You simply needed a better quality of audience--or even the same audience, cued to behave differently (for example, by coming to the film as part of a Hitchcock filmography series or something).

It was the last entry in this season's Science on Screen, which I would not call a shlock-fest-it's the program that's enabled me to see The Man in the White Suit and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and I still resent missing Death in Venice (1972).

This seems to be going beyond that, though--sounds like the audience was willfully not entering in to the mood.

I don't want to malign the Coolidge-going population; it wasn't the entire audience, just a much greater percentage than I would have imagined. If it had only been the two idiots next to me, I would have told them to shut up. And I will admit I have mercilessly mocked films I thought were terrible (Oliver Stone's Alexander comes to mind, as it still does from time to time despite years of Mary Renault and Pseudo-Kallisthenes), but I maintain that's because they were. And never in theaters, for God's sake. I suffered through Titanic (1997) in clementine-aided silence.

So sorry their loss was yours, too.

Thank you. That is the correct icon.