From the Cheap Seats

Sometime last century, my then-local fleapit decided to branch out into late-night screenings. This in itself was a novelty in a small town where the weekend’s entertainment usually involved Diamond White and Actual Bodily Harm. So imagine the feverish buzz that resulted when it was learned that these late-nighters would be double-bills, that is two films for the price of one.

I’m sure the metropolitan sophisticates would sneer at this provincial fare – horror flicks for the most part – but for at least one young apprentice cineaste, it was movie heaven. I still think that double bills are the very acme of film-going. Indeed, I find it hard to credit that some folk don’t share my affection. There are those who think four hours in a cinema seat is too long and I suppose it is but only if you look at it in those terms. Personally, I’ve always found that long-form cinema goers pace themselves accordingly.

What struck me most about the double bill was the possibilities it offered. Here was a chance have two films in direct dialogue, to ‘compare and contrast’ as my old exam papers would have it. It always seemed to me that a canny programmer could carefully select two films which might seem very different but which resonated in surprising ways. How did the common elements differ? How were they the same?

The trouble is, this seldom happened. It always annoyed me how little thought had apparently gone into programming double bills. Yes, I had the chance to see two (usually good) films on a single ticket, an important consideration when you’re as tight-fisted and mean-minded as I am. But where was the sense of adventure? These days, I can take matters into my own hands.

Thanks to DVD, I can cock a snook at those film programmers who shunned my brilliant ideas in times gone by. My DVD collection can be paired off in ever more ingenious ways, according to mutual personnel, a shared theme or for some more abstruse connection.

For instance, for many years I dreamt of twinning Powell & Pressburger’s The Red Shoes with Dario Argento’s Suspiria. At the first glance, they might have nothing in common (one’s a high-class melodrama, the other a noisy horror movie.) But both are films about ballet and Technicolor and both go quite deliriously over the top.

Or maybe The Shining vs Russian Ark; they’re both about houses haunted by the history of their respective nations. And both have got lots of snow in them. If that’s too conceptual, what about Point Black and The Big Heat? Two revenge dramas with barnstorming Lee Marvin performances (albeit as very different characters.)

A friend suggested playing Don Siegel’s Madigan with Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog. Both, after all, were about cops who lost their guns in the course of duty. Graeme Hobbs, of this parish, wondered about pitting Hitchcock’s The Manxman against Michael Powell’s The Edge of the World (islands and love triangles are common to each.)

The double bill is an endangered species at the cinema – and I’m not surprised given how boring and conservative most modern repertory screenings are. So, if you’re an enterprising/desperate cinema manager who’s on the lookout for ways to save their establishment, why not get it touch? Believe me, I’ve got many, many more ideas yet…