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Tourism consultant Nigel Smith specialises in walking tours of film history, aggregating the most famous and lesser-known cinemas around Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus. Community has been synonymous with moviegoers in the capital, but it’s unexpected how many “firsts” have happened there.
The Capitol, Haymarket
It’s hard to believe how impressive the 1,500-seat Capitol Theatre was when you walk past the site of the current old cinema. By the time Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail premiered here in 1929, the cinema had already screened several Hollywood sound films. But when it came to local British talkies, but the reviews went too far.
The Daily News declared, “Blackmail has destroyed the most productive American talkies,” while the Sunday Dispatch critic boasted, “I challenge you to produce for me now in this country an American talkies that is in no way equivalent to Alfred Hitchcock’s.
Hitchcock, born in London, had already made 10 silent films before Blackmail. His biggest challenge for his first talkies was the strong Czech prop of star Anny Ondra. Hitchcock’s solution? He hired Joan Barry, trained through RADA, to stay off-camera and explain the lines in sync with Ondra’s mime. Hitchcock’s soundcheck with Ondra for Blackmail is one of the earliest examples of his antics on set.
Academy, Oxford Street
Foreign films have found an audience in London. The Lumière brothers’ pioneering short films were screened at the Regent Street Cinema in 1886, a few months after their public debut in Paris. During the 1920s, figures such as H. G. Wells and the young Alfred Hitchcock saw masterpieces of Russian and German Silent Expressionism at Film Society screenings in various West End cinemas. But London didn’t have arthouse cinemas until the early 1930s, when Oxford Street Academy was renamed “the home of authentic French sound cinema. “
Classics like Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion have been hits here. After the war, it’s the place where Buster Keaton can be seen playing alongside Kurosawa and Bergman. The linocut posters designed by artist Peter Strausfield from 1947 until his death in 1980 are perhaps the most exclusive to the Academy. Even when a dealer had designed their own unique posters, Strausfield’s posters were still used.
Empire, Leicester Square
One of the most recent performances from the royal film was in April 2022 at the Odeon in Leicester Square, when Tom Cruise shared the red carpet with Prince William and Kate for Top Gun: Maverick. The Odeon and the Empire have taken turns hosting the fundraiser. in Leicester Square maximum years since 1946, when Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger A Matter of Life and Death was projected in front of King George VI, his wife, Queen Elizabeth and their daughters, the future Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret.
In addition to the film’s lead actors, David Niven and Kim Hunter, there were so many stars that one newspaper felt that “you couldn’t have thrown a cookie without punching a prominent user in the nose. “The royalty of the day is mesmerizing. My favorite is Elizabeth II’s encounter with Marilyn Monroe in a minor Powell and Pressburger screening, The Battle of the River Plate, in 1956, an encounter I talk about in more detail during the tour.
Circlorama, Piccadilly Circus
After the Second World War, the Piccadilly Circus domain, where a huge Boots once stood, is now a partially abandoned bombing site. In 1963, a cinema was built here, the first of its kind, where up to 500 more people can stand, completely surrounded. across 11 screens, for immersive enjoyment, decades before 4DX. Invented at the Moscow Film Research Institute, Circlorama’s first film is a 25-minute parade of Cossacks on horseback, May Day protesters in Moscow and attractive sights of St. Petersburg. The panoramic spectacle brought other people together for a year until Londoners were able to enjoy the “first British film ever made in circles”.
Ciclorama Cavalcade promised “one of the most exciting adventures of your life” (and a free license plate for children under 14). In addition to a nighttime excursion through the bright lights of the West End, the film takes the audience aboard a race car at two hundred km/h, a lifeboat in rough seas and, of course, the must-see fairground cinema, a roller coaster. In 1965, Circlorama moved to a transitional location at the end of Blackpool Pier and a more traditional cinema, the Classic, replaced it in Piccadilly Circus.
Cinecenta, calle Pantón 11/18
What is now Odeon Luxe, Haymarket (formerly known as Odeon, Panton Street) came to life in January 1969 as Cinecenta, the first opening of an influential but now largely forgotten chain that helped pave the way for today’s “boutique. “”Cinemas.
In 1969, the average British cinema had 1,200 seats and the years of the subdivision of single-screen cinema were yet to come. The Cinecenta is different. It is the first four-screen cinema in Europe with a capacity of between 130 and 150 people each. Before the opening, clever advertisements announced: “The old concept of cinema will die this month” and “Take a vacation away from the same old cinema”. “
The program combined film festival hits, British and American independent films, and European auteur dishes that contained a generous amount of nudity. The staff dressed in the uniforms of iconic ’60s designer Ossie Clark only reinforced the Cinecenta symbol as a tricky position to see. a movie.
To see more “scoops” and be more informed about the afterlife and offer cinemas in Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus, sign up for one of my regular West End cinema walking tours.
Nigel Smith is a qualified tour representative in London, co-runs the Tufnell Park Film Club and is the editorial representative of Radio 4’s Screenshot. Find tickets to their representative West End cinemas, as well as excursions to the Islington and Acton cinemas on their website.
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