Today's movie theaters, although small, are wonderful
. Spongy, wide seats that recline a little without making noise. Armrest with hole to put the drink. Slope that facilitates viewing of the film from any position. Stereophonic and immersive sound that puts you right inside the scene and that, at times, even manages to make the noise of jaws chewing popcorn inaudible. Not a very large screen, so that we don't miss the TV in the living room so much. The only detail, and I point this out only out of being picky, is that they may not be so close to where you live.
In other words: if you live in a neighborhood with shopping, bingo
. If not, patience.
Do not take what I am going to say as an idealization of the past but, rather, as a hard fact from history: when I was a child,
each neighborhood, no matter how marginal, had its own cinema
. Some, more than one.
Pompeii, for example, had the Sáenz cinema, where they took me on a school trip to see
The Saint with the Sword
, the biography of Saint Martin made of pure bronze by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson. But in its giant room with uncomfortable seats, similar to those at the Center, I went on my own to see two unforgettable hits by Leonardo Favio:
Juan Moreira
and
Nazareno Cruz y el lobo
(yes, I admit it, I stayed up many nights thinking about Marina Magalí ).
Pompeii Cinema. Image from the early 50s.
Boedo Avenue had three cinemas: the Cuyo, the Los Andes and the Nile. If the plan of our early adolescence was to see one of Trinity or James Bond and then eat pizza at La Flor, we went there on a short trip with the 75. If the plan was to see one
forbidden for 18
, the nearby destinations were the Pablo Podesta, in Parque Patricios (there I saw
La Mary
and the cause of my sleeplessness became Susana Giménez), or the Gran Alsina, by Valentín Alsina , which alternated in its programming the films of Bruce Lee with those of Coca Sarli or those of the Italian Lando Buzzanca. The sound was annoying, the seats were horrible, the cleanliness was dubious, and the fabric (that was the screen, a fabric) had traces of past pranks, but
no one asked for your ID upon entering
.
The winds of the end of the century swept away the neighborhood cinemas, which ended up being converted into
evangelical temples, dance halls or parking lots
. Each era has its own ways of making money and, from the eighties onwards, the idea of living off a giant cinema in peripheral areas was exhausted.
Today, when I get into those brief hermetic cubes that are the current theaters, I can't help but let my memory go back to one of the first times they let me go alone to see a movie.
It was in the “priests' cinema”
, which operated on weekends behind the Church of Pompeii. They showed old movies. That afternoon,
The Alamo
, a western with John Wayne. As it was long (it lasted three hours), they made an intermission in the middle of the screening. I ran out to the kiosk in the hall and bought a package of “Merengadas” cookies. I came back right away and started eating, happy to feel big in
that separate world that would return as soon as the lights went out
.