Out there in the seats

David Stratton recalls some standout memories as a young movie-goer.

Jeanne Crain and Russ Tamblyn in The Fastest Gun Alive

The first time I kissed a female who wasn’t a family member was during a screening of a Norman Wisdom comedy titled Man of the Moment. Her name was Brenda and the incident occurred in the back row of the circle at the Forum Cinema in Bath, Britain, on October 8, 1955. Before you get the wrong idea, I should say I didn’t make a habit of such things: too much canoodling meant you missed too much of the movie. But I thought of Brenda because I’ve been thinking about the future of cinemas, and of cinema audiences, in the post-COVID era and wondering how we will respond to the inevitable restrictions that will be imposed on us after we have been spending such a considerable amount of time experiencing movies at home in isolation.

No doubt when cinemas do reopen patrons will be obliged to sit in assigned seats with appropriate gaps for social distancing. But the cinemas in some multiplexes aren’t much bigger than the little screening room I have at home, so that won’t work in every case. Hopefully, a way can be found around it, because the experience of seeing a film with an appreciative audience is not something I’d like to forgo indefinitely. However, there have been times in the cinema’s past when audience behaviour was, shall we say, questionable.

When I was growing up in the UK smoking was allowed and, boy, did people smoke! On a winter’s day there was sometimes more fog inside the cinema than outside.

Generally, audiences back then were well behaved, but a crisis, of sorts, occurred in 1956 when Rock Around the Clock was released. The kids became so excited by the performances of Bill Haley and His Comets, Little Richard and the rest of the rockers that they started dancing in the aisles. This breach of public order led to the banning of the film by many local councils in England, including that of Birmingham, where I was living at the time.

A different kind of breach came about because of the national anthem. At the end of the final screening of the day, the young queen would appear, in technicolor, on horseback, in full Trooping of the Colour regalia, while a stirring rendition of God Save the Queen was played at top volume. Audiences were supposed to stand to attention while this was going on, and some did. But many more, perhaps anxious to catch the last bus home, fled the cinema when it looked as if the feature was about to end. Sometimes this abrupt exodus must have led to a serious misperception of the evening’s entertainment.

I remember a chilly evening in January 1957, when I was watching a western, The Fastest Gun Alive, at the Alhambra Cinema in the Birmingham suburb of Moseley. Glenn Ford plays George Temple, the owner of the general store in the town of Cross Creek; his wife, Dora (Jeanne Crain), is pregnant. He hears that a bank robber named Vinnie Harold (Broderick Crawford), who claims to be faster on the draw than anyone else in the country, is looking for gunmen to challenge him. It’s revealed that, before he “retired”, George was just such a gunman: if two people throw silver dollars in the air, he can draw and puncture them both before they hit the ground. A glass of beer dropped from waist height can similarly be shattered by a bullet from George’s six-shooter before it hits the ground. But George doesn’t want any more gunfights; he promised Dora he’d put away his gun forever. Until Harold shows up.

Directed by Russell Rouse, The Fastest Gun Alive was a pretty average black-and-white western of the period and it concludes with what must be one of the most feeble gunfights in cinema. The two men meet, as per tradition, in the middle of the street; guns are drawn; we hear the shots and see flashes – and then cut to two graves, side by side. It seems they killed one another, but did it safely off-screen. A big anti-climax for western fans. The music starts to swell – and almost all of the audience in the Alhambra rose to its feet and dashed for the exit. I was one of very few who stayed for the “twist” ending; George won the gunfight but pretended to be dead so he’d be left alone in the future. A weak conclusion that the imminent arrival of Her Majesty saved most of the cinemagoers from experiencing that night.

Some bad behaviour in cinemas is unwittingly encouraged by the filmmakers themselves. How often have you seen a film in which a couple of characters go to the movies – and, instead of watching the film, start talking? In 1944 a 10-minute short film, Movie Pests, chronicles some of the drawbacks of movie-going – admittedly back in the days when cinemas were packed with people and seats were narrow. The comedy featurette depicts, among other sins, a guy noisily eating peanuts (today it would be popcorn, an odious American import introduced to Australia along with the multiplexes in the late 1970s). There’s the couple that come in after the film has started and block the view of half the audience while arguing where to sit. We see the man sitting on the aisle who stretches his leg and trips up a late-arriving patron. There’s a lady with an opulent hat (“a mountain of millinery” as the narrator, Pete Smith, describes it) that blocks the view of those sitting behind her. She takes off her shoes and they get confused with the footwear belonging to the woman in front of her. And so on. Today, of course, the biggest pest in cinemas is the mobile phone user who insists on texting throughout the proceedings.

In an era when the end credits of a film run as long as a comedy short like the one I’ve described above, it seems unwise of filmmakers to inset an important scene either during or at the conclusion of the credits. Audiences for the films adapted from Marvel Comics have been led to expect these last-minute additions, but sometimes an unprepared audience has emptied the cinema before the film’s final moment. A case in point is The Mission (1986), Roland Joffe’s powerful drama about the destruction of a Jesuit mission in the Amazon by Portuguese troops given tacit approval for the slaughter by the local Cardinal. After the conclusion of the final massacre, four minutes of credits begin, listing painters, riggers, caterers, interpreters and all the rest of the craftspeople, while Ennio Morricone’s choral score gradually rises in volume. Despite Morricone, the cinema will likely be empty when we return to the character of the duplicitous Cardinal (Ray McAnally); he is sitting at his desk and, as the camera moves in closer, looks up directly into the lens – an accusatory look? A look of complicity with an audience no longer there?

The star of Paddington 2

More recently, the end credits of Paddington 2 are well under way when those members of the audience who remain are treated to an unexpected coda: a hilarious song-and-dance routine by Hugh Grant in the prison to which his character has been rightfully condemned.

The audience, by this time, has left the building; it’s to be hoped it won’t be too long before cinema audiences are able, and willing, to return to those wonderful places where we watch stories of all kinds unfold on a screen while we relax in the comfort of our seats.

The Fastest Gun Alive – Free on YouTube
Movie Pests – Free on YouTube
Paddington 2 – streaming on Netflix