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revivals of earlier film first saw the beatific vision of Garbo in
classics that I’d missed, Camille, or my heart throb beautiful
having grown up only at the Margaret Sullavan in The Mortal Storm
tail end of the last golden age or Greer Garson in Goodbye Mr Chips.
of the cinema. Those wonderful, luminescent black
Some demolitions I’m and white prints (albeit a little blurred
glad I missed! Favourite for me in the more traumatic moments!)
cinemas hold too many will long live in my memory. As will
youthful associations. When the pleasure of watching the best of
I moved from the civilized Hollywood screened impeccably by top
world of Kew to the wilds of projectionists in an attractive cinema
Mitcham I was spared the setting. Of course, I could say the same
dying fall of the beautiful for my other Metro favourite, the
Above: The Carlton MovieHouse closed suddenly Rialto in Kew and one of my glorious Metro in Collins Street. You
in 1999 and was later sold. Its future is still regular haunts, the Metro in can keep all your boring multiplexes!
uncertain. Photo: Roger Seccombe. Malvern (previously the I know some will say it’s worse to
Below: The Hoyts Bentleigh Theatre, shown here Embassy). How many see a favourite cinema demolished than
under demolition. Former manager Les Egan youthful buckets of tears I converted to some other use. I know,
stands in what was the ground floor foyer, near had shed (along with the too, you can still walk into an ex-
the candy bar. Photo: Courtesy Les Egan. movie-struck matrons of cinema, like the Burnley or Canterbury
Malvern) at intermediate (both antique/furniture markets) and see
sessions of marvellous old what remains of a cinema. Until a few
MGM ‘weepies’ during the years ago the old Canterbury Theatre
early 1960s. They’d all long still had the screen painted within the
pre-dated the start of my back wall alcove while the rickety and
film-going but the Metro once-illuminated sign “Pictures” could
very thoughtfully regularly even be made out quite clearly from the
revived anything with train as late as the 1970s. Today you
Margaret Sullavan, Greta may yet climb the stairs to the dress
Garbo or Greer Garson! circle space, as you may also do at the
There wasn’t a dry eye in the Glen Theatre in Glenferrie (another
house at the session when I regular stamping ground of mine long
ago). But the scant remains wake little
nostalgia for me no matter how hard I
try. The memories and the magic have
flown, lost amongst bric-a-brac (or a
dance studio in the circle of the Glen!).
When does the soul leave the body?
We’ll leave that one to the theologians!
When does the soul of a cinema depart?
Well, it was still there today at the
Barkly! I felt it! You see, it was, for me,
still a cinema, albeit burnt, vandalized
and partly demolished. No screen hung
in the cavernous proscenium opening, no
beam pierced the gloom from the
sightless projection ports, no seats
remained. Yet, in some mysterious way,
the magic of years of movies and
countless thousands of movie-goers
living out phantom stories and shadowy
emotions in the dark lingered like an
aura in this once stately picture palace.
Yes, I believe it’s true! We do invest
something (often a great deal) of
ourselves in those magic shadows up
there on the silver screen. These cinemas
aren’t just piles of bricks and mortar,
they are living memorials to our love
affair with cinema. How else can one
Article from the Moorabbin explain that inexplicable sense of
Standard, 6 June 1984. mourning and loss one feels looking at the
remains of old, once loved cinemas? ★

20 Spring 2001 CINEMARECORD