Article: Cinema, only in the cinema?
In one of the many online discussions we have in the SetCenas group, when commenting that a title was already available for download, one of the colleagues said that they preferred to watch the movies in the theater. This comment made me stop to think of this experience, of watching a movie in a movie theater.
In fact, being one of the elders of the group, I may be the one who most frequented movie theaters from the 1960s until now. That is why I agree with my colleague that the act of seeing a film in an appropriate room is, in fact, a unique experience.
After all, we are there, a group of strangers, sharing the complicity of absorbing that moment where images and sounds lead us to experience pleasures, sorrows, rages, and so many other emotions that their authors have tried so hard to convey to us.
My first conscious moments in a movie theater were in the old Cine Avenida, the main theater of Santa Rita, city of the metropolitan region of João Pessoa. At that time, every city had at least one theater, because this was, as the slogan of the time said, “the best fun”.
From the westerns of Sundays matinees, I soon moved on to the epic films that abounded in the 1960s, departing to a more varied range in the 1970s, given the striking variation that provided the only daily session of that cinema.
Interestingly, comfort was not so required. Most rooms used wooden armchairs, and the ventilation was natural, with only the help of powerful fans to overcome the strong heat of brazilian Northeast. Air conditioning only in some cinemas of the capital, like the imposing Plaza, in Ponto Cem Réis, and the Municipal, going up Visconde de Pelotas street.
For us children and teenagers, going to the movies was something as natural as breathing, mainly due to the abundance of rooms available. In João Pessoa, besides the already mentioned Plaza and Municipal, there were the Rex, Brasil, Filipéia, Astória and São Pedro, only in downtown.In Jaguaribe neighborhood, where I used to go on vacation at my grandfather’s house, there was Santo Antonio, on Av. 1º de Maio, Jaguaribe, on Captain José Pessoa, and São José, a small cinema that was very close to grandpa’s.Detail, even the latter, which was small, it had more than six hundred places.
What was common in all was a large screen, which displayed the magnificence of an image projected in a quality unsurpassed until a few years ago, and a sound that was probably only mono, distributed through acoustic boxes strategically distributed in the room.
For me, the experience of going to the movies was magical. More than simply watching a movie, I had created a ritual: arrive early, meticulously choose an armchair in an empty room, open a book, and enjoy the good music chosen by João do Cinema until the beginning of the movie .
Although for some people going to the movies were a collective experience (including couples, to date), I always enjoyed doing it alone. There is, of course, an interaction among viewers, such as the screams to fly the bird symbol of Condor Movies, or the applause in a more exciting scene.
But watching a movie in a movie theater brings a different tension, the feeling that if we take our eyes off the screen we miss some important scene, and go to the bathroom, then, no way! Of course, that was a time when people did not talk during the movie or answered cell phones.
There was a period, however, of movie theater decay, driven by an obsolete distribution model, the arrival of color television and the VCR, and increasingly sophisticated equipment to watch a movie at home.I witnessed in Natal the closing of the traditional cinemas Nordeste, Rio Grande, Rio Verde and the two Severiano Ribeiro rooms of Natal Shopping.
To give an example of the disregard of the rooms at that time, in one of the rooms at Natal Shopping, the sound was only stereo, and within six months I noticed the same fault in one of the speakers – although I had warned the administration since first time I had noticed it.
At the same time I had bought a DVD player through “importing”, and with an entry-level Pioneer receiver and a set of JBL speakers, I found that the sound I had at home was better than the sound of my town theaters.
This has changed a lot with the advent of multiplex rooms, with multichannel sound, digital projection, THX certification, subsonic effects, vibrating armchairs, and other novelties.Unfortunately also came the buckets of popcorn and soft drinks, cell phones, and the growing rudeness of spectators who do not respect the space of others.
The home environment has also made amazing strides with ever-increasing screen size and resolution, impressive quality receivers and speakers, and media features like Bluray, Netflix and other sources that can be streamed via cable, wireless or even Bluetooth.And all that with multichannel sound in the latest Dolby True HD or DTS-HD Master Audio standards, on six, eight or nine channels, and even THX-certified – the same of theaters!
In favor of the couch, we can choose to watch what we want, whenever we want, with or without snack, being able to stop to go to the bathroom or answer the phone, and all this with the quality that our wallet – or our standard of exigency – determines.
So what’s the best, the theater or the sofa?This is a response extremely personal, related to our needs and availability, and factors ranging from laziness to leaving home, fear of violence, and going to the simple and pure determination of the aforementioned colleague: we prefer to watch movies in the theater.What really matters is the love of cinema.