Old cinema architecture

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The design of the first railway carriages were closely modelled on that of the horse-drawn carriage. This seemed entirely right at the time. After all, wasn't there a similarity of function between a carriage pulled by an engine and one pulled by a horse?

When architects and builders began to erect the first purpose-built cinemas a similar mind-set seems to have taken hold. Cinemas were places of mass entertainment that held a large audience of people who all looked at the same spectacle in front of them. This was very much like the music-halls, theatres and concert halls of the time. Consequently it seemed entirely reasonable to draw upon their designs and decoration when building the new venues of mass-entertainment. To look at the music-hall architecture of someone like Frank Matcham and then at the cinemas of the first two decades of the twentieth century is to see many similarities. It is true that the sum spent on the average cinema's architecture was often less than on a music hall. However, the same debased classical features and the borrowings from exotic architectural styles (Moorish and Oriental were popular) pervade most such buildings.

The other day I stood in front of the former Tower Cinema in Hull. This was built by a Hull architect, H. Percival Binks, in 1914. The overall style is classical with domes, obelisk pinnacles, pediments, pilasters, rustication, swags, even a pseudo Diocletian window and an allegorical figure. However, it is faced in the then fashionable green and cream faience and has debased Art Nouveau touches - see particularly the stained glass lettering and its surrounding low arch. When built it must have seemed very up-to-date and quite different from the staid stone and brick of the Victorian buildings of the city; in fact, perfectly in keeping with the technological marvel of the moving pictures on display inside. Today it is no longer a cinema but some sort of night club. Mercifully, with the exception of a band of grey paint over the lower level tiles, little has been changed on the facade and so it remains an interesting building that speaks of its time of construction.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (27mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Former Empire Cinema, Wisbech

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The uses to which redundant cinemas have been put are various. I've seen them turned into supermarkets, carpet showrooms, nightclubs and bars. However, one use for these former picture palaces has been more prevalent than all the rest put together: I mean, of course the conversion into bingo halls.

That is the current use of the former Empire Cinema in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire.This particular building was erected in 1932, the work of the architectural partnership, Ward and Woolnough. The style chosen, as for so many metropolitan and some regional cinemas was Art Deco of the Moderne variety. Reconstituted Ketton stone was chosen for the main facade where symmetry prevails left, right and above the main, entrance. The composition is stepped with a central "crest" and prominent oriel windows emphasising the middle. The glazing bars are quite unusual, eschewing the almost mandatory horizontal banding in favour of geometrical designs everywhere except for the sunburst of the main doors. Brick is used everywhere except at the front.

Most cinemas are, to my mind, interesting rather than beautiful, architecturally and socially noteworthy buildings that enliven the streetscape with their glitzy oddness. It's appropriate that they continue to be used as places of low-cost entertainment, not only because that continues by other means their raison d'etre, but also because it usually results in their exteriors and interiors remaining intact due to a lack of funds for refurbishment and "improvement".

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (27mm - 27mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

West End

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I remember learning in my school geography lessons that in Britain poorer housing and industry is often located on the east side of a city and better housing on the west. This is apparently due to the prevailing wind being a westerly or south westerly. The well-heeled preferred not to have noxious odours brought to them on the breeze and so, in the main, they chose the western side of the city in which to live. The poor had less choice or no choice at all.

I recall thinking that this seemed to apply to London in so far as I knew it; that the West End was upmarket compared with the downmarket East End. When I moved, several years later, to the city of Kingston upon Hull, the rule applied there too, though it was somewhat spoiled by the fact that the fish dock was in the west of the city.

On my first visit to Boston I noticed this sign on top of a cinema. Roof mounted signs are much less common in Britain than they are in other countries so they do catch my eye. Could the same rule apply in this town I wondered? Was this a West End in the London sense though on a smaller scale? The answer in both cases proved to be no. The sign seems to take its inspiration from London and the fact that the West End has many cinemas, but also leans on the fact it is located in a road called West Street. The clear January light was emphasising the sharp shapes when I looked up at it the other day so I photographed it against the cloud flecked sky in a very off-centre composition.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17.8mm (48mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  - 0.3EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Self-portraits and Mr Turner

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The other evening we went to see Mike Leigh's, "Mr Turner", a film about the great English painter, J. M. W. Turner. It was exquisitely shot, beautifully acted and an interesting take on the artist's life. For me it only suffered by a little too much direct connecting between the artists later, great "impressionistic" works and their sources of inspiration. I do recognise, however, that anyone coming to the film with no knowledge of Turner would value this direct explication.

As we went up to the gallery where our seats were I took a couple of self-portrait photographs in the glazed stairwell windows. This was the best of the bunch with the market place beyond, illuminated bank signs on the right, and a passer-by at bottom right balancing my silhouette on the left. Anyone who has looked at my many self-portraits (for example here, here or here) on this site will know that, with one exception, they can all best be described as "obscured", since they are designed to hide or suggest rather than reveal.

After we'd seen the film mentioned, my wife read me an extract from Wikipedia about Turner's first sale of a work (a seascape, "Staffa, Fingal's Cave", unseen by the buyer) to an American, one James Lenox of New York City. The person who bought it from Turner on behalf of Lenox reported to the artist that the new owner was "greatly disappointed" by what he described as the painting's "indistinctness". Turner is reputed to have replied, "You should tell Mr Lenox that indistinctness is my forte". I think henceforth that will be my reply to those who find my self-portraits unrevealing!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.8mm (34mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8 Shutter
Speed: 1/40
ISO: 640
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Cinema and birds

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The Majestic cinema in King's Lynn opened on 23rd May, 1928. This event is recorded in the building in a stained glass window. Anyone interested in the architectural history of Britain could easily guess that the decade in which it was built was the 1920s because the style and details simply shout it. The asymmetrically placed tower with a copper-covered dome, the brick with plentiful contrasting stone or concrete, the pared down Corinthian style of the pilasters at first floor level, and the Ionic of the ground floor arcades are familiar from countless town halls, public libraries and other civic buildings that feature a freely treated Jacobean-cum-Baroque style. Here the architects were the King's Lynn team of John Laurie Carnell and William Dymoke White.

Many cinemas of this era have closed and found other uses as bingo halls, carpet showrooms and such. It's good that the Majestic continues as a cinema. I've tried to photograph this building before without much success - it's in a group of fairly narrow streets. Today's prospects didn't look too good either with the sun low down behind the building. However, as I tried a few shots some scavenging gulls came swooping down to clean up someone's spilled take-away food and so I seized my moment and managed to place a couple of them in the empty space at top right.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Sleaford Picturedrome

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The first cinemas in Britain were built in the years before the First World War. They were generally small with fanciful facade details in a debased Art Nouveau or Classical style applied in relatively cheap materials.  The real heyday of cinema construction began in the 1920s, speeded up after the introduction of the "talkies" in 1927, and continued through the 1930s. A theatre for moving film projection was a new building type. However, designers initially based the layout on a traditional theatre, though the area of the stage was reduced and the associated machinery and layers of curtains were clearly not required. The later cinemas were essentially functional buildings overlaid with a decorative style on the facade and in the public rooms and auditorium. These styles were plundered from many lands and periods - Moorish, Classical and Art Deco were popular but in the 1930s a streamlined Moderne took hold featuring cream tiles, fins, windows wrapped around corners and sometimes columns, lotus flowers and tapering pilasters sourced from Egyptian temples.

Today's photograph shows a former cinema - The Picturedrome - at Sleaford in Lincolnshire. Like many such buildings it no longer fulfils its original purpose and is now closed, but it still shows evidence of its recent use as a nightclub. It was built in 1920 in a sort of stripped Classical style. The main entrance is flanked by columns, with a large Diocletian window with a rusticated surround above. The cornice has regularly spaced paterae-like circles and in the centre of the attic storey is a circular window with what look like husk garlands and some Greek key pattern. The inside had a rectangular proscenium arch, a barrel vaulted ceiling and painted panels decorating the walls. It could seat 900 people and it was apparently so successful that a balcony extension was installed to seat a further 80. Who knows what its future holds?

You may be wondering about the colours of this particular photograph. I turned the original colour shot into black and white and then gave it a digital blue and sepia "split toning" effect. In the days of film, when I processed and printed my own black and white photographs, I always wanted to try split toning but the apparent complexity of it put me off. Essentially it involves using two different coloured toners which affect the shadows and light areas differently. Digital split toning mimics this. I've applied the effect once before, and I think it is a very good fit for the subject - the new seafront at Cleveleys, Lancashire. I thought this cinema might also benefit from the treatment.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On