Estudio Técnico

The elite: Cinema Palace and Cinema Royal

A few years after the first permanent cinema, and very soon after the onset of the cinema boom in Amsterdam, the arrival of luxury cinemas, often called

‘elite cinemas’, added an extra dimension to the phenomenon of permanent cinema. The Elite Bioscoop Theater Union, which opened in March 1911 was probably the first cinema in Amsterdam to award itself this title.⁹¹Desmet opened his Cinema Palace in Amsterdam at the end of 1912 and the Cinema Royal in Rotterdam in mid-1913. These were his deluxe motion-picture the-atres.

With the establishment of a development company named NV Middenstad on 28 October 1911, Jean Desmet became one of three directors and a major shareholder of Cinema Palace (Fig. 21).⁹²The other two directors were Elias De Hoop and David Hamburger, two Jewish entrepreneurs who had started out in the diamond business.⁹³Because of his experience in film distribution, Desmet took on the job of acquiring movies for the cinema for a while. Later, in the spring of 1914, Middenstad was to buy the Cinema De La Monnaie next to their Cinema Palace and rename it Cinema De Munt (Mint Cinema).

Around 1914, however, this company gave birth to the Cinema Palace distri-bution company, which turned out to be a cuckoo in the nest that would make life difficult for Desmet. Eventually, he was undermined by De Hoop and Hamburger ‘on his own turf’.⁹⁴

The decision to turn Cinema Palace into a public corporation was an in-novation in the Netherlands at the time, although it was already an estab-lished practice in other countries. A cinema of the same name had been opened in Paris in February 1907 and was one of the busiest cinemas on the great boulevards. Along with the Pathé Omnia, it was used to premiere the latest films. In 1908, the Paris Cinema Palace became part of a corporation named Universel Cinéma. This was becoming the normal way of doing busi-ness in Paris at the time, and France quite probably provided the inspiration

Fig. 21. Builder’s drawing of the external front and rear façade of the Cinema Palace, Amsterdam, c.1912

for Dutch cinema entrepreneurs.⁹⁵From 1912, more and more Dutch cinemas became limited companies. This was probably due to the coming of larger and more comfortable cinemas, but land prices may also have been part of the calculation. On a fashionable shopping street like Kalverstraat, land was undoubtedly extremely expensive in 1912. Limited companies generated cap-ital for building cinemas and spread the financial risks. Personal and family capital was not exposed. Another factor was that after the turn of the century the whole of the Dutch construction industry had begun to make use of limit-ed companies.

The company had obtained permission to convert number 224 Kalver-straat and numbers 465 and 467 Singel into a cinema as early as 1912, but almost a year elapsed before the new theatre opened its doors. The architect was Evert Breman who was also one of the principals, a common way of doing things at the time. Breman had previously designed the new Theater Pathé, which was also on Kalverstraat.⁹⁶Desmet’s investment of ƒ10,000, of which he deposited the first quarter on 11 May 1912, made him a major share-holder of Middenstad together with Hamburger and De Hoop, and he was also engaged as the cinema’s technical director.⁹⁷NV Middenstad bought up a mirror and painting business on Kalverstraat and a rye bread factory behind it on Singel, both of which were demolished to make way for the new cinema.

Meanwhile, just one door further down the street, the company’s competitors were hard at work on the construction of the new Theatre annex Taverne De La Monnaie, which actually opened a month before the Cinema Palace.⁹⁸

The Cinema Palace had a high but not very large entry hall with a foyer above it, behind which was a spacious and lofty auditorium with a balcony and an orchestra pit. The performances were accompanied by a small orches-tra led by Boris Lensky, a celebrated violinist of the time who had spent part of his career at the Flora Theater. The cinema occupied an area of 470 square metres, and the auditorium contained 600 seats.⁹⁹Both the front entrance of the theatre on Kalverstraat and the rear exit on Singel had opulent facades.

The Cinema Palace opened on the evening of Friday 27 December 1912 with a performance for a specially invited audience. On Saturday, it opened its doors to the general public:

The superb new ‘Cinema Palace’ at 224 Kalverstraat near Muntplein, which we described in an earlier number, opens its doors this evening. The first performance took place before a specially invited audience yesterday evening and was a truly festive occasion. The brilliant, electrically lit entrance was full of flowers, and there were throngs of curious onlookers in front of the doors throughout the evening.

By eight thirty, everyone was seated and the performance began. First the orches-tra played the Palace Movie Waltz, a lively number specially composed in honour

of the directors by the conductor, Mr Boris Lensky. The managing director then paid tribute to all whose efforts had made this superb theatre possible, extending special thanks to the architect Mr E. Brema, and the contractor Mr Louis Mohr-mann. A fine programme was then ‘run’. The ‘Palace-Courant’ featured a review of the most recent events abroad and the audience was then treated to a quite de-cent melodrama, not too exaggerated and performed by well-known actors from the Royal Theatre of Copenhagen. They were many other pleasant and interesting films besides. We feel confident of a very positive audience response to this com-fortable and welcoming theatre.¹⁰⁰

Jean Desmet’s second ‘Elite Bioscope’ was the Cinema Royal. In October 1912, he bought the building at 17 Coolsingel in Rotterdam for ƒ95,000, a con-siderable sum at the time.¹⁰¹That same month, he paid ƒ5,000 for the yard ad-joining it. Months went by before the opening of a new cinema designed by the architect Jac van Gils. On Friday 1 August 1913, with the newspapers full of reports of the war in Macedonia and the Tivoli Theater performing the operetta Film Fever, Desmet opened under the name Cinéma Royal Elite Bio-scope (Fig. 22). Like the Cinema Palace, the Royal opened to invited guests on a Friday evening and to the general public the following Saturday

after-Fig. 22. Entrance of the Cinema Royal, Rotterdam, with poster of Il veleno delle parole (Celio 1913)

noon.¹⁰²The performances were again musically embellished by a small or-chestra conducted by Ch. Wallage. This opening received extensive coverage in De Kinematograaf. Even aldermen and city councillors put in an appear-ance, along with the heads of the police and fire departments, members of the press and, of course, the proud Desmet and his wife.¹⁰³The trade paper De Kinematograaf describes the cinema as follows:

We hardly need to stress that the Cinema Royal leaves nothing to be desired in the way of comfort and safety. The superb lighting enhances the pleasant atmosphere in no small measure. The lighting in the auditorium itself is equivalent to 15,000 candles, while the five large arc lamps on the front of the building and the brightly lit vestibule create a very pleasing effect. The establishment accommodates about 400 persons and is divided into loge, parquet and front and rear stalls. There are four exits and two emergency exits, as well as a spacious ‘cloakroom’ where you can leave unneeded items of clothing at no cost. In front of the Perlatino projection screen, the very latest invention, which is also called ‘Desmet’s screen’, is an elec-trically operated curtain. The well-stocked and tastefully designed buffet is under the supervision of Mr Corns Smits, who has the task of catering to the audience with ‘a good selection of drinks and prompt and polite service’. It is a pity, there-fore, that this establishment will not remain in its present shape for very long. Mr Desmet intends in the foreseeable future to create a world theatre by buying the premises next door to it. This new building will be an up-to-date structure with space for 2,000 people. So we await further developments.¹⁰⁴

Nothing would actually come of this ‘world theatre’, but Desmet did buy up several premises in the neighbourhood of the cinema. Although Desmet con-tinued as owner, in April 1914 the Cinema Royal acquired a new manager in the person of Abraham Tuschinski. With his new Thalia cinema on Hoog-straat, Tuschinski had proven himself a competent and successful cinema operator. This cinema, which Tuschinski had opened in 1912 after his first Thalia on Coolvest was forced to close, was regarded as the most luxurious cinema in Rotterdam at the time. Desmet had known Tuschinski profession-ally for some time, as Tuschinski had rented Pathé newsreels from him in 1913-14 and booked the long feature Cleopatra in 1914. This was probably cleopatra (Helen Gardner Feature Plays 1912), distributed by the Wilhelmi-na Company. Desmet thus rented the film on to Tuschinski.

Tuschinski was Desmet’s greatest rival. Fearing that Desmet might trump him with the Royal, Tuschinski had his Thalia extensively altered be-fore reopening just a day after the inauguration of the Royal. By building an extra balcony and demolishing the refreshment buffet, he managed to add another hundred seats, so he could now seat 500 instead of 400 customers – a

hundred more, therefore, than the Cinema Royal.¹⁰⁵On top of this, he had en-gaged the popular cabaret artist Dumas and a snake dancer called La Joula to liven up his film shows. It is not known whether there were variety acts at the Cinema Royal.¹⁰⁶Like Desmet, Tuschinski employed a small orchestra at the Thalia under the direction of Simon Feldt. The Thalia also had an explicateur, first Leo Riedée and then, after the reconstruction, Vaillant.

We can only guess at Desmet’s reasons for handing over the running of the Royal to his competitor within a year of opening it. Desmet had originally assumed the management himself, but his commitments in Amsterdam kept him away from Rotterdam, leaving him unable to keep the operation under his own control. For the same reasons, he had previously entrusted Heinrich Voltmann with the management of the Cinema Parisien in Rotterdam and installed his brother-in-law Piet Klabou at the Amsterdam Parisien. He was therefore looking for someone to manage the cinema on the spot, and that person was Tuschinski. It is also possible that Tuschinski wanted to take over the Cinema Royal and was getting his foot inside the door by renting the theatre in the meantime.¹⁰⁷On the other hand, Tuschinski did not exchange contracts with Desmet until during the war, and there was no mention at that time of a previous agreement. It is therefore unlikely that Tuschinski was buying the place in instalments. In 1916, Tuschinski was to acquire the Royal for no less than ƒ350,000 (€2,886,363 or approximately US$2,625,000 at today’s prices).

Tuschinski reopened the cinema on 11 April 1914 as simply the ‘Cinéma Royal’. When he became the director, he continued to rent films from Desmet, but no longer took complete programmes from him. He ordered only single films and the occasional Pathé newsreel. Presumably, he had agreements with other distributors, perhaps via earlier arrangements for the supply of films to his Thalia cinema, and used Desmet’s films just to fill his spare slots.¹⁰⁸

Programme variation, screenings and publicity at Desmet’s cinemas The programmes at the Cinema Palace in Amsterdam and the Cinema Royal and Cinema Parisien in Rotterdam illustrate how cinemas were programmed and portrayed to the public in those days. The programming of the Amster-dam Parisien is hard to follow, as Desmet did not include it in his distribution books.¹⁰⁹Although the films screened at the two Parisiens did not differ no-ticeably from those offered at the Cinema Palace and the Royal, the differ-ences between these cinemas in terms of ambience, musical accompaniment, location and audience would have affected the character of the actual per-formances.

From the opening of the Amsterdam Cinema Palace in December 1912 on-wards, Desmet first ran his programmes for a week at that cinema. The Cine-ma Parisien was too modest a cineCine-ma for these first runs.¹¹⁰Desmet’s letter-head proudly announced that he was the letter-head of the Cinema Palace (the names of his partners were not included). Like his competitors, Desmet ran his programmes in other Dutch cities according to a fixed order after their week at his first-release theatre, the Cinema Palace. From there they moved to Rotterdam for a week, then to The Hague, then to Utrecht for a week and so on. After a certain amount of time had lapsed, a programme would appear in Amsterdam again, though this time at a smaller cinema, such as Desmet’s Parisien. Anyone willing to pay extra could be sure of securing a first-run programme, and the Mullens brothers did this from time to time. On the other hand, they often took just the longer film or ‘main feature’ from a com-plete programme, not the programme as a whole. Usually, the exhibitors ac-cepted Desmet’s ready-made programme, which had either been compiled by Desmet himself or made up in advance by a foreign distributor. Besides the main feature, Desmet’s programmes consisted of a variety of films, and as long as they had not played at that particular theatre before, they did not all have to be equally ‘fresh’.

Unlike the programmes from before 1910, with their relatively inter-changeable titles, genres and lengths, the rise of the long film began to affect the programme as a whole. Programmes became more hierarchical and acquired a stricter form. It became usual for the performance to begin with a musical overture, which was often a march specially composed for the cinema, or a piece of music that had been adopted as the house ‘signa-ture tune’. Next came a newsreel, which Desmet often called the ‘Cinema Revue’, or the ‘Palace Courant’ after the name of the cinema itself. Bearing in mind that in the Netherlands Pathé had next to no competition to worry about in this area, these newsreels would certainly have been mainly Pathé productions before mid-1914. They would be followed by short documen-taries such as travelogues with images of exotic places. Depending on the length of the main feature, it might be preceded by short dramas and come-dies. The main feature was largely dramatic in character, but by way of making sure that the audience did not leave the building with tears stream-ing down their faces, the programme was often rounded off with a short farce.

Nationalities and genres alternated continuously. During its first week (27 December 1912 to 2 January 1913), the Cinema Palace showed a newsreel and a travelogue on the area around Luchon (in the French Pyrenees), fol-lowed by a French historical drama, a British comedy about thieves, an American western and a documentary about the boxer O’Brien. The main

feature (Fig. 31) was a Danish film, tre kammerater (the three comrades, Nordisk 1912). With an eye still to Christmas which was just over, the west-ern shown on this occasion was bronco billy’s christmas dinner (Essanay 1912).¹¹¹

The long feature films that played at the Cinema Palace in 1913 were Ger-man, Italian, French, Danish and American. Most of them were GerGer-man, with Italian productions in second place.¹¹²Many of the long French and Danish films were by Éclair and Nordisk. In the case of other countries, the selection was varied: Selig, Vitagraph, Ambrosio, Cines, Messter, Deutsche Bioscop.

Short films, on the other hand, came mainly from Gaumont and Vitagraph.

Tuschinski’s Thalia in Rotterdam also regularly showed Vitagraph and Gau-mont films in 1913 and stated their place of origin in its advertising. Since Tuschinski rarely booked films from Desmet, it is possible to speak of a gen-eral trend here: Vitagraph and Gaumont films enjoyed a great deal of expo-sure in the Netherlands from 1910 onwards.¹¹³

The Cinema Palace was again a focus of interest from the autumn of 1913, due to its premiering of the first films by the Dutch film company Hollandia

Fig. 23. Boris Lensky during a recording

to be widely acclaimed: nederland en oranje (holland and the house of orange*, 1913), silvia silombra (1913) and zijn viool (broken melody, 1914). The music for nederland en oranje was composed by resident con-ductor Boris Lensky (Fig. 23).¹¹⁴In zijn viool, Lensky went even further, for he wrote the script and acted in the film as a violinist. To the great delight of the audience, he played the same solo violin pieces during the show as he played on the screen as the violinist. On the other hand, both the screenplay and the acting were criticised as below standard in comparison with other countries.¹¹⁵Hollandia films were not actually distributed by Desmet but by his rival Gildemeijer and his Union company.¹¹⁶

From its opening in August 1913 to the point at which Tuschinski took over the management, the Cinema Royal Elite Bioscope was Desmet’s first-release house in Rotterdam. Before that, his films had been premiered at the Rotter-dam Cinema Parisien.

During its first two weeks the Royal screened the Messter film richard wagner (1913) (Fig. 24 and Colour Plate 15), a film biography of the famous composer, produced in commemoration of Wagner’s hundredth birthday

Fig. 24. Apotheosis, Richard Wagner (Messter 1913)

(and the thirtieth anniversary of his death). The composer Giuseppe Becce, who also played the part of Wagner in the film, arranged a score consisting of music by various composers. This score was supplied along with copies of the film.¹¹⁷ The Wagner year was well commemorated in the Wagner-loving Netherlands in gala performances, memorial volumes and brochures. The Ring was performed in its entirety in Rotterdam in 1913, and Tannhäuser and Tristan and Isolde were performed in Amsterdam.¹¹⁸The screening of the film was thus part of a larger cultural framework. It was launched with the same blaze of publicity as two months previously at Willy Mullens’s Residentie Theater in The Hague. The film was 2,500 metres long and ran for two hours, which was quite unprecedented at the time. The city’s fashionable business paper, the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, praised the film in its review for its realistic representation of famous personalities and events. The ‘mishmash’

comprising the musical accompaniment, on the other hand, was not quite so well received:

Bits of Wagner’s own works, then a little Rossini and Schumann, a minuet by Boc-cherini, and the Meditation from Thaïs. And then sure enough, when Wagner and Mina Planer divorce, we hear the Romance of Violin by Svendsen. Find the con-nection if you can! However, the playing is correct and everything sounds very tasteful, which is the most important thing in these instances.¹¹⁹

Just as he had with the Union and the Cinema Palace, which were also

Just as he had with the Union and the Cinema Palace, which were also