Crossing The Bridge It occurred to me with shocking force a while back that I haven't seen an usher in a movie theater in what must be years. Granted, I grew up in a fairly hoity-toity suburb, but I distinctly remember uniformed figures who would prowl the aisles in the middle of screenings, shushing the unruly and making me take my feet off the seats. I didn't like that last part too much then, but given how long it's been since I saw a regular public screening where a cell phone didn't ring, I've started to long for their officious, order-maintaining presence. I didn't see anyone come in to check out the audience of my Saturday afternoon 8 Mile screening, but here's a miracle: they weren't needed. Even though the audience let out a yell every time Eminem administered a verbal drubbing to one of his opponents, they actually kept quiet most of the time. OK, I heard one cell phone ring, but at least they didn't answer it.

For all the abuse heaped on local multiplexes -- which, while partly deserved, has always had a hefty dose of racism and classism mixed in -- art houses have their share of indefatigably chatty patrons and lackluster conditions. (I went to one screening at New York's MoMA where the movie was shown several feet out of frame despite repeated requests to fix the problem, and -- oh yes -- a fight broke out in the audience.) The problem is partly one of infrastructure -- dying projector bulbs, undertrained manager-projectionists who don't know how to do much more than load platters and press buttons, underpaid employees without a shred of pride in their work. More than once, I've asked for major problems -- like the lights being left up for the first hour of a movie -- to be corrected, only to have a disinterested ticket-taker inform me that he'd let the projectionist know, "if I see him."

There are all kinds of problems tied up in this syndrome, of course, including some that stretch far beyond the movie exhibition industry -- like the fact that minimum-wage workers several generations removed from their ever-swelling corporate employers aren't likely to go the extra mile when it comes to customer service. But a lot of it has to do with the fact that movies are an increasingly cheap commodity, to the point where people go in, at least unconsciously, expecting to be disappointed, jumping to the conclusion that a movie has failed before they'll consider that its style might take some getting used to. Talking is an audience's way of rebelling against a movie that's failed to win its attention, which in some cases is perfectly fair game -- a movie like Jason X practically demands that you talk back to the screen. But sometimes, it's a sign that audiences want their food cut up for them, that they'd rather check out than experience a new form of storytelling. Home movie-watching, whatever else it's done, has made this more acute. Jean-Luc Godard said, "Movies will never be shown on television; only television will be shown on television," and it's true that a cathode ray tube turns everything that passes through it into a TV show; even if you turn out the lights and turn off the phone, you'll never submit to a movie at home the way you might in a theater. But the phenomenon has worked upwards as well; you may not be able to watch movies on TV, but people are doing their damnedest to watch television in a movie theater. And if all you get when you go to the movies is a sticky floor, mediocre projection and a monkey-house atmosphere, why not stay home?

That's where, maybe, a theater like The Bridge comes in. I talked to Shari Redstone, who runs the exhibition giant National Amusements and The Bridge (and whose father, Sumner, runs the entertainment behemoth Viacom) and asked her about the elevated ticket price in relation to Philadelphia's other theaters ($9 for weekday evenings; $9.75 Fri.Sun.). "It's really not much when you consider everything you get," Redstone said, and while it's worth noting that clean auditoriums and helpful staff used to come standard, it's also true that nowadays eight bucks doesn't guarantee you more than a chance to crane your neck and hold your nose. The Bridge wouldn't be the first place to discover that charging people a bit more puts them on, if not their best, then at least their slightly-better-than worst behavior. But with all the talk about making "the moviegoing experience," wouldn't it be nice if the movies tried to follow suit?

Love Me Tonight (Sat., Nov. 16, 5:30 and 7:30 p.m., $5-$8.50, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org) A last-minute addition to the Prince's schedule is this Cinema Lounge screening of Rouben Mamoulian's 1932 musical, starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald (and not available on video). The reason? With its Rodgers and Hart music, it ties right in with the Prince's centennial Richard Rodgers celebration and their current production of Pal Joey.

Antonio das Mortes (Fri., Nov. 15, 8 p.m., $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542, www.ihousephilly.org) Bringing Glauber Rocha's 1969 socialist fable to I-House seems to have been a labor of love for programmer Michael Chaiken, who in the press release announcing the screening calls it "visually resplendent" and "among the greatest [films] I have ever seen." As my dad likes to say, that's what makes horseraces. A sort of sequel to Rocha's Black God, White Devil, the 1969 Antonio -- which took best director honors at Cannes -- continues the story of a hired killer whose mission is to wipe out the cangaceiros, revolutionary people's bandits who roam the Brazilian serto. But unlike the earlier film, where Antonio (played in both by Maurcio do Valle), was the heavy, here he's a haunted man who becomes swept up in the vibrant song of the people and eventually turns against his masters. Rocha devotes long (long, long) stretches to tableaux of singing peasants and tells much of the story in song. The compositions are deliberately theatrical; the effect is something like a Brazilian Threepenny Opera, or a collaboration between Jean-Luc Godard and Sergio Leone. To be fair, the film on video is washed-out, with the red tint of aged Technicolor, the subtitles sometimes illegible, but even on the big screen, it seems as if Rocha's histrionic dialogue and unabashed sentimentality would start to grate. Do Valle's performance makes Eastwood look positively expressive; considering the change of heart Antonio undergoes, his lumbering acting is a serious liability, even if it does make an interesting contrast with the wailing and breast-beating going on around him. (This is the kind of movie where a wounded man screams, "The piranhas have got me!") One interesting consideration, though: The plot bears serious similarities to Apocalypse Now, and it would have come out just when a young Coppola was in his impressionable, operatic youth. It's not at all inconceivable that Antonio das Mortes is the missing link between Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now.

A Nous la Liberté ($29.95 DVD) As far as socialist musicals are concerned, you're better off with René Clair's charming 1931 film, which follows the exploits of two ex-prison inmates: one who finds fortune as an industrialist, the other who ends up working in his factory. It's de rigueur to compare Clair to his contemporaries Renoir and Vigo, which is more than a bit unfair -- Clair represents a previous, theatrically bound tradition at its peak, while Renoir and Vigo were the heralds of a new age. Compare Nous la Liberté, instead, to Chaplin -- after all, Clair's distributor did, and sued Chaplin for plagiarism after Modern Times was released. (The fascinating saga is chronicled in an audio essay on the disc, though its pro-Chaplin bias is evident; Clair petitioned his distributor to drop the suit, saying if Chaplin had been "inspired" by him, he was honored.) Watching them within the span of a couple of months, it seems unavoidable that Nous is the superior film, less self-consciously universal, more successfully railing against the dehumanization inherent in the assembly line: Clair personalizes the workers, while Chaplin only seems to have time for the Tramp. It's still early enough in the sound era for Clair to treat sound magically, so when a wind whips up, you hear something more akin to a spacecraft landing rather than someone sticking a microphone out the window -- by comparison, the characters' tendency to break into song is hardly even noteworthy. Like Criterion's other Clair discs -- Le Million and Sous les Toits de Paris -- this one comes with a host of opportunities for further study, in this case additional interviews and Clair's 1924 short Entr'acte, a Dadaist landmark with appearances by Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp.

Art Films I Have Loved (Wed., Nov. 20, 7 p.m., County Theater, 20 E. State St., Doylestown, 215-345-6789, www.countytheater.org) A Chronicle of Corpses' Andrew Repasky McElhinney takes stout-hearted viewers on a tour of his cinematic psyche, with clips, from Persona to Pennies from Heaven.