OUT WITH CLASSIC, CULT FILMS : BALBOA CINEMA TO TRY A DIET OF FOREIGN FARE

Audiences will weep no more when Humphrey Bogart looks into Ingrid Bergman’s eyes and says, “Here’s looking at you, kid”--at least not at the Balboa Cinema in Newport Beach.

At the end of this month, the Balboa--Orange County’s only full-time repertory movie theater--will abandon showings of classic and cult films from “Casablanca” to “Eraserhead” in favor of a new format featuring first-run foreign and art films.

“There are two reasons for the switch: one is money, the other is financial,” chuckled Alan Resnick, district manager for Landmark Theatres, the Santa Monica-based chain that operates the Balboa as well as the Nuart, Vista and Rialto repertory theaters in Los Angeles.

“We’ve seen a trend in repertory theaters around the country, and there is a general decline in revenue for repertory programming. We’re just running out of things to play,” Resnick said.

On Jan. 29, the Balboa’s new programming policy gets under way with the critically acclaimed 3 1/2-hour version of Italian director Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America.”

Along with the programming change, Resnick said the Balboa will undergo “a long overdue renovation. We will be putting in a new screen. . . . and doing quite a bit inside the theater.”

In Orange County, the Port Theatre in Corona del Mar is the only theater that shows art and foreign films on a full-time basis. The Newport Beach-based Edwards Cinemas chain, however, periodically books such films into its Lido and Town Center theaters, and Orange County colleges occasionally show foreign and art films on campus. The Bay Theatre in Seal Beach, which in the past has featured repertory programming similar to the Balboa’s, lately has been showing first or second-run art and foreign films more than film classics.

“The audience that comes to a repertory theater is the same audience we had 10 years ago. I think they are getting tired of seeing those same films,” Resnick said.

Many of the Balboa’s regular patrons have expressed disappointment at the news of the impending change, Resnick added.

“There are a lot of upset people and I feel sympathetic for them,” he said. “All the people who are complaining and talking about it are people who come here on a regular basis. But that’s just not enough people to keep a repertory program going.”

Dennis Leslie, manager of the Port, views the change at the Balboa as potentially beneficial to local movie-goers: “I think this will just help expose more people in Orange County to good foreign films. Everywhere you look you see the same films. Everybody has ‘Beverly Hills Cop.’ There are so many good foreign films out that never get to Orange County. There’s enough good product out there for everybody.”

Ironically, during 1983 and ‘84, the Balboa stepped up showings of first-run foreign films, but Resnick said attendance for those was poor.

“They haven’t been doing that well,” he said. “But I think with the condition of the theater and the screen, we lost a lot of that audience that came on a regular basis. We hope to change that.

“Everything is pretty much experimental. We’ll have to see how (the new format) works. We hope this is going to be a positive change, although some people may not see it that way at first.”