Once Upon a Time When Cinemas Smelled...

Sensual perception of the cinema space and its role in the memories of
cinema-goers – the case of Brno, 1930s–1960s

Pavel Skopal, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

On April 8th (1945) I went to the cinema, and instead a movie,

I got a better experience – an air raid on Brno. … Then I had
not dared to go to Brno till the battlefront passed, on May
9th. I visited my auntie to find out if she is still alive,
and on the way back I saw a poster, not poster, it was a piece
of paper that said „cinema for free, Red Army presents“, it
was in the Moskva cinema, how it was called back then, is it
Scala now? … An interesting Russian movie was screened,
shooting all the time, I was entranced by that… members of the
Red Army were sitting next to me, all smoking like a chimney,
they smoked „dog’s leg“, it was a kind of tobacco, you could
not see anything because of the smoke… but nobody cared… the
war was over and we were in a cinema. May 9th, afternoon, we
were happy. We were free. (Z.V., *1930)

Such memories could make an oral historian happy – they are

identified accurately in time and space, describe the event in
detail and at the same time express the subjective values and
emotions which the narrator kept for more than sixty years.
But the precision of this recollection is obviously caused not
only by an exceptional ability of the narrator and by his
affection for movies, but by the exceptional nature of the
historical moment as well. Dealing with oral history of
everyday life and common activities brings usually far more
blurred, fluid flow of associations. As Annette Kuhn aptly
describes the “memory works”, “...the tenses of memory text do
not fix events to specific moments of time or temporal
sequences. Events are repetitive or cyclical (‘at one time’];
or seem to be set apart from fixed orders of time (‘once upon
a time…’)… The memory text is typically a montage of
vignettes, anecdotes, fragments, ‘snapshots’, flashes. All
this produces a sense of synchrony, as if remembered events
are somehow pulled out of a linear time-frame, or refuse to be
anchored in real historical time.”1 And I have to confirm that
most of the interviews we have collected and transcribed so
far are pretty vague in their attempts to specify time, space
and context of the narrated fragments. They also often use the
conventions of “memory texts” as Annette Kuhn analysed them in
memories of 1930s cinemagoers in Great Britain.2 However, this
does not disqualify them, as a valuable source of information
on cinema-going habits and practices of cinema exhibition in a
specific historical situation. It merely confronts the
researcher an urgency of very careful contextualisation based
on extensive archival research. The recollections provide us
not only with the values which the cinemagoers ascribe to the
past events, but also with important information which fell
uncaught through other potential sources capturing traces of
the past. For the time being, I can offer preliminary results
of our large-scale projects on cinema-going in the
Czechoslovak city of Brno from 1930s to 1960s. While the
individual topics which I intend to present here will be
elaborated in the later stage of the projects, they clearly
indicate what such research can bring into focus.
Specifically, I will concentrate on the possibilities to
research the space of cinemas: how it was “performed” by the
practices of exhibition and by the audiences and also how it
merged into the narrators’ imagination and memories.

1
See Annette Kuhn, A Journey Through Memory. In: Susannah Radstone (ed.), Memory
and Methodology. Oxford – New York: Berg 2000, pp. 189-190.
2
For formal conventions of the „memory texts“, see Kuhn, Dreaming of Fred and Ginger.
Cinema and Cultural Memory. New York: New York University Press 2002.
My paper will use the preliminary results of two
interconnected researches. The larger, collaborative project
deals with the history of cinema culture in Brno in the period
of 1918-1945. The oral history section of the project intends
to conduct 150 interviews with avid cinemagoers born before
1932 (at present, 70 interviews have been done). The second
project deals with the cinema culture in the post-war era
(1945-1970). The 17 cinemagoers interviewed for this project
were born in the years 1937 or 1938. All the narrators were
chosen on the common grounds of having attended Brno schools
classes that participated in a wide-scale sociological
research implemented in 1947. All of them were schoolmates
from two classes of schools situated in two city
neighbourhoods which were significantly different from the
point of view of their socio-economical characteristics.

In the last two decades film historians have devoted a lot of

attention to cinema as a public sphere, to the reception of
cinema as a specific place and to the behaviour of cinema-
goers.3 As Janet Staiger points out, cinemas were not
necessarily places of quiet and silent watching movies despite
the gentrification of cinema culture and the advent of sound.
Especially afternoon screenings (Saturday matinees) for
children often happened in rumbustious atmosphere.4 One of our
narrators gave a lively description of such screening in Brno
in the 1930s:

3
See, for example, Miriam Hansen, Early Cinema, Late Cinema. Permutation of the Public
Sphere, Screen 34, 1993, 3, pp. 197-210; Richard Maltby – Melvyn Stokes (ed.), Going to
the Movies: The Social Experience of Hollywood Cinema. Exeter: University of Exeter
Press 2007; papers on conferences like Edinburgh International Film Audiences
Conference (2005, 2007, 2009) or The Glow in Their Eyes. Global Perspectives on Film
Cultures, Film Exhibition and Cinemagoing, Ghent 2007.
4
Sarah J. Smith, A Riot at the Palace: Children’s Cinema-going in 1930s Britain. The
Journal of British Cinema and Television vol. 2, 2005, 2, pp. 275-289; Janet Staiger –
complaints of exhibitors on behaviour of children in the years of WWII, see Writing the
History of American Film Reception. In: Staiger, Perverse Spectators. The Practices of Film
Reception. New York – London: New York University Press 2000, pp. 46-47.
I liked Saturdays pretty much, because dad came from work
earlier, the school was over at 11 o’clock already, mummy
baked cakes that made the house smell nice, and at three there
was a movie in the cinema named Stadion, just across the
street, a screening for children, Laurel and Hardy, slapstick,
cowboys with horses, a lot of shooting, we screamed a lot when
the going got tough… This goes to show that these screenings
for children were pretty different from the „regular“ ones …
reasonable people would not go near the cinema on Saturday at
3 p.m., or they would run away, the screaming was enormous,
the audience lived with the movie.
(Z.S., *1923)

Another specific environment provided open-air „summer

cinemas“. The following description of the atmosphere relates
to the end of the 1950s and to the 1960s:
As 15-16 years old boys, we spent Saturdays and Sundays at the
riverside and at eight o’clock we went to the cinema at
„Leninka“. Beers and lemonades were sold before the screening,
and also bags with lemonade powder – these behaved like sticky
water mines when you stamped on them … There were
professionals, who visited the cinema with blankets, it was a
hobby for them. They never missed a screening, they went to
the cinema almost daily in the summertime … The screening
started at 9.30 p.m. and the cinema was fantastic, because
there was always someone who commented on the movie. For
example, when there was an intensive love scene, someone cried
„what are you waiting for“… The movie got another dimension
thanks to the comments and I can say, while it was often
obscene or vulgar, it was usually funny as well, so the
auditorium laughed twice. The best movies you could watch at
the cinema were the ones about Angelique. To see those movies
in a regular cinema rather than in one of these “summer
cinemas” provided only a fraction of the experience.
(F. N., *1944)

These venues and screenings were highly specific, however, and

stood out in the memories of cinema-goers as exceptional
events and spaces. Some of the narrators complained about the
disturbing elements in the summer cinemas and most of the
memories keep the space of the „regular“ cinemas as a quiet
one and even restrictive to any possible disturbance by a
viewer. One recollection related to the 1930s exemplifies the
point through a conflict between the pleasure to consume a
delicacy in the cinema on the one hand and the attitude of the
„general audience“ on the other hand (the audience usually
performs in the memories as a self-regulating and restrictive
power):

When you were late for the cinema … all were like „sh, quiet,
sit down“. They shouted immediately. And people liked to eat
something, and it was disturbing. And I liked eating in a
cinema. During a movie, you know? … but the wrappers made a
sound, I stopped buying that, and I rather bought grapes. They
made no sound and I was satisfied and I enjoyed the grapes
which I love.
(A.U., *1924)

Besides the memories of „regular“ screenings as quiet ones and

as restrictive towards disturbing moments, we should keep in
mind that we are dealing with the four decades from the 1930s
to the 1960s in the projects – it gives one an essential
historical framework which needs to be take into account. Most
of the period came under two totalitarian regimes, the fascist
one during the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (1939-
1945), and the Stalinist one from 1948 to, at least, 1953.
Under both regimes,5 the space of cinemas was strongly
regulated and ordered. The perception of the cinema space as a
controlled one as well as the awareness of the devastating
consequences of a behaviour which would be intentionally
subversive to the regimes emerged in the memories repeatedly.6

Despite the regulation of the cinema space (regulation

performed by the authorities and perceived by the audience),
the material conditions of the auditorium and the sensual
experience of the space does not fade from the horizon of the
cinema-goers’ reception. The usual differentiation between
comfortable and luxury cinemas situated mostly in the city
centre on the one hand and the “fleapits” on the other hand
serves in the memories as a symbolical distinction between two
kinds of cinemas and the experiences associated with them.7 The
term “fleapits” represent generally uncomfortable, unhygienic,
dirty small cinemas. However, the term refers to very concrete
feelings, sensations, even “risks” as well, and evokes
memories of concrete details in the cinema space:

“...some of the cinemas were fleapits... I came from such

cinema and said to my mom: ‘hm, I feel (scratchy)’... despite
that, fleas never stuck to me, I was used to delivering milk
to different people like Gipsies or factory owners” (J.Š.,
5
I do not want to overestimate the „totalitarian“ features of the communist regime – the
characteristic refers to concrete practices of control over the cinema space, not to a
vague „totalitarian paradigm“. For a critical reflection on the concept of totalitarianism
and its role in historiography, see, e.g., Beyond Totalitarianism. Stalinism and Nazism
Compared. Michael Geyer – Sheila Fitzpatrick (Eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press 2009.
6
For an archival research on the way the cinema space was controlled and regulated in
the regimes, see Pavel Skopal, Filmy z nouze. Způsoby rámcování filmových projekcí a
divácké zkušenosti v období stalinismu. Iluminace 21, 2009, 3, pp. 70-91; Lukáš Kašpar,
Český hraný film a filmaři za protektorátu. Propaganda, kolaborace, rezistence. Praha:
Libri 2007.
7
For a similar process of differentiating cinema experiences in Nottingham of the 1930s,
see Marc Jancovich – Lucy Faire – Sarah Stubbings (ed.), The Place of the Audience.
Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption. London: BFI 2003, pp. 87-89.
*1919); „In the cinema called Slavia, there were cushions on
the chairs, allegedly full of fleas ... and we really got one
time to time... In the other cinema however, in the Sokol
hall, there were fine benches” (J.H., *1922).

There were not only “fleapit” cinemas, but also “flea-seats”,

sections allegedly used only by lovers: “The boxes were not
favoured, there were tapestries and it was said that there
were fleas ... only lovers took these seats” (Z.P., *1927).
This recollection refers to the use of the cinema as an
intimate space – in this case, the negative characteristics of
the auditorium recede to the advantage of privacy. But while
the material characteristics of the space disappeared, the
attraction of the screened movie could violate the illusion of
the „invisible nowhere”: “We would always go the cinema and
kiss there... it was in the last row, nobody could see us...
but then the kissing was not so often as the movies were
beautiful, and there were all the beautiful women and men...”
(K.D., *1917); “There were boxes in the cinemas, and when you
had no place where to go and no money for a hotel, then...
Once we were in the Kapitol cinema, I had a girl in my lap,
they screened an East German fairy tale, and when the best
moment with the girl arrived, I thrown her aside, because the
movie was very interesting at the moment...” (B.R., *1938).

The most prominent characteristic of the cinema space which

pushed to the foreground in the memories is, however, an
olfactory one. The auditorium is remembered both for its
heavy, stale air of the often unventilated cinemas, and for
its specific perfume. The fact that the cinemas had no proper
ventilation system pushed the managers to two practices: they
often opened a side door, what gave kids a chance to sneak
into the auditorium without buying a ticket; and some of the
cinemas also air-sprayed a perfume during or after the
screening to refresh the air. This sensual experience of a
strong aroma, furthermore accompanied by the “performance” of
an usher entering the auditorium with a strange tool for
spreading the perfume, became stuck in the memories and
retrospectively acquired a positive, nostalgic slant:

„…two things had a magical influence on me, the first was the
advertisements showed on slides before screening a movie, they
were… in the era of black-and-white movie, they had something
magical for me… because there were colours, it was something
beautiful, it still evokes an emotion. They were pretty simple
advertisements, but they were worth arriving to the cinema on
time … and the second thing that impressed me was that in
certain cinemas, I do not know whether it was Studio or
another one, they air-sprayed a scented substance, dispersed
it in droplets, it was pleasantly perfumed...“
(C.N., *1931)

„…then came for me an era of the cinema called Čas (Time), I

visited the cinema almost every week - or a few times a month
at least. It was after the currency reform (1953), when the
price of the ticket was 1,20 crowns, and the cinema was really
magical. It had two exits, the second one was under the
screen, where there was a row of swing-doors, and a row of
toilets beyond the doors. It was a cinema for people waiting
at the station for their train, and I believe it served as a
public toilet as well. It meant that everybody went to the
cinema for two reasons and at the moment the swing-doors were
opened, a reek from not very clean toilets entered the
auditorium. At that moment an usher rushed in, he had a brass
vessel on his back and air-sprayed a forest-scented perfume.
It made a fantastic impression on me when I was a boy.“
(F. N., *1944)
These interviews could help us to interpret various practices
used in the cinemas in the respective periods and to identify
minute characteristics of the space – features which were
neither promoted in advertisements, nor commented on in the
press, or recorded in archival materials. The practice of air-
spraying was obviously a method that the small, uncomfortable
cinemas employed to augment the standard of the cinema
experience without a significant investment – a practice which
needs to be put into the context of the cinema business
conditions in a concrete urban space. At the same time,
however, the memories demonstrate the role of the concrete
cinema space and its material characteristics for the activity
of cinema-going, for the process of reception and for the way
the experience of cinema is remembered. Annette Kuhn’s
research pointed out that “for the 1930s generation memories
of courtship and romance are associated exclusively with one
kind of cinema: the sumptuous new picture palace as opposed to
the modest local picture houses of childhood picturegoing...”8
This kind of differentiation of cinemas is clearly present in
the memories of the cinema-goers in Brno as well. But when we
explore the detailed recollections of the material conditions
and sensual characteristics of the space, we can get a
slightly more intricate perspective: not always the best
cinemas – and not always the best seats in the good cinemas –
appropriated all the merits for cinemagoers. And when we ask
the essential and often ignored question which Annette Kuhn so
brilliantly brought to the focus – what and how the
cinemagoers remember their experience – then seemingly
marginal exhibition practices like refreshing air or showing
slides get absolutely prominent position.
It is very difficult to reconstruct the conditions of
screenings in the past that is 70 years distanced and to
evaluate the reception of the cinema space, although we have

8
Kuhn, Dreaming Fred and Ginger, pp. 140-141.
to do our best in this risky venture. But when we look at the
position which these material characteristics of cinematic
events rank in the memories of cinema-goers, then one thing
comes to the foreground: next to the biggest stars of the
Brno’s film posters – from Vlasta Burian, through Marika Rökk
or Heinz Rühmann, to Gérard Philipe - we should make space
for the usher with the brass vessel.