Intermissions in early films had a practical purpose: they were needed to facilitate the changing of
reels.
[9] When
Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth (
The Loves of Queen Elizabeth), starring
Sarah Bernhardt, opened on July 12, 1912, in the
Lyceum Theatre in
New York City, the four reel film was shown in four acts, with an intermission at each reel change.
[10]
The technology improved, but as movies became progressively longer, the intermission fulfilled other needs. It gave the audience a breather, and provided the theatre management an opportunity to entice patrons to its profitable
concession stand. A well-known 1957 animated musical
snipe suggested, before the main feature in theatres and during intermission at
drive-ins, "
let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a snack". During the
3D film trend of the early 1950s, intermissions were a necessity because even though many theaters used two projectors that could skip intermission by shifting from one reel to the other, 3D films required the use of both projectors – one for each stereoscopic image – and so needed an intermission to change the reels on both projectors.
The built-in intermission has been phased out of Hollywood films; the victim of the demand to pack in more screenings, advances in projector technology which make reel switches either unnoticeable or non-existent (such as
digital projection, in which reels do not exist).
[11]
6 AM to 2 PM. Didn't even go after too. Just went home.
