What future for our remaining classic cinemas?
A question coming rather late in the day is what to do with our remaining classic cinemas.
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Kate
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Ian 16:39 on 2024-12-28 Permalink
Regret the tragedy of the cineplex that destroyed them?
A few years back I happened to be in Los Angeles and stopped by a lovingly restored cinema in Westwood. It was a terrible movie, but wow, what a space. I had forgotten how beautiful real theatres were.
For a while my physio was in the gym on Metcalfe that used to be a cinema, I remember seeing movies there but even then the murals and vaulted ceiling were covered up. I was sad to see it finally get torn out for condos.
DeWolf 13:46 on 2024-12-29 Permalink
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if more of the neighbourhood cinemas had stayed in business. There are a lot of them around town and they would have added a lot of life to the street, the way the Beaubien cinema does now. I live close to St-Denis/Bélanger, where there used to be the Rivoli and Le Château. It’s kind of a nothing corner today — the Rivoli is now a Pharmaprix and Le Château is an evangelical church — but it must have been pretty hopping back in the day.
Kate 16:04 on 2024-12-29 Permalink
It’s a similar problem to the churches. Big buildings, hefty bills for heating and maintenance – tax too, for the cinemas –, and both facing declines in attendance.
Ian 18:53 on 2024-12-29 Permalink
For a long time repertory theatres kept those spaces going but the studio distribution system & VHS rental pretty much killed the business in the 90s. When I was a teenager in Hamilton there was a rep theatre around the corner form my house that had a double bill of Eraserhead and Liquid Sky at midnight pretty much every Saturday. They even had matinees where they would run a full set of vintage newsreels, serials, and cartoons befor a classic black and white B movie. You can’t find half that stuff anymore to buy, rent, or download – though to be fair Youtube has a a LOT of old movies, but mostly bad quality.
When I first moved to Montreal there was a place on St Kitty, Cinema de Paris, that used to run old movies all the time, both French & English. I’d go watch French films to beef up my language skills. First time I saw Les Enfants du Paradis and many other French language classics was there. For art movie rentals there was Boite Noire – and again, many of those films you just can’t find anymore.
Kate 20:19 on 2024-12-29 Permalink
I saw the most classic films at Concordia, not in a grand old cinema. I wasn’t a student at the time, but anyone could go to the Hall Building screenings for maybe two bucks. I think the programming was done by Serge Losique (who’s listed in Wikipedia with the birthdate of 1931 but, as yet, no death date). Don’t know why they stopped – maybe that was decreased demand, too.