Going to the Pictures

In my life, as far as culture is concerned, I’ve got more out of the cinema than almost anything.

When I was a kid most people from my class went to the cinema two or three times a week. There was lots of ‘picture palaces’ as we quaintly called them, and the programmes changed midweek. The main film and a supporting ‘B’ feature would run from Monday through Wednesday and then a new programme would go from Thursday to Saturday . Sunday there’d be a new programme just for the day, normally including an old classic that one had missed first time around.

Considering there were three cinemas in short walking distance, imagine the choice to be had, dramatic love stories starring great intense film actresses like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford. Historical dramas with Errol Flynn, Leslie Howard, Lawrence Oliver and the two sisters who seemed to dominate period drama, Olive de Havilland and Joan Fontaine. Cowboys and Indians with Randolph Scott, John Wayne, Joel McRea playing straight shooting, honest to goodness white men, while the poor old redskins as we called them in our less enlightened times were always wicked and ruthless to be shown no quarter at any time. Gangster movies with the laconic coin tossing George Raft, the quick fisted James Cagney and the sly Humphrey Bogart, while the gangster’s moll would be the ever dependable Claire Trevor who everyone could tell had a heart of gold, dark eyed temptress Marie Windsor or the crafty blonde Virginia Mayo who one knew was more interested in the money. Musicals with the big voiced Betty Hutton or sweet Vera Ellen and leading men like Gordon McCrae or Howard Keel and the dancer Fred Astaire. In comedy the choice seemed endless from Laurel & Hardy, the Marx brothers, Old Mother Riley, George Formby with his ukelele, Will Hay with his sidekicks Graham Moore and Moore Marriot and various school kids. In between films, there was newsreels, cartoons and shorts with the three Stooges or Edgar Buchanan. In intervals we would rush to the ice cream girl who would light her wares with a torch to tempt us with various ice creams and drinks that always sold out.

This picture-going experience coloured the lives of my generation. Karl Marx, not Groucho, once said that Religion is the Opium of the people, well the only time my class of person went to church was for weddings, christenings or funerals so I guess we were a pretty pagan lot; in times of stress when bombs were coming down I believe people would mutter under their breath and pray to god that the bomb wouldn’t fall on them, but I believe Hollywood was our teacher, Hollywood our religion, it served as our comfort and probably averted revolution. Even the names of these huge, warm palaces, Geisha, Splendide, Excelsior, Ritz and Paragon reflected a carpeted and velvet curtained cigarette smoke filled Paradise, showing us a way of life that was so far from reality and allowed us to dream such a variety of dreams that wives who hated their husbands wouldn’t leave them they preferred instead to spend their time at the sink or the oven dreaming of escape with Clark Gable after he had rejected Vivien Leigh, men who hated their jobs and the poor pay that went with it would not revolt just dream while on the assembly line or digging coal or loading ships that they were on the open range helping Gary Cooper take steers on the big cattle drive, school kids would put up with miserable and hard caning teachers knowing they soon would be able to escape and be like Harry Fowler in ‘Hue and Cry’’ spending his time tracking down crooks. We still loved our football and we played and went to see our teams but that was just Saturday, the cinemas were open every day and they were everywhere, the conversation at work and at school was very often about the film you’d seen the night before and if you had to queue. We had no Romeo and Juliet our young lovers were Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.

I still go to the pictures and still enjoy them and regard them as an escape but they are big multi- plexes and have 7 or 8 screening rooms, are extremely comfortable but so nakedly commercial, the adverts are blared out with such intense noise, I try to time it that I get in my seat just as the film is starting, most of the offerings we get are so predictable, the big budget, glitzy production. The distribution companies dictate an agenda to film makers to a formula that will guarantee them their money. It does seem to work for the studios, they pour just as much money into promotion as they do in making the films and even if the film gets bad or shocking reviews it makes no difference the public will go and watch it. I expect the old Hollywood was just as commercially driven but it all seemed unspoiled then or perhaps we were too naive. All the good films now seem to be made by small independent film makers who quite often fail to get distribution and even if they do they are normally only shown in ‘Art’ cinemas that are sparse on the ground outside of London.

I had a rather different experience this week. My youngest son Gerard has just completed his first film, 'Tony', his directorial debut to put it grandly and he laid on a family showing at the Brixton ‘Ritzy.’

Advertised as a horror film its true genre is ‘Black Comedy’’. A thoughtful, sometimes violent piece, its wonderfully acted not only by Peter Ferdinando the leading man, but the ensemble cast, actors none of them famous but all serious and aware of their craft. It’s directed by someone with wonderful insight into the way a section of some of our country’s low earning and under privileged lead their lives.

The experience was made grander because so many family turned up. The family has dwindled somewhat in recent years but there was still enough of us to make a good crowd, we caught the tube train together, went and had a meal together and got the train back together and i was struck by how nice all my family was, the nieces, the cousins, brothers and sisters, in laws they all loved the film and they all seemed to enjoy the day. The usual things were said how we must meet more often but compared to some families we still see quite a lot of each other which in these days is a blessing.

As I’ve already said, I still go to the pictures, about once every two weeks in the winter. and its still a pleasant experience, but its just one leisure activity for today's folk. I suppose the biggest influence, and has been for years, is now television, that is why they bear a huge responsibility and I don't think they bear that burden very well. Maybe its because the people in charge are too young, that's an incorrect statement as far as politics nowadays are concerned but I do believe its true. Some of these kids have very little experience of the real world and they base their knowledge on what they’ve seen on TV. Modern day tv has nothing gentle or soothing about it. Its harsh, bad languaged, in your face raw. People in streets getting drunk and swearing and vomiting, people in houses living and hating together, celebrities on islands doing the same, celebrities, endless celebrities, like constant musak, or boring wallpaper they are identikit these celebrities, famous what for? No one quite knows but everyone aspires to be one or, failing that, to meet one.

So maybe its a good thing that TV seems to be losing its power, maybe in the future, and a lot already do, we will package our own entertainment, just buy it off the shelf and play it on our projectors, stuff that really suits us. Perhaps, unable to stand the sight of the inanely famous we will go back to the spoken word and listen to Radio 4 or console ourselves with Mozart and Schubert on Radio 3.

I was interested to read that a young black comedian, famous because he doesn’t tell rude jokes in case his Mother is watching, has just filled the O2 the biggest stadium in the country against all expectations. Most of us, and I include all ages, don’t like the gratuitous rude and brutal, the obsession with lavatory humour, the obscenities, but it seems the producers and powers that be just don't get it. Perhaps that young comedian if he carries on with his success just might be the harbinger of a more responsible less brutal age. It would be good if it were so.