-Noah Gittell

If you subscribe to The Film Club at The Picture House in Pelham, you’ll get a unique cinematic experience: tickets to six films in six weeks. The hook is that you’ll have no idea what the film is until you sit down in your seat. For the last few years, Stephen Whitty, longtime critic for the Newark Star-Ledger and member of the New York Film Critics Circle, has been the host of The Film Club, choosing the selections, arranging for actors and directors to attend and submit to a Q&A, and facilitating discussion with eager audience members.

Noah Gittell: What drew you to get involved in The Film Club? 

Stephen Whitty: The biggest appeal is purely personal. My family moved to Pelham Manor when I got out of second grade. And I lived there until I graduated high school. All those formative years I spent in that town, and that was my local movie house. I would walk over to the movie house with a dollar, buy a ticket to “Destroy All Monsters,” get a Clark bar and a paper cup of Coca-Cola. I saw so many major movies there growing up.

NG: So the venue itself was the draw.

SW: It was a draw, but even if it weren’t the Picture House, I still love the idea of introducing people to films they might not have otherwise seen. Talking to film-makers and actors about the movie afterwards. Fostering that sense of community. We’ve forgotten that cinema is a communal art. It’s meant to be experienced with other people. The lights go down, and you’re there for two hours. You’re enjoying it at the same time that other people are enjoying it, as opposed to streaming it at 2 a.m. on your couch. Anything that encourages the theatrical experience is great, as far as I’m concerned.

NG: How do you select the films? What are your criteria? 

SW: With rare exceptions, these are films we are showing before they are shown theatrically or on a streaming service. They’re sneak previews. We’re limited by what’s coming out, but I try and vary it between foreign films, documentaries, comedies, dramas. There are some things I’ve realized don’t work particularly well for this audience. They’re not big fans of gory horror movies, but I tend to not pick those anyway. We’ve done really mainstream films like “80 for Brady” and really challenging films like “The Happening.” We’ve done documentaries. We’ve done films that are still looking for a distributor.

NG: I could see how the sponta- neous element of this would help foster a strong film culture. 

SW: I hope it does. I can see that people are hungry for this. They love getting the chance to see a movie in a theatrical set- ting and then get to talk about it afterwards. There’s a certain generation, which I’m part of, that grew up going to the mov- ies regularly. It almost didn’t matter what was playing. “It’s Saturday night, let’s go to the pictures.” Certainly, a lot of people who come to Film Club are of that generation, but it’s great when I see younger people in their 20s who are showing up. It’s an experience we’ve gotten away from, and it’s just so satisfying to talk about what you’ve seen in person as opposed to typing out your thoughts on social media. It’s very encouraging because we need to keep this culture alive.

NG: You’ve been a film critic for several decades now. What is your take on the state of the film industry today?

SW: I was encouraged by what happened with “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” last summer, and not just because they made enormous amounts of money. It was more that they drew crowds. People wanted to see them in a theater. “Barbie” was so much better than it needed to be. This wasn’t like the Battleship mov- ies from 10 years ago. It was an intelligent, thoughtful take on it. And “Oppenheimer,” a three- hour movie about a socially awkward physicist who invents a weapon of mass destruction. These are not movies that folks in Hollywood would usually greenlight. But they were hits. It told me that the audience is still there for challenging pictures. If you give them something they feel they need to see in a theater, they will show up.

NG: I know you’ve written a book on Hitchcock. Outside of the classics, what is a Hitchcock movie you think more people should see?

SW: One movie that I recommend, which people aren’t going to run out and see because it’s a silent film, is called “The Ring.” It’s about a boxer in carnivals, a romantic drama-slash-tragedy. I think it’s the only movie he ever took a screenplay credit on. There are some won- derful little touches in it. You’ll watch it and think, “Gee, I wonder if Fellini saw this movie.” There are some wonderfully little surreal moments in it. It’s certainly worth seeking out.

The Spring season of The Film Club begins on May 1. You can subscribe at: https://thepic- turehouse.org/tph-film-club/