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The great escape
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For those growing up in the '70s, going to the movies, and talking about it later, was an intense experience. PRADEEP SEBASTIAN recalls those giddy days even as he mourns the fate of his favourite theatre, Blu Diamond.
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Photos: Sampath Kumar G.P.
The closing of all old theatres marks the end of a movie-going culture in Bangalore.
CAN A movie theatre make a movie buff out of you? Blu Diamond did that for me. And I'm sure it did the same for many Bangalore moviegoers from the '70s and '80s. That cosy little theatre was the closest thing the City has had to an art house theatre. It was partly by default — small, intense movies that other theatres didn't have space for (the blockbusters took it all up) would be shown here. Films like Truffaut's Day for Night, Fellini's Amarcord, Costa Gavras's Z; offbeat Hollywood movies like Bound for Glory, A Little Romance, Tender Mercies, Interiors, Hannah and Her Sisters, Hannah K, A Soldier's Story, Agnes of God, Dog Day Afternoon, Comfort and Joy, Biloxi Blues, A Wedding, Four Friends, Blues Brothers, The Last Waltz, On Golden Pond, Missing, and several Merchant Ivory films. You can add all your great favourites that you saw here.
Those were the days when you had to stand in a long queue to get a ticket. You came an hour and half before the show. Standing in the queue at Blu Diamond you came across regulars. You began to notice that a bunch of people — usually the first 20 in the line — came for all the movies that played here. Most of them came alone and none of them knew each other. Sometimes an awkward, self-conscious nod would pass between these shy, ardent moviegoers, and sometimes they would just stare at each other and look away. The more daring ones picked up a conversation — usually about the movie that played here the last time. That was what was so sweet about the whole thing: you stood there talking to a total stranger about a movie that both of you saw the last time you were there at Blu Diamond.
Another reason why I said this theatre made movie buffs of us is because we came to implicitly trust the movies that played here. Most of us were only slowly becoming aware that we loved movies and we were not too knowledgeable about them. (We had heard of some of these movies, of course, but in the '70s and '80s, the only way you could find out about a movie was if you got hold of a movie magazine like, say, Photoplay.) But we just knew that if a movie played here it would have to be good. Classy. Even great.
Each of these movies would play for two to three weeks, giving you a chance to both, see it a second time, and urge others to go see it. Imagine a movie like Interiors playing for three weeks in any theatre today! It wouldn't last a week. A great loss to movie lovers in India is that Woody Allen films don't play in our theatres anymore. The distributors won't touch them. An exception was to be made for The Curse of The Jade Scorpion but it has been dropped now because they felt, box office-wise, it would not be worth showing here. Hannah and Her Sisters was probably the last Allen movie to play in Bangalore. The only way you can see a Woody Allen movie in India today is on video or on cable TV. (Incidentally, the last movie to be show in Blu Diamond was The Manchurian Candidate.) If Blu Diamond were around today, these are the kind of movies that would have played here: The Hours, Possession, Far From Heaven — in other words, Hollywood's finest dramas. It had a small seating capacity of 344 seats. That was one reason why most shows also went full. But even in those heady days of Bangalore's movie going, some of these more intense, arty movies went half empty. But that never stopped the theatre from bringing these offbeat films. Curious, some of the Blu Diamond regulars got together and asked the owner, Mr. Swamidas, why he persisted in showing little movies when he could be playing blockbusters and making more money. His answer: "Who will then play all these wonderful little movies? I'm proud that we do." So, it wasn't entirely by accident that Blu Diamond was Bangalore's repertory art house movie theatre, after all. I guess Blu Diamond was Bangalore's very own Cinema Paradiso.
Which brings me to the magnificent Galaxy: is it to be no more? It has been shut down now for more than a year because its lease has run out. I miss being in there. I've known it from the day it opened. The grandest, most opulent theatre then. The red carpet that glided up the balcony with a small pond and fountain underneath it was a striking showpiece. (A friend tells me how there would be jam sessions in the lobby Sunday mornings, attracting a lot of the IISc. crowd.)
The Blu Moon complex has made way for a shopping arcade.
Galaxy opened (as all theatres then had to) with a Kannada film — Sharapanjara. Hello Dolly followed that, and then The Last Valley, Tora, Tora, Tora, Patton, Too Late The Hero. Enter The Dragon ran for a year and The Exorcist for 25 weeks. Star Wars didn't do as well as it should have. Several of my favourite movies played here: The Hot Rock, Blade Runner, The Mission, Excalibur, The Goodbye Girl, Howard's End. Even when I, as a critic, have panned a movie that played here, Galaxy's owner, Suresh Bhatheja, has always been courteous and gentlemanly about it — he would never hold it against me. The next time I would turn up there to review a movie, he would welcome me just as warmly, and be just as generous with handing out complimentary tickets. He knew without having to be told that it was not personal, that I was only doing my job and that I knew whereof I spoke, rather, wrote. For this I'm grateful to him. A critic is so easily misunderstood.
Bangalore movie buffs can only hope that the lease will be renewed and Galaxy will be there for us once again. May the Force be with it.
The closing of all those old theatres — BRV, Liberty, Empire, Opera, Imperial, Blu Moon, Blu Diamond, and now Galaxy, marks the end of a certain kind of movie-going culture in Bangalore that existed up to the mid-'80s. The cinema was a thrilling, singular experience then. (There were books — plenty of them, everyone read then — but no television). Nothing matched the excitement of setting off to see a movie. You knew you had a wonderful three hours before you. Before the movie you were in knots simply from the expectation of seeing one. Those days the curtain would go up slowly to reveal the screen as the lights went down. At interval you knew there was more to come but already disappointment lurked that it would all be over soon. Those precious, troubling hours in the dark. It was depressing to walk out into bright sunlight and carry on with the day as if nothing had happened. What compensated for this low was talking about the movie with your friends over coffee.
I don't think going to the movies evokes all this now. It seems one more recreational thing you do among other things. I'm sure the excitement is there, and the lows, but it isn't the intense, enveloping, giddy experience it once was for the '70s generation. (Sadly, towards the late '80s, in some of the more rundown theatres, you had to watch out for rats.) Maybe this is just nostalgia, maybe it just coincided with my generation discovering films — but that's how I'd like to remember it. Where would we have been without cinema? It was our great escape.
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