Mysticism of Collective Consciousness
As the Electric Palace cinema in Hastings survives to fight another day, Kent Barker offers a personal view of the shared experience of sitting in the dark with strangers.
Did I tell you I used to work in the movie industry in LA? It was true as far as it went – i.e. not very far. In the 1970s I had a job cleaning cinemas in the Eagle Rock Plaza shopping mall not far from Pasadena. It was hard work. They were full almost every night, and industrial quantities of sticky popcorn were strewn under the seats. The three screens there closed a couple of decades ago, part of the long-term decline of movie houses.
Hastings has seen the dis-appearance of a number. Among them are the Elite Picture Theatre in Warrior Square (closed after wartime bomb damage), the Rialto/Regal cinema in London Road St Leonards (1932-early 1970s), the Bohemia Electric Theatre – at one time Europe’s smallest cinema – and the Cinema De Luxe in Pelham Place (1910-1965), once Europe’s largest.
And, very nearly, the Electric Palace cinema in the High Street. This little gem of a 46-seater was just hours away from closure when a crowdfunding initiative raised £15,000 in short order. Wonderful. A cinema saved by its patrons. But for how long?
The problem is that our viewing habits have changed dramatically over the last century. Increasingly we seem to favour staying in with our TVs and ‘home’ cinemas. In 1946 there were more than 1.6 billion cinema tickets sold in the UK. By 1970 it was down to under 200 million, and by 2000 admissions stood at 142 million. The first 20 years of this century saw a slight revival with figures hovering between 155-176 million. Then with the pandemic it crashed, and in 2020 there were only 44 million actual cinema admissions in Britain.
This, I believe, is a tragedy. And not just for the film production industry. This has been buoyed up by streaming platforms like Netflix and Prime. Annual revenue from all film, video and TV production is running at £2bn. Cinema-released films account for less than half that. No, the real loss is to our collective consciousness. The experience of sitting in the dark with strangers to view a creative art form. The barely perceptible changes in mood of others in the crowd which affects your own attitude to the work.
As the Oscar-winning editor Walter Murch – whose films include films include The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, American Graffiti and The English Patient – wrote in The Guardian: “A theatrical screening deeply enhances the experience of cinema. A lot of what can be said about this veers into the mysticism of collective consciousness – hard to quantify but certainly intangibly present.”
And it’s not just now, but then. Who can’t recall their first date – or first kiss – in a cinema? Who doesn’t admit to a heartstring-tugging emotional response to The Last Picture Show or Cinema Paradiso when local cinemas were threatened or closed?
One prediction is that only the huge blockbusters – the Bonds and the Spider-man franchises – will in future get advance cinema releases while almost everything else will be available immediately on streaming channels. It might temporarily bolster box-office takings, but if we lose the habit of actually getting off our couches and making the effort to go out for the evening, we will have lost something important – and wonderful niche cinemas like the Electric Palace will face a very rocky future.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Leave a Reply