At The Movies

My First Trip To The Cinema

Is it just film lovers who remember their first trip to the cinema? What is it about that magical glow from the projection booth that fills our souls with such delight it can become a formative childhood memory? Sheffield Hallam University’s Film lecturers share memories of their first trip to the movies.

Dr Suzanne Speidel - Senior Lecturer in Film Studies

The first time I went to the cinema was to see a re-release of Disney’s Peter Pan. I must have been six years old, and I was taken as part of a school-friend’s birthday treat. We went to the Jesmond Picture House in Newcastle, which was the kind of cinema that doesn’t really exist anymore now. It had a stalls and circle, as well as a pit (the cheap seats at the front of the stalls).

My friend’s parents must have splashed out, because I remember that we were at the front of the circle. We went into the cinema slightly late, however (too many children needing the loo), so the lights were already down and the movie was starting. (Nowadays I really, really hate being late for a film!)

Shelley O’Brien - Senior Lecturer in Film Studies

The first film I saw at the cinema was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang when I was five years old. Seeing a film on the big screen and in colour was like magic, because I was used to watching films at home on a small TV and in black & white.

The story, performances, songs and dances really did take me to another world as I sat in the dark with my eyes wide open, completely enraptured. I loved Dick Van Dyke and Gert Frobe, but Robert Helpmann as The Child Catcher absolutely terrified me. My parents bought me the soundtrack album for Christmas and this started my passion for film music.

I watched the film again recently and it immediately transported me back to that first moment in the cinema and, yes, The Child Catcher still terrifies me!

Dr Sheldon Hall Reader in Film Studies

I don’t remember the first time I was taken to the cinema, but I remember being told about it years afterwards. It was to see Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, made in 1951 but rereleased in the UK in 1969, which is when I would have seen it. I’d have been four years old. According to my mum, I cried uncontrollably at the Red Queen and had to be taken out. Since then, I’ve left many a film before the finish, but not often in tears. My earliest memory of seeing a film is of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, most probably the same year. But I have a much better memory of the colouring book I had to go with it, which was ruined by a younger cousin who scrawled all over it in orange crayon. Moral: keep your loved ones close but your colouring books closer still.

As a nerdy teenager with my first typewriter*, I tried to compile a list of all the films I’d seen at the cinema – a list I still have. From the early Seventies to the early Eighties, I seem to have gone on average eight or ten times a year, often to double bills. Around half the films I saw were reissues of older titles from the Fifties and Sixties, not just Disney cartoons, but often blockbusters of the past that had not yet been sold to television: the likes of Ben-Hurand The Ten Commandments, Zuluand Where Eagles Dare. These are still among my favourites.

The frequency of my cinema visits rose exponentially when I was at university (as an undergrad student, I mean), where as well as the local commercial venue I often went to the campus arts centre and the student film society. I kept a typewritten record of those films too, and began writing reviews, first for my own amusement and then for the student newspaper. The week after I finished my course I became a professional film critic. But that’s another story.

Dr Emmie McFadden Senior Lecturer and Course Leader BA (Hons) Film Studies

It was the summer of 1985. My mother brought five young children (me and my two sisters and my two cousins) to the Savoy Cinema on Dublin’s O’Connell Street. We were allowed sweeties – always a bonus in my humble four-year-old’s opinion. The steps down to our seats were a challenge for any four-year-old’s legs. Everything was large. The 70ft x 22ft screen, the 800-seater auditorium, the enormous red velvet curtains that peeled across the screen at the start of every movie. Even the individual cinema seats had the power to swallow up a child’s entire body upon seating. And so, trapped in a boat pose yoga position and keeping a firm grip on my sweeties, I settled in and watched my first film at the cinema. 

The film was the greatly anticipated The Black Cauldron. It was greatly anticipated because I had been diligently collecting tokens for The Black Cauldron toys from Cornflake boxes all summer long. I fell in love with – not the pig farmer or the princess – but the fluffy dog-come-rabbit-come-squirrel-like character. His name was Gurgi. When Gurgi died mid-way through the film (this is not a spoiler), I remember my mother quickly making her way down the row of us five children and consoling us with whispers and hugs. I wasn’t crying as I somehow hadn’t yet twigged that he had died. Then she whispered to me (this is a spoiler!): ‘Don’t worry, he’s not dead’. And for some reason that can only be explained by complex child developmental psychology – that, that was the moment I began to cry my eyes out for Gurgi. 

I would later work at Savoy Cinema Dublin as a seating attendant in my teenage years. They were some of the happiest times of my life. That large auditorium, that enormous screen, those giant red velvet curtains never lost their effect. I couldn’t have asked for a better cinema to watch my first movie.