According to the book “Los Cines de La Habana” by María Victoria Zardoya and Marisol Marrero, Havana once had 138 movie theaters.
HAVANA, Cuba – In times past, one of the main distractions for people, especially those with low incomes, was going to the neighborhood movie theater.
The closest cinema to my home was the Valentino, located at an old intersection in the capital: La Esquina de Tejas.
The Valentino cinema had a single Art Deco style. It looked like it had been a warehouse. It had tall hinged windows that an employee closed with a piece of string when the performance began. The atmosphere was cool, with two large fans, one on each side of the screen. The seats were made of wood, uncomfortable but bearable.
The main attraction of that cinema was the price of admission. During the week it was worth 10 cents, with a consecutive batch with the presentation of two films, a documentary, a cartoon and the usual advertisements. On Saturdays and Sundays it cost 30 cents, because the movies shown were more recent. There was a “Ladies Day” when women could enter for free.
The tapes exhibited were almost always used for a long time, and the rolls frequently broke during the presentation of the film. This generated a cry from the attendees that was very popular: “lame, drop the bottle”, which originally alluded to a certain lame projectionist who liked to drink alcoholic beverages during his work.
Also, when the tape was broken, there were some people who uttered insults and bad words at the projectionist, who was ultimately not to blame for the mishap.
In that cinema the sound quality was poor, which gave rise to another type of protest with the phrase: “Lame, vitafón.”
Added to that problem was the circulation of a vendor along the aisle with some jams and strawberry essence soda, loudly proclaiming: “strawberry soda”, which resulted in them shouting: “shut up, you won’t let me hear.”
I attended this cinema with my mother, family and friends from the area during my childhood and part of my adolescence. I remember that with 20 cents, I could see the entire batch, I could have a snack with five bakery cookies and the aforementioned soft drink.
Also very close to my house was the Rooselvelt cinema, located on the corner of Monte and Fernandina, which after it came into state hands was called Guisa.
This cinema was more comfortable than the Valentino, but the cost of admission was higher, so we went less than the Valentino, which we were already used to.
On one occasion, as a child, I went with a cousin to the Guise to see a horror movie called The Tarantula, and I was so scared that I was blindfolded most of the time.
Another movie theater in the neighborhood, but one that I never went to, was the Esmeralda, which was called “the pleasure theater,” because it was almost in front of the theater. the Square of the Four Pathson Monte Street.
The Esmeralda cinema was built in 1908. The writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante lived next to it. He mentions it in his book “Havana for a Deceased Infant,” where he remembers that from his building you could hear the sound of the tape they were showing.
Another cinema that I visited regularly in my childhood and adolescence was the Ámbar, on the corner of 15th and 14th streets, in El Vedado, when my parents and I began to live in that neighborhood.
The Ámbar, which had its time of glory, had become a lower category cinema. It had air conditioning, but its windows were destroyed.
I remember seeing many old American films there that were re-released when after 1960 no more films came from the United States; the Czechs “Waltz for a Million” and “Love is Harvested in Summer”; and the Spanish “The Little Nightingale”, by the child singer Joselito, who my mother really liked.
I occasionally visited some neighborhood cinemas that were not in mine, such as the Moderno, near the Corner of Toyo; the Ritz, in Luyanó; the Lux, in Buenavista; the Tosca, on the Calzada de Diez de Octubre, in La víbora; and El Olimpic, on Línea Street, among others.
Now a cinephile, I went to better cinemas where I could see Italian neo-realism films, the French New Wave ones; Spanish musical films such as “Cantando a la Vida”, by Massiel, “La Vida seguir Igual”, by Julio Iglesias, and “Cera Virgen”, by Carmen Sevilla (the latter in 70 millimeters and wide screen, at the Cine Jigüe).
It was rare that a neighborhood in populous Havana did not have at least one cinema. According to the book “Los Cines de La Habana” by María Victoria Zardoya and Marisol Marrero, the Cuban capital once had 138 movie theaters. Today, due to that devastating machinery that is Castro-communism, a dozen cinemas operate, if anything. The rest are demolished, closed, or with other different functions.
