Intermissions were never primarily a courtesy; they were a consequence of how film was physically handled. A feature arrived on multiple reels, and early presentations simply broke where the reel broke: a 1912 four-reel release was shown in four acts with a pause at each change. The 1950s 3D boom made the break unavoidable again, because a stereoscopic film ran on two projectors at once and both had to be reloaded. Once projection technology removed the seam (changeover between paired projectors, then platter systems, then digital files with no reels at all), the technical reason vanished, and exhibitors had a commercial reason to drop the pause too: a shorter running time means more screenings per screen per day. Where the incentive runs the other way, intermissions survive. Indian cinema keeps them because the interval is when the concession stand earns, and the practice is strong enough that Indian films screened in UK cinemas usually retain it while the same films in US cinemas do not. The polling splits almost exactly on how long a film has to be before the argument applies.