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The Great Dictator


This weekend I went to see The Great Dictator. This was a moment that I had been waiting for for a long time, the chance to see an old comedy on the big screen, it doesn't happen too often where I live sadly.

There was a good crowd at this movie, around 250 I would say. Not too bad on a Saturday afternoon, when the weather was perfect, certainly you could have found a million other things to do rather than lock yourself away in a movie theatre. And we had a large car race on the weekend also, which about 250,000 people attended over the 4 days that it ran.

So this makes me ask why, why don't theatre chains of today ever show old movies? Why don't they show Ängels with Dirty Faces, The Third Man, Philadelphia Story etc.

I really think that once a month perhaps on a traditionally slow night, say Thursday's perhaps theatre houses should grab an old movie and give it a try. In the multiplex cinema's of today you would just need to use one theatre and one showing and try something different. Put on Buster Keaton's The General, let the public see Harold Lloyd's Safety Last how it should be seen and heard on a large screen with a crowd all around laughing and having a great time.

I've seen quite a few new movies lately including a couple that would class themselves as comedies, and yes they were funny in parts but never once did I hear anyone laugh so much that they snorted.

I did (not snort, but heard the women in front of me do so) on Saturday during The Great Dictator. Perhaps we were a biased audience that had been hanging out to see Chaplin for so long that just to see him standing there made us snigger, and it did , he stood there and we laughed and laughed.

Last Saturday was one of the most enjoyable moments that I have ever had a theatre, I just wish it would happen more often.

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