Nostalgia: The Sunday Morning Matinee

I do not know if Sunday morning matinee movies still exist. I hope they do, because some of my fondest childhood memories are from watching such movies. As usual, I will elaborate (possibly at too much length).

I grew up in a place called Bandra, in the city of Bombay (now called Mumbai). At one time, Bandra used to be called the “Queen of the Suburbs”. It isn’t anymore. It is crowded, expensive and in my opinion, not worth living in anymore. But thirty years ago, it was all different.

Bandra was a quiet, clean, tree-shaded place by the sea, full of beautiful cottages and an old world charm. Back in the old “socialist” days, very few people had cars, so traffic wasn’t a problem. In the 1970s, Bandra was still not populated with high-rise residential buildings, shopping malls, cable television and beauty parlors. Instead, we had huge playgrounds where we played cricket, football and hockey every day of the year and for entertainment, we had the New Talkies cinema hall.

The New Talkies cinema hall was a beat-up, old movie theatre on Hill Road. On weekdays, they usually showed the latest Bollywood blockbusters. But on weekends (Sunday mornings), they showed old black and white Hollywood movies from the 1940s and 1950s. And these are the movies my dad took me to see when I was seven, eight, nine years old. Going to these movies with my dad every Sunday morning was a treasured ritual; moments in time that I will remember as long as I live.

In particular, a few movies stand out. The first one was the “The Corsican Brothers”, the 1941 black and white version, starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as a swashbuckling swordsman in a double role. For an eight year old, it didn’t get any better than this. An epic tale of sword-fighting, revenge and romance, with not one, but two Douglas Fairbanks sliding down banisters with sword in one hand and the damsel in distress in the other. The two Corsican brothers (both played by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. of course) are separated at birth, and destined to meet at some point. To add to the drama and pathos, both of them become expert swordsmen and fall in love with the same woman (actress Ruth Warrick). There is a dastardly villain, and of course, one of the brothers then has to sacrifice himself for the other. I wonder if our Hindi movies got the idea of siblings separated at birth from “The Corsican Brothers”!

Another movie was “Godzilla” – the original black and white Japanese version dubbed in English. The opening scene showed Godzilla emerging from the Pacific Ocean at the stroke of midnight, poised to terrorize whole villages of Japanese peasants. For some reason, Godzilla’s preferred time of surfacing from the Pacific Ocean was always midnight; and in the movie, church bells ominously chime twelve times every time Godzilla is about to emerge. This was my first “horror” movie, and watching Godzilla terrorize the Japanese countryside was plenty scary for a seven year old.

I remember many other such matinee movies I watched with my father; “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1937 version with Ronald Colman and yes, the ubiquitous Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Three Musketeers”. Watching these movies with my father made for some enduring and happy childhood memories. They were great opportunities for me to bond with my dad. For him, it was a chance to re-live his childhood, since most of these Sunday morning matinee films were from the 1940s and 1950s.

Today, the New Talkies cinema hall is long gone; replaced by a huge, glittering mall. I feel no sense of attachment to the mall, but every time I walk past it, I still mourn for the New Talkies theatre, that air-conditioned palace of dreams from my childhood.