December 8, 1946

Today is my 13th birthday! To celebrate, my Mother and Father agreed to take me to the cinema for the very first time. The Willow Theatre opened up a few months ago and today we finally went to see a Walt Disney film. My Father was reading the paper this morning and read about a Black lady named Viola Desmond who was arrested exactly one month ago today because she took a seat at the downstairs level of a theatre in Nova Scotia.

The paper said that the people who ran the theatre did not say Black people could not sit at the bottom, but coloured people liked to sit in the balcony together. My Father told me that Viola could not see well from very far so she wanted to sit at the lower level, but the manager called for a police officer to drag her out. Viola had to pay $26 for the one penny tax difference between the lower level and balcony. I don’t think it’s fair that somebody can’t sit in the lower level because they don’t have the same skin tone as me. Good thing that didn’t happen while we went to the movies today…

Watching Song of the South at the Willow was AMAZING! The movie was in colour but I could tell that the colours were a bit off since the screen in the theatre was not that white. The brightness of the screen was also not the greatest BUT I can’t complain! My parents got me popcorn and I LOVED IT! There were a bunch of teenagers and young adults, I read in the paper that college and high school graduates go to the cinema at least 4 times a month. If this is the case, I can’t wait until I’m in high school! Then again, it makes sense that college people see more movies than students in high school since they have more money. So… I guess I can’t wait until I’m in college and I can afford to do this regularly!

Earlier this year, my family and I drove to Stoney Creek to see a movie at Skyway Drive In Theatre. I would definitely prefer watching a movie in a theatre. The seats in the car are not as comfortable and spending a lot of money on gas to travel to a theatre does not make much sense since there is a cinema only a few minutes away.

September 17, 1962

The growth in cinema has been beyond what I could have ever imagined. As I went through college in the 1950’s one of the most popular films was “Rock, Rock, Rock!”. The music in the film was the highlight as opposed to the plot. For some reason, the term “juvenile delinquent” became a large part of popular culture and this sparked a lot of worry for people. In America, a majority of the people were more worried about juvenile delinquents than open-air atomic bomb testing. Non-coincidentally, the rate of crimes committed by teenagers rose during this time as well.

Fast-forward to more recent events, a so called “New Wave” coming from France, has made a large impact in cinema. Now that I am 29 years-old, I look back and compare my experience with cinema when I was 13, but also take the time to figure out the story behind these changes.

World War II affected all of the countries involved, but France has a different approach to building themselves back up in the eyes of their citizens. This “New Wave” was basically a cultural phenomenon that led to economic, political and social trends. France wanted to regain the clout they had and get more respect from other countries in Europe. They had the goal of creating a revolutionary new look in fashion and film. French film directors used a new approach to their films such as a deemphasized plot, hand held cameras as opposed to leaving them on tripods, location shooting and improvised dialogue. This was all done in an attempt to capture the audience and increase true human emotion/sincerity.

Over the last few years, movie theatre attendance has noticeably decreased. I would attribute this to the prevalence of television within households. Since we got our own television, our weekly family move nights turned into daily television shows after dinner. My parents have not been to a cinema after purchasing the television, and it’s getting harder to find friends who are willing to spend money to watch a film when most of them have television sets as well. I never thought it would get to this point, but I barely go to the cinema. My visits decreased from 4-6 times during college, to twice a month within the last few years. On top of that, I only go to the drive-in theatre about once every few months now. It’s really hard to rationalize the cost of going to a drive-in theatre.