Page "Movie palace" Paragraph 8

The movie palace's signature look was one of extravagant ornamentation.

The theaters were often designed with an eclectic exoticism where a variety of referenced visual styles collided wildly with one another.

French Baroque, High Gothic, Moroccan, Mediterranean, Spanish Gothic, Hindu, Babylonian, Aztec, Mayan, Orientalist, Italian Renaissance, and ( after the discovery of King Tut's tomb in 1922 ) Egyptian Revival, were all variously mixed and matched.

This wealth of ornament was not merely for aesthetic effect.

It was meant to create a fantasy environment to attract moviegoers and involved a type of social engineering, distraction, and traffic management, meant to work on human bodies and minds in a specific way.

Today, most of the surviving movie palaces operate as regular theaters, showcasing concerts, plays and operas.