What?! New Haven Without a Movie Theater?

Say it ain’t so — the only remaining movie theater in New Haven is soon to close? Have things gotten that terrible?

The big bad news was delivered Wednesday in the online New Haven Independent, with this sad headline: Bow Tie Movie Theater’s Future Looks Dark.”

The Independent’s reporter Thomas Breen, who has been hearing rumors “going around town” that the nine-screen Bow Tie New Haven Criterion will close by the end of this month, quoted Bow Tie Partners Vice President of Operations Brooke Sugaski: “Unfortunately, the movie theater business in smaller markets such as New Haven has changed dramatically following the Covid 19 pandemic.”

Sugaski said Bow Tie “is in the process of analyzing options for an updated entertainment venue that may contain a theater component. No final decisions have been made with respect to the theater in New Haven but it is clear that a movie theater in its current configuration is not a viable business model in the future.”

Breen noted the Criterion, along with other movie theaters across the country, went dark in March 2020 when Covid hit. It remained closed until August of the following year.

But ever since it reopened, movie-loving New Haveners since as me have been shocked and worried to see how few people returned. Sure, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” have done well. But I went to the opening night showing of what was supposed to be a summer blockbuster, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and there were just a few dozen people there. A few weeks earlier my wife and I saw “It Ain’t Over,” the fabulous documentary about Yogi Berra. We sat in that big theater with just one other couple.

“I’m worried about this place,” I told my bride. “I don’t see how it can stay open.”

This apparently imminent closure comes 12 months after we lost Cine 4, a family-run operation on Middletown Avenue, after 51 years of service.

Where are we supposed to go now to see a movie? That fancy dancy multiplex at a strip of stores in North Haven where you have to buy reserved seats? Must we drive all the way up the shore to Madison to sit in a theater with a pleasant atmosphere?

I can’t begin to count how many movie theater obituaries I wrote through the years for the New Haven Register. The first was for the fabulously funky Lincoln Theater in 1982 (classic film double features! Hitchcock! Truffaut! Altman! “Harold and Maude.” “Frankenstein.”) Other neighborhood fixtures followed: The Whitney and The Strand in Hamden. The dear old Forest Theater in West Haven. The Cheshire Cinema. Branford lost all of its theaters. And shortly after the Criterion came to New Haven, the York Square Cinemas, offering art movies a few blocks away, had its inevitable death.

There was one break from these obits, one night where I was able to write a celebratory movie theater story for the Register. I’ve got the hard copy sitting here in front of me, the front page story from Friday, Nov. 5, 2004: “Curtain Goes Up on a Downtown Screen Gem.”

Yes, that was the opening night for the Criterion, which began with five screens, later expanded to nine of them. I reported: “The crowd of about 150 applauded the restoration and new use of the long-vacant United Illuminating building at the corner of Temple and George streets.”

The first movie shown on that “VIP only” night was “Sideways,” an enjoyable comedy starring Paul Giamatti — the son of the late Yale President A. Bartlett Giamatti.

I quoted several people for that story, including a civic-minded local official and city resident, Paul Wessel: “I’m ecstatic! A five-screen theater where you can get coffee and wine and beer! In my lifetime I can only remember movie theaters closing.”

Our U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, told the gleeful audience that when she was a kid her parents brought her to downtown New Haven to see a movie on most Sunday nights.

“The Loew’s Poli, the Bijou, the Roger Sherman, the College, the Crown — all that is gone,” she lamented. But miraculously, here it was! Another downtown movie palace.

I didn’t come to New Haven until 1977, so I have no memory of those legendary theaters DeLauro cited. But I spent many formative years at the Lincoln and the York Square as well as Cine 4. After that, there was the Criterion.

Could it be that New Haven, the home of Yale University, a city that prides itself on its rich offerings of arts and entertainment, will no longer have a movie theater?

Oh, but as a wise guy reminded me Thursday night as we discussed this sad state of affairs: we’ll always have the Fairmount! That’s a rundown one-screener in the Annex section of New Haven. It shows porno films.