Movie palaces
If you're fed up with squinting to watch that movie playing on your iPhone screen, a visit to Cinema Treasures at cinematreasures.org may provide some respite. This Web resource is not a fan site for classic movies, but for classic cinemas.
The site celebrates a time when films were viewed on massive screens in gloriously decorated movie palaces. It acts as a database of extant and extinct cinemas, a pressure group for their preservation, and a record of their destruction at the hands of developers.
Cinema Treasures describes itself as 'the world's largest and most up-to-date guide to classic movie theatres'. It has 24,200 entries, and visitors are encouraged to add details and pictures of classic cinemas in their own locales - or share their memories. The US has 19,000 entries, but there are cinemas listed from as far afield as Laos, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka, with 200 listings from Hong Kong.
Cinemas can be searched by location, architect, or number of screens, but it's the section devoted to architectural styles that is the most entertaining.
The movie palaces of the 1920s and 30s were built in grandiose styles to attract audiences.
Cinema designers pounced on any look they thought would catch the eyes of passers-by. Art deco was very popular, but historical fantasies were also in vogue. The site lists cinemas designed in Egyptian, Mayan, and Moorish styles. These architectural follies reflected stereotypical representations of historical themes designed to make them seem exotic and unique.
Egyptian-themed cinemas appeared in the early 1920s, when the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb piqued the public's interest in ancient Egypt. Cinema architects incorporated great golden tombs and the pyramids into their designs.
Many favourites are discussed on the site, such as California's Avalon Theatre. This mixture of art deco and Moorish styles was built in 1929 for US$2 million - a tremendous amount of money for the time.
Hong Kong cinemas old and new are documented on the site. The Broadway Theatre, which once stood in Argyle Street in Mong Kok, was 'the first deluxe theatre to be built on Kowloon side' after the second world war, notes contributor Raymond Lo, who has written many of the entries. This shared the first Cinemascope film to be shown in Hong Kong, The Robe in 1953, with the Roxy Theatre in Causeway Bay. There's also a picture of Central's charming Queen's Theatre, which finally closed in 2007 after being twinned in the 90s.
Most posts on the site document the destruction of these glorious old movie palaces. Local councils and avaricious developers are to blame: generally these cinemas are torn down to make way for shopping malls and parking lots. Visitors to the site mourn them: 'The beautiful Martin Theatre in Martin Street was torn down in 2008 to make way for more downtown parking,' laments one writer from Alabama. 'How sad. When I was a child I saw The Sound of Music there, and many Disney movies. Another cinema treasure is lost forever.'
