The Cinema

Long ago.....there were two types of movie theaters.  There was the regular place that had popcorn, sodas, candy, and featured cowboy westerns and mobster movies.  The other one?  A cinema.  This typically meant wine, glacier water, oversized seats, and movies with odd twists and usually featured some French actress that fell in love with a fake Italian count with a glass eye.

You went to a cinema for upscale company, a boring movie, and the thrill of being different than the other ninety-five percent of people who desired a cowboy, space alien, or Jerry Lewis-comedy.  Yeah, the cinema crowd paid more for their tickets.  Yeah, they paid fifty percent more than you should for the glass of champagne.  And yeah, they generally forgot the entire theme of the movie within sixteen minutes after they walked out of the theater.

Generally, cinema experiences came and died out in the US.  You might find an old-fashioned cinema in New York City....maybe Miami and forty other big-scale cities.  For the most part....cinema has died out in the US.

Germany?  Well....there's probably five or six big-name cinemas still thriving across the country.  And there's probably another hundred that split between the two themes and try to bring the cinema experience to the intellectuals of Germany....ever how remote they are from real society.

Why does this topic come up?  Well....Wiesbaden is in the midst of a 'passage-renovation' in mid-town.  A passage is typically a small mall of sorts....built into a small building....with a couple of cafes, restaurants, and upscale stores.  Small would be the appropriate word to use with passage.....with total fronts rarely going above thirty.

What the city will attempt to do....is build this roof-top cinema on this passage building.  What they say....it'll be 400 seats between three rooms on the roof.  The seats will be plush and oversized.  No sodas or popcorn....strictly bubbly drinks and such.  The cost factor?  Fifteen Euro per movie ($20).

The features of such a cinema?  One can only guess......French love stories between a countess and a duke.....an Italian opera of sorts with weepy stories over failed vineyard operations....and some Scandinavian story featuring a drunk lobster fisherman and his third wife, Vicky, from Wales....who meet a stranger from Amsterdam who sings country-and-western tunes.  

Will they fill the seats nightly?  Well....this is a year away from start-up and it'll consume at least two years (probably more) to build and renovate.  Maybe they can get four hundred seats filled on a Saturday night.  The rest of the week?  I'd have my doubts if they can get in forty people.  Maybe if they advertise and note that Count Karl will be among the attendees, or some promi-pop singer from Mannheim will be in the audience.....maybe it'll draw more folks.

A slam by me over cinema movies?  No.  We need outlets like this to tell woeful French tales.  I don't mind sub-title movies.....the scripting tends to make sense without all the terrible accent business.  And to be honest here.....it's nice to see rich intellectual stories about some Italian duchess who fell for the wrong guy...four times in a row....proving that intellectuals are just as dopey about making good decisions as the regular folks.

My humble view.