The Ultimate Film: Cinemagoing in Britain

Seeing films on the big screen has been very much a part of British cultural life since the early 1900s. However, our cinemagoing habits have been influenced along the way by changes in both the film industry and society at large, as well as by historical events.

Image: The Academy, Oxford Street.

The Academy, Oxford Street

The Ultimate Film chart encompasses the sound film era, but the changeover from silent to sound cinema was in practice a gradual process - "talkie" feature films beginning to establish themselves in the mainstream of British cinemagoing with the release of The Jazz Singer in 1928. The arrival of sound in the 1920s and 1930s coincided with a wave of cinema building across the country and a trend towards larger and larger auditoria. For instance, Green's Playhouse in Glasgow opened in 1927 with a colossal 4254 seats. The coming of sound also focused the audience's attention almost exclusively on English language films produced in the USA and Britain.

Read more about The Spread of the Cinema in the 1930s from Screenonline, the definitive guide to Britain's film and TV history.

Annual admissions to cinemas continued to rise through the 1930s and 1940s to a peak of 1,635 million in 1946 - equating to approximately 30 cinema visits per person each year. The Second World War had a great impact on all aspects of the film industry - from the availability of film prints shipped over from Hollywood, to the type of film deemed suitable for public consumption, and even the demographics of the audience with so many men away on national service.

Read more about The Second World War, Postwar Boom and Long Decline from Screenonline, the definitive guide to Britain's film and TV history.

Harbour Lights, Southampton

Harbour Lights, Southampton

By 1960, cinema admissions had dropped by two-thirds from the heights of the 1940s, and this steep decline continued to a historical low in the mid-1980s (with only 54 million admissions in 1984). By far the main factor in this slump was the advance of television whose greater convenience increasingly became a part of everyday life. With this decline, the grand picture palaces of the past had largely closed, often converted into bingo halls, or had been divided up into smaller auditoria. By the 1980s, surviving cinemas were often regarded as ailing and uninviting establishments no longer suited to family entertainment.

We can see how dramatic this downfall was by taking a specific example. Sheffield has had a stable population of around half a million people throughout this period. At the high point of cinema admissions in 1946 the city had 52 cinemas with a vast seating capacity of around 50,000 - roughly one seat for every ten residents. By 1984 this had fallen to just four cinema sites and ten screens, housing just under 4,000 seats.

The effect of television's growth was compounded by the rise of home video in the early 1980s, even if it could be argued that video (and later DVD) has fuelled the public appetite for film entertainment. A new era for cinemagoing in Britain, though, was born in the latter part of the 1980s with the emergence of the multiplex. These new multiscreen venues, usually built on out of town sites, have proved popular with audiences across the generations and their growth has coincided with a resurgence in cinema attendances. Sheffield again illustrates the trend - there are still only four cinema sites in the city but they now offer a total of 45 screens and 12,000 seats.

The changing patterns of the industry over the years and the growth of home entertainment have clearly had an impact on which of us watch films, how we watch them and in what numbers. Nonetheless, the British public are still showing a great desire to go out and see films on the big screen.

Read about More Screens, More Choice: Film Centres and Multiplexes from Screenonline, the definitive guide to Britain's film and TV history.

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Last Updated: Monday, 04-Sep-2006 22:02:07 BST