The standing ovation used to mean something. Not any more

“It’s gotten totally out of hand,” Chita Rivera said of the standing ovation nearly 20 years ago. “It’s become a bit of audience participation. What does it mean any more?”

The Broadway legend can have had little idea what was coming down the line. In recent years, the standing-o (as they really do call it) has become to media journalists as the heavens were to pre-Enlightenment astrologers. Nowhere does this manifest itself more preposterously than at the larger international film festivals. Back in May we were told that George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing — released commercially two weeks ago to little interest — was an Oscar player because it scored six minutes of upright clapping at the Palais des Festivals. Top Gun: Maverick got five. But Elvis won the world’s dumbest contest with a full 12.

We have, this week, been enjoying even sillier standing-o chatter at the Venice International Film Festival. Zack Sharf of Variety helped us out with a chart at the midpoint. Brendan Fraser’s bravura turn in The Whale did good business with six minutes. Bones and All had them aloft for eight and a half. But The Banshees of Inisherin won easily as the audience at the Salle Grande clapped Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell for 13 minutes. Those watching outside ended up joining in. “You’ll neh-ver beat the Irish! You’ll neh-ver beat the Irish!” they weren’t quite shouting.

Everybody gets a standing ovation at a world premiere of a film

Then there was the discourse around Olivia Wilde’s exhaustingly chewed-over Don’t Worry Darling. As you will have heard, the media has been alive with speculation that star Florence Pugh didn’t get on with her director. “Pugh refuses to make eye contact with Olivia Wilde during the 4-minute #Venezia79 standing ovation,” Ramin Setoodeh, Sharf’s colleague at Variety, tweeted. (Pugh is indeed not looking at Wilde in the clip. Then again, she’s not looking at a lot of people.)

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Listen carefully. Everybody gets a standing ovation at a world premiere. With all the cast, crew, friends, lovers, mammies and daddies in the audience, it would be rude not to oblige. Few people clapping on foot are expressing anything like a worthwhile opinion. The fellow to look out for is the red-faced malcontent performatively folding his arms and working his bottom deeper into the plush of his seat. He is making a statement worth hearing. In an environment where a standing ovation is expected, the person keeping hands unreddened is the real hero of the hour. That is usually me. I would have obliged following the red-carpet screening of Todd Fields’s TÁR at Venice, but I really liked the film and I wanted to get a photograph of Cate Blanchett’s Schiaparelli top. You know? Like a civilian. Like an amateur schlub. Indeed, one suspects many of the clappers are keeping it up to help their chances of getting a good snap. Just give me another two minutes and I’ll have the ideal Instagram crowd-pleaser.

At journalism school they tell you (I’m betting) never to assume motivations from even partially ambiguous actions. So we make no claims about the audience members who gave Michael Flatley’s Blackbird a standing ovation at its recent Dublin premiere. It is, however, fair to say that, despite the cacophonous greeting, little undiluted praise has elsewhere come the film’s way. Don’t take health advice from a tarot card reader. Don’t use phrenology to pick a romantic partner. Don’t turn to the ovation charts when selecting your evening’s entertainment.

As the curtain falls on even the most mediocre premiere, one finds oneself thinking of those poor Soviet audiences who, following one of Stalin’s speeches, feared to stop clapping lest that decision propel them towards the Gulag

The standing ovation used to mean something. Particularly in these islands. I love our American friends but they do feel an unending need to let the world know they are enjoying stuff. Think of chatshow audiences who yell like electrocuted baboons whenever a pop star mentions one of his hits. Broadway audiences have a scarcely believable habit of applauding during straight plays when a celebrity lead makes his or her entrance. Centuries ago, the Irish and the British were better behaved than that at cockfights or bear-baiting.

We are becoming more American. Four years ago, Denis Staunton, writing in this paper, asked a theatre-going British friend about the apparent shift in theatre etiquette. “It’s disgusting and it has to be stamped out. Standing ovations are un-English,” his pal sensibly replied.

Sadly, the situation has, if anything, got worse. As the curtain falls on even the most mediocre premiere, one finds oneself thinking of those poor Soviet audiences who, following one of Stalin’s speeches, feared to stop clapping lest that decision propel them towards the Gulag. “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!” Alexander Solzhenitsyn reports an interrogator telling a recently arrested factory director.

Ponder better times. Ponder the genuinely moving ovation that greeted Charlie Chaplin in Hollywood when, after decades in exile, he returned to receive an honorary Oscar. It went on and on and on. And it mattered. Chita Rivera surely approved.