So, what's this all about then?

 

A good question and I’m glad you asked.

I hope to come up with an answer during this project but for the moment let’s say it’s about time. And movies. And memory. And space. And class. And one particular cinema of which more shortly. As well as one particular audience member, me.

Movies are inextricably linked to time. It’s only the fact that our brains retain an image on our eyeballs for a brief period – about 1/24^th of a second – that fools us into believing we are seeing smooth movement rather than a juddery series of still images. The great movie star James Stewart described movies as being like little moments frozen in time. This project is about what happens when those frozen moments thaw.

The American film academic Robert Allen has some interesting thoughts about movies, memory, and space. He suggests that our memory is often enhanced by the design and architecture of the space in which we view them. To be clear he is not talking about the modern multiplex, a long soulless box with a white rectangle at one end and multiple concession stands at the other. He is talking about your opulent picture palace with lush lighting, vast spaces, and a screen that made the audience completely subservient to the giant image before them. It engaged the entire sensorium as a place where memories were created and stored, and every repeat visit added to those which had gone before.

It should similarly be made clear that we are also not talking about the magnificent venues of Glasgow city centre; places like The Picture House (left) in Sauchiehall Street – later the Gaumont – with its foyer containing a koi carp fountain and a palm court orchestra, or the art deco masterpiece which was the Paramount – later the Odeon - in Renfield Street (below). It is worth bearing in mind that cinema spread faster and across a wider demographic in Glasgow than almost any other city in the United Kingdom. In 1913, for example, the city could boast 87,000 cinema seats between its private and municipal venues. Most of these were in the working class schemes and suburbs of the expanding city.

Although they were frequently surrounded by tenements, these cinemas were some of the architectural jewels in the civic crown. Albert Victor Gardner, the architect who designed many of them, was a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright and his work contained many nods to the American genius which were often luxuriously at odds with their relatively meagre surroundings. Gardner designed around 50 cinemas which can be found in suburbs such as Springburn, Hillhead, Finnieston, and Govanhill, as well as small towns such as Rothesay, Dunoon and Campbeltown.Every suburb or district had its own cinema. 

I grew up in the Sixties in the 4-in-a-block houses in Red Road in Balornock, where there were half a dozen cinemas no further than a short bus ride away. In Townhead there was The Carlton and The Casino, at Charing Cross there was The George, not far away was The Vogue in Possilpark, The Kinema in Springburn Road, not to mention the recently closed Wellfield in Springburn. Above them all was my own palace of cinematic memories, The Princes in Gourlay Street, just off Springburn Road.

The attraction between the local audience and its cinema was almost parochial. Few went to see a particular film, most went to the same cinema at the same time, often two or three times a week depending on programme changes. The elite city centre venues were the homes of the first-run pristine releases, the local cinema was a little more down market and since they were in working-class areas they became proudly working class.

Professor Annette Kuhn has worked extensively in the field of cinema memory, including research in Glasgow, and her landmark work, An Everyday Magic, suggests that social cohesion, of the sort evidenced in those memories, is a prime example of the appeal of the cinematic space. She says that cinema going was regarded as part of the routine of everyday life and was a strong driver of social identity. For the majority, going to the pictures is remembered as being less about   films and stars than about daily and weekly routines, and neighbourhood comings and goings.

Kuhn has developed a hierarchy of memory to classify these recollections. ‘Type A’ memories are those which feature quite distinct recollections of scenes or sequences from films; ‘Type B’ memories situate those scenes in the context of the subject’s life in the sense that, for example, it may have been the first film they saw; while ‘Type C’ memories are those where it is the activity rather than the content which is remembered. This is common, for example, in the recollections of older people of those children’s matinees at the famous BB screenings in the Wellington Palace in the Gorbals, housed in the National Screen Archive in the Kelvin Hall. They tend to remember the excitement of the experience without necessarily being able to recall what they saw, which would categorise them as ‘Type C’ memories. The event is memorable, but the specifics fade with time. 

Recently I came across a similar sensation in my own life and that’s what prompted this case study. Basically I misremembered the first film I saw. This was the foundation myth of my entire career and most of my life and I had got it wrong – the full story will appear in due course, but it was a shock and it prompted me to look further.

By the time I was 10 I had a rudimentary understanding of how cinema exhibition worked. I could find the listings pages in the Evening Times, I knew which hoardings advertised coming attractions, and basically, I was starting to educate myself as a cinemagoer, able to express some agency in what I wanted to see.

For the next year, using those Evening Times listing pages I’ll post a monthly blog at the end of each month looking back at the releases from that month in 1966. We should find a very different industry from the one we have today.

I’d like to invite you to join me as we discover the answer to a question frequently asked by 10-year-old me: “What’s on at the pictures?”