Criterion Closure Leaves A Void

Midnight showings of classics and new movies. Packed lobbies for James Bond films. A small screening room for arthouse flicks. The smell of popcorn. The collective laughter, sobbing, and gasping as an audience took a ride through a movie together.

When Bow Tie’s Criterion Cinemas closed its doors in October, New Haveners lost the ability to have those experiences — and now face the question about the future cultural place of movies in the Elm City. 

Some might argue that a downtown theater isn’t needed any more, now that we have streaming. But two film aficionados would disagree.

“It’s not simply about a business closing. It’s more than that,” said Brian Meacham, film archivist at the Yale Film Archive, of Criterion’s departure. ​“A first-run cinema is a real sign of a complete cultural array that is really missing from New Haven now,” he said. New Haven not having a first-run movie theater is ​“a cry for help. We need that piece of the puzzle to make life as rich as it is in this day and age.”

Criterion’s closing hits even closer to home for Raizine Bruton, archive staff at Hamden’s Best Video Film and Cultural Center, who worked at the Criterion for the better part of a decade.

“I have always loved movies,” Bruton said. She and her stepfather watched TCM ​“all the time” together growing up. ​“We would sit there and watch black and white movies all day long.” Before she worked at the Criterion, she had seen screenings of classic movies there on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, like The Godfather and On the Waterfront. Part of the appeal of getting a job there was the chance to see movies for free.

Bruton started working at the nine-screen Criterion in 2012 when a friend got her the job. She was there straight through 2016, then worked there on and off through the summer of 2022. For the first four years she worked a series of positions, from cashier to ticket taker to staffing the concession stand to cleaning the theaters. ​“I loved that,” she said of cleaning, ​“because you got to walk around, go in the theaters, making sure people were behaving, catch 10 minutes of your favorite movie.” When she came back after 2016 she was asked to be a manager and she declined, though she did work as a supervisor. There, she learned a little about how to run the projectors, which were all digital. ​“We all were friends for the most part,” she said. ​“When you care about a place, you want to do more.”

She also learned a lot more about film from her time at the Criterion, starting with the fact that, when she first started working there, she took advantage of the fact she could see them for free and watched movies all the time. Once, she watched four movies in one day. During downtimes she wrote scripts. 

“It was a place where you could be creative and meet creative people. You don’t get that everywhere.” She knows other Criterion employees who moved on to work at other, larger theaters and found a different working environment. ​“We were a smaller theater,” she said,” so we could have a different relationship with the staff and customers.… It didn’t feel like a chain. It felt like a mom-and-pop place, more personal.” From working there, she met people who she still sees all the time. ​“A lot of them come to Best Video, which makes sense,” she said. They still remember her and ask her for movie recommendations. ​“I really did build great relationships.”

Bruton also remembers staff talking about the possibility of the Criterion closing for ​“years,” she said. Harry Potter and James Bond movies packed the house, but few screenings other than those ever sold out. Toward the end, full-time staff told her ​“it’s not like how it used to be.” The theater stopped doing midnight showings. ​“Something changed, and not for the better,” she said. 

That checked out with Bruton’s experience. At the beginning of her run at the Criterion, she recalled seeing ​“full lobbies at any time of day” for screenings. But the last time that happened was in 2015. After that, attendance began to dwindle. ​“I remember last year never seeing a full lobby,” she said.

A lot of variables, to Bruton, went into that. The Criterion was late to offer food to patrons, after years of customers asking. The theater also didn’t quite keep up with renovations. ​“A lot of people would complain about the seats not being comfortable,” Bruton said — young and old alike. Some people came to the theater with extra pillows. As an avid movie watcher, Bruton understood but didn’t connect with that. ​“I’m really into a movie, I don’t care, I could be sitting on the floor,” she said. ​“But I get that not everyone has that same relationship to film.” But even so, she noted a change in herself over the years. She watched movies less. ​“You can overwhelm yourself too much with movies,” she said. 

Factors outside the Criterion’s control played their parts, too. Streaming cut into its audience. The pandemic (obviously) didn’t help. But also, ​“as time went on, we were not getting the bigger films,” she said. ​“We would get the biggest films” — the box office smashes — but not the ones coming in second or third place at the box office. ​“People questioned why we weren’t getting those,” Bruton said, even as it was evident that the theater wasn’t taking in enough revenue to cover its expenses. The loss of mid-tier movie screenings got at something fundamental about the theater management’s understanding of the audience in the Elm City. In the choice of screenings, she said, ​“I felt like they had an idea of what New Haven was supposed to be, but it didn’t end up working out.”

“They just weren’t showing things that the majority of people wanted to see.” The last movie Bruton recalled seeing at the Criterion was Tár, ​“and it was me and one other person in there. The movie looked and sounded incredible. That was a good experience.”

Nevertheless, when the theater finally closed, it took Bruton by surprise a little. ​“It really happened — and a lot of us” who worked there ​“just didn’t think it was going to happen. Even though there were days when you were there doing nothing.”

Something Lost, Something Found?

With the loss of the Criterion, Bruton wonders how some people will able to watch some independent and foreign films. ​“The Criterion was the only place in Connecticut” that showed some of her favorite movies. ​“If they came out now, they wouldn’t play in Connecticut at all. Obviously they’ll go to New York. They’ll go to L.A. But are they just not going to show in Connecticut now?” She noted that Best Video does a great job of acquiring copies of independent and foreign films, ​“but sometimes you want to see it on the big screen.” And ​“sometimes there will be films we’re just not going to be able to see.”

Bruton is hoping to be able to secure funding through Best Video to screen some smaller independent and foreign films that otherwise will get no screen time in the state. ​“We can make it as nice as we can for people who want to see them,” she said.

She knows that, in a grand sense, the way people watch movies has changed, and moviemakers and the movie industry are accounting for the decline of movie theaters and the rise of streaming. Bruton noted how old directors bemoan the degradation of an art form because people aren’t watching them with impeccable sound systems and screens the size of houses. Meanwhile, ​“people are making movies for Netfilx knowing how it’s going to be shown,” on people’s TVs or laptop screens or even their phones. On one hand, ​“it’s just a different experience.” But ​“I’m going to miss that experience” of the big screen.

Bruton doesn’t worry about the decline of moviemaking itself. ​“People still have amazing ideas” for films and ​“amazing films are still coming out. I feel like I’m seeing more films now come out by people of all different genders, all different ethnicities, than ever.” It is getting easier and cheaper to make movies. ​“In that sense, film culture is doing great.” 

But ​“I still really enjoy seeing a great movie on a big screen,” and ​“I’d like to think other people will find ways to do so. If we can’t do it at the Criterion, can we find another space? Can we do it here” at Best Video? ​“Can we figure out another way to still have those collective experiences of enjoying something together?” — from watching it to talking about it afterward. 

The closing of the Criterion isn’t the end of seeing any films on a screen in New Haven. ​“There are a lot of different screening series going on at Yale,” said Meacham, from Films at the Whitney to Treasures from the Yale Film Archive to a series of other screenings that the archive presents. ​“It’s our primary method for providing access” to the archive and is ​“a mix of things we’ve had for some time combined with new acquisitions.” Some screenings are done in conjunction with Criterion and Janus Films, others with Harvard and places in New York City.

“We have a bunch of different series” but ​“they all take place in the same place” — at 320 York St. — and ​“they’re always free and open to the public. They are a great way to see classic, important, thought-provoking films. They are not going to replace a first-run cinema, but they are cinema,” Meacham said.

The loss of the Criterion can seem particularly strange because movie theaters were once quite popular here. ​“This town used to have an incredible array of cinemas,” Meacham said. In 1947, New Haven had 13 movie theaters, a level of interest that persisted through the 1960s and 1970s ​“when moviegoing was on a different level of importance than it is now.”

But movies are still important, and New Haven now is ​“the only Ivy League university town without a first-run theatre downtown” — even as it boasts ​“world-class” theater and art galleries and a vibrant music scene. ​“We’re an arts-hungry community” and ​“a hub for the region,” Meacham said. ​“Film has really been a hole in the cultural scene,” and ​“there’s nothing that can fix it except another first-run movie theater.”

Thus, ​“it feels inevitable” to Meacham that ​“some organization” —like, say, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema — ​“is going to find the opportunity in New Haven very tempting.” He acknowledges that the Criterion’s nine screens were perhaps ambitious, but a smaller place, with two screens for first-run movies and one for foreign films and classics, could work. ​”You would find an immediate audience here,” he said, ​“especially if you had beer and good food.”

He also looks to nonprofit movie theaters in other college towns, like Princeton Garden in Princeton, N.J., or Cinemapolis in Ithaca, N.Y., that have survived streaming and the pandemic to continue to show first-run movies. ​“That’s a smart way to do it,” he said.

Meacham acknowledges that ​“I have kinds of films that I’ll let myself watch at home. I see maybe a third of the movies I see in cinemas.” But streaming ​“doesn’t feel as much like a movie” to him. He likes ​“the way laughter builds” in a theater in an audience for a comedy. ​“The movie becomes funnier because people are laughing.” But also, ​“there’s a focus you give a film when your phone isn’t on, and you’re in the dark, and you’re not worried about what your dog is doing. You give the movie the respect that all movies deserve.”

He recalled Yale Film Archive’s recent screening of the Coen brothers’ modern classic The Big Lebowski. ​“Probably half the crowd hadn’t seen it before” and ​“some people had seen it 30 times.” So half the audience gasped in surprise at the movie’s twists and turns, while some people in the other half were nearly whispering along to every line.

“It was so much fun,” he said, a ​“completely different experience” from watching at home.

While he knows that ​“commercially showing first-run films is complicated and expensive,” and ​“you have to be creative and nimble,” he sees it as a vital part of New Haven’s cultural life.

Bruton, at Best Video, shares Meacham’s sense of urgency, and his sense that New Haven’s culture pushes toward another theater opening. ​“There will be something else,” she said. ​“We just have to want it bad enough, as movie lovers and moviegoers, and figure out a way to make it happen. And I think we will.”

But when?