since the first storefront theaters were opened in the earliest years of the twentieth century. However, in almost all of its manifestations, the cinema has been a vital element of urban life. The cinema can be viewed as a portal for understanding the various developmental cadences of urban centers, as well as the pursuits of leisure for working-and middle-class city dwellers during the twentieth century.

Film was the first mediated popular entertainment. From a local perspective, the development of the motion picture projector enabled films to be exhibited to large groups of people who were often strangers to one another. They sat together in one room or hall and watched either a portion of a film or an entire motion picture simultaneously. From a national perspective, the mass distribution of motion pictures created the conditions for audiences across a large geographic region, or even an entire country, to view the same motion picture nearly simultaneously. These conditions helped to create an urban identity, constructed around the pursuit of leisure and visual entertainment.

As both cities and the movie industry changed and grew, so did the movie houses that projected motion pictures. During the first few years of the twentieth century, for example, when the motion picture industry was still in its infancy, motion pictures were not projected in movie houses at all. They were exhibited in vaudeville theaters, as only part of the evening's entertainment, or they were exhibited in storefronts; entrepreneurs purchased motion picture projectors, chairs, and makeshift screens and opened for business. As the motion picture industry matured and as films grew more sophisticated and longer in length, the movie house in its earliest manifestation was born.