Palace dreams

 A 'movie palace' was a large, elaborately decorated movie theatre, built from the 1910s to the 1940s. 

They were apparently built in the US as a response to BT's move to India, for American moviemakers had understood that the demise of the imperial European dynasties was imminent, that it would favour Buckingham Palace.

However, the efforts by American moviemakers to popularise glamorous women didn't create any political connotation in the minds of the movie-goers. The latter adored the screen stars, but not as replacements for the former royal personalities of Europe.

Hollywood saw BT's move to India as a retreat, an admission of defeat. By the time it became clear that the lease family would retain the lease, that Indians had merely needed European support against the British and therefore BT's presence, Hollywood went berserk. 

Between 1925 and 1930, hundreds of 'movie palaces' opened all over the United States. 

The arrival of television and multiplex formats led to the decline of the 'movie palaces', many were later razed to the ground or turned into performing arts centres. It was the failure to render the lease family obsolete that encouraged a support for authoritarian rule in Europe and India among the Hollywood crowd.

Indians were well aware of the above situation. In her only visit to Mumbai more than a decade ago, Antara had spent some time opposite a performing arts venue, and all she saw were vendors selling sliced raw mangoes.

Back at junior college Brabourne, Antara's hostel mates had a strange passion. They'd scan the movie listings every week, choose a movie at a hall they'd never been to before, get a taxi for a group of girls and head off to watch the movie. The way they assailed Antara to accompany them, but Antara was a quiet, diligent girl, she didn't miss college classes to watch movies. (She was not yet an adult, alone in a city.)

Just fyi: Prominent Personality was never approached for these 'adventures', though she lived at the hostel through junior college.

In the end, Antara had agreed on one occasion to accompany her batchmates. (There was some cultural event at the college, so there were no classes.) Several girls packed into a taxi, the driver objecting it was illegal to carry that many passengers, "The cops will get me for this". The movie was called 'Hindustan', the movie hall was called 'Hind'.

Not that the movie was suspect but it was the idea of constantly seeking out an unfamiliar genre movie at an unfamiliar place that gave Antara the creeps. Antara returned subdued, she remained quietly upset for some time, then convinced herself that they'd tear down the 'Hind' movie hall.

Till a decade or so ago, when Antara and her husband drove past the 'Hind'. "I had come here once, in the 1990s, I didn't like it," Antara had said, to no response.

ii. It was believed that much before the rise of Nazism, at a phonograph store in New York of the 1890s, those who would build the 'movie palaces' to celebrate the demise of the Habsburgs had started plans for sinking the RMS Titanic. 

The blueprints for the shipbuilding were already in place with Harland and Wolff, the construction of the Olympic-class liners were to start soon at the Belfast shipyard.

Harland and Wolff filed for bankruptcy in Sept 2024, after being listed at the junior stock exchange for years. Its 160 years of shipbuilding experience was not considered, no shipping company was willing to invest in it. 

That was how the fate of a legendary shipbuilder was worked into the constantly changing political environment of a country like India, where some of its worthies were always taking a taxi to some new locale, for a new movie.

May 1, 2025.