When I was growing up in Manchester, cinemas still played an important part in people’s lives. There would be occasional trips to the big venues in the city centre but, more regularly, there were visits to the local picture houses: The Wycliffe on Princess Road in Moss Side, The Imperial at Brooks Bar or The York in Hulme.( I have no idea how a cinema came to called The Wycliffe, by the way!). Films would do the rounds and these local flea pits would show them long after they had been seen by town centre audiences. At times old films would be given an airing; I remember making my way to see Lord of the Flies at The Temple (another great name) in Cheetham Hill years after the film’s release.
There was a cinema in Rusholme which had a serving hatch at the back selling hot patties from the West Indian café next door. In the weeks before it closed down some movie buff on the staff arranged to dig through the old reels and have festival of horror films. What you got to see was pot luck; I don’t remember any publicity or who told us what was happening – we just turned up, paid our one and six and watched Harryhausen monsters with a strong background smell of curry. Nobody asked our ages or bothered about ratings.
Last week we thought we might go to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The film is hugely successful, it has just been released and we have several multi screen complexes nearby so we naively assumed we would be able to pick our time and place. No such luck! Le Carre had vanished and all that was available was an array of moronic nonsense. I don’t even want to start listing the films in case I get carried away or fall foul of libel laws. Suffice to say that Mark Kermode wouldn’t have had a good word to say about any of them. The only venue we could find showing Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was nearly thirty miles away with a start time of 21:30. Ironically it was in a Manchester suburb.
Clearly, if you are not quick off the mark you miss your chance and have wait for the DVD or for the film to be on TV the Christmas after next. The days of films ‘doing the rounds’ are clearly long gone. Or perhaps we just happen to live in a bit of a cultural desert.
I've always dreamed of having a serving hatch. Maybe one day...
ReplyDeleteOur closest cinema is a 30 minute drive and usually shows the second run of the 'blockbuster' crap thats already in the video store. Once in a very blue moon we go into Victoria, an hour away and treat ourselves to a few Guiness, an early meal and a flic. The last one we saw was Werner Herzogs 3d, Caves of Forgotten Dreams...well worth the drive! We used to go to this place called the Cinegog...owned by a Jewish fellow where you could see 3 flics for 5 dollars! It used to be a porn theatre called the Fox, owned by East Indians, and I always felt a bit creepy going in. Needless to say, the good old cinemas are slowly disappearing...curry and all!
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of a picture house called 'Cinegog'. The Temple cinema was in what used to be Manchester's jewish district - I wonder if that explains the name.
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