A night of cinematic nostalgia
The showing organised by Kilcullen Lions drew an audience of cinemagoers who would understand what the smartphone and Netflix generation have probably never experienced — the community of a night at 'the pictures'.
Your editor recalled various 'back-room' aspects of showing films when I was a child, access to which I had because my dad and a couple of pals started up a cinema in the premises in the early 1940s — before I was born — and later as a youngster I had the perk of getting in free.
The cinema was later taken over by a community group and operated until the mid-70s when the advent of videos effectively killed the cinemas of rural Ireland. But during that time it became the first cinema in Co Kildare to have Cinemascope wide screen and stereophonic sound, and had the reputation of being the best cinema in Leinster outside of Dublin.
Big movies shown soon after general release included The Sound of Music, The Robe, The Big Country, The Magnificent Seven, The Alamo and many more. As one advertising flyer put it, 'for a little over a shilling, you can see a production costing many millions of pounds'.
The Town Hall has also been the constant venue for the Kilcullen Drama Group productions — today it remains as the home of that group which has been in existence for more than eight decades. There were also live shows, including the famous Community Capers of the 1970s and early 1980s. Boxing tournaments were also presented on the stage.
But last night it was the movies, and the memories, from Nessa, Noel Clare, Bernard Berney, and no doubt others in the evening's conversations. All that was missing was that there was no O'Connells shop across the road to race to for sweets and drinks during the intermission …
