Hammer Over Heritage

 

I recently came across this picture on Twitter of Mumbai’s Eros movie theatre covered with tarpaulins as it gets ready to be torn down to make way for yet another ritzy shopping mall. Built in 1938, Eros is one of the prime example of art deco style of architecture in the city, which was very popular in the 1920s and 30s across the world.

Art Deco combined modern styles with fine craftsmanship and rich materials, while symmetry was its hallmark. However, its dominance ended with the beginning of World War II and the rise of the strictly functional styles of modern architecture.

South Mumbai became a Mecca of art deco in the 1930s with apartments on the newly reclaimed Marine Drive built in this fashion. The trend later spread to suburbs such as Matunga and Chembur. In fact, even today Mumbai houses the second highest number of art deco buildings in the world after Miami.

Coming back to Eros, during my stay in Bombay (as it was known back then in the early 1990s), it was a landmark theatre located right opposite to the Churchgate station. It was dull yellow structure with a light maroon façade and had two art deco blocks joining in the middle to cylindrical structure.

Eros along with Regal and Sterling used to screen only English movies, and I remember that Steve Martin starrer Father of the Bride was the first movie I saw at Eros, and the first in Mumbai. The movie was a hit and the producers tried to milk it further with sequels.

After that these three movie theatres – Eros, Regal and Sterling became permanent fixtures during off days and holidays.

Those were pre-internet days and movie watching was an altogether different experience. Online booking was not even thought of, and hence, one had to reach the theatre a couple of hours in advance to avoid facing a ‘house full’ board at the ticket counter. Making an advance booking meant going to the theatre in the morning to book for a night show. 

After the culture of people going to malls and watching movies in multiplexes became well entrenched, the single-screen legacy theatres came under threat. Sterling reinvented itself into a multiplex, Regal diluted its Hollywood only norm and Eros stopped screening movies in 2016.

Now this piece of priceless heritage is soon going to be history.

Tech-tonic Shifts on Silver Screen

The other day some TV channel was airing 2006 James Bond flick Casino Royale. Back then it was a valiant attempt by the James Bond franchise to make 007 relevant to post-9/11 reality. I remember Daniel Craig through his robust screen presence had resoundingly silenced many who had doubted his panache to play 007.

But what struck me was that throughout the movie he was using Sony Vaio laptop and a Sony Ericsson phone to get along with his business of licence to kill and make the world a safer place. It was a clever attempt by the Japanese electronics major to co-brand its products with the Bond flick.

If the producers were to make the same movie now (inclusive of pact with Sony) then Craig's baggage probably would be much lighter. He would be just carrying a Smartphone - probably the latest from Sony Xperia stable, tucked in the breast pocket of his suit and use 4-G technology to keep in touch with his boss M.

In the field of mobile phone technology six years has brought about a generational change. Those days the only Smartphone we heard of was BlackBerry and to possess that one probably had to be a higher up in the corporate ladder (a director I guess) of some MNC. Apple back then had only reached the iPod stage. The coolest thing then was to have a camera phone with an FM radio - MotoRazr, Nokia 6630 and Sony Ericsson Walkman were the top draws and the Gen-X was barely getting used to ear bud speakers and 2-megapixel cameras on their phones. Now PCs and laptops are facing the same fate as typewriters, when boxy desktops made their entry.

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Quite often the movie scriptwriters spin out stories in which the contemporary technology often proves to be a game changer of the plot. In mid-1990s I happened to see a movie Hear No Evil, starring Marlee Matlin, who had earlier won an Oscar for the movie Children of Lesser God. The movie is about a deaf woman who falls foul of a corrupt police officer looking for a stolen coin, hidden in the woman's pager. That was the first time I happened to see the 'beepy' matchbox like device and wondered what that hi-tech gadget was. It would often beep the wrong time, putting the woman’s life in danger. It was in fact pager - a precursor to the cell phone revolution.

If anybody from the current Smartphone generation happened to watch the movie he/she too would be astonished, but for a different reason. The device got reduced to a museum piece long back and they may wonder what that crude instrument was!

Also Read: Bangalore Beat