ASSOCIATED COMPANY

Act Productions is part of the Act Entertainment Group.
This company owns and runs the Curzon cinemas; The Curzon Mayfair and The Curzon Soho. Chairman Roger Wingate shares some of the company - and family - history:

A short history of the Curzon Mayfair by Roger Wingate

A personal and episodic history - The Beginnings
“The Curzon”, as it was universally known until its companion cinema opened in Shaftesbury Avenue, was built by The Marquese di Casa Maury, in 1934. It was a Bauhaus style bungalow – fire regulations prohibited any construction above a cinema in the days before safety film. In contrast to the “picture palaces” typical of that era, The Curzon had an almost austere interior. White walls and vaulted ceiling, dark blue carpet and velvet covered armchair seating combined to create a sensation of restrained luxury.

My father acquired the lease of the Curzon in 1940, the year of my birth. Sadly, I have no record of the wartime programming, but I do remember my father telling me it was a busy time for the entertainment world – heatless homes and poor food encouraged going out, not to mention London’s floating population of young men and women “in uniform” on the look out for dating venues.

Distribution & Post-War Social Realism
In the immediate post War period, my father began to import foreign language films; that is to say he became a distributor as well as exhibitor. My mother was fluent in French from school days and was picking up kitchen Italian, which she was able to improve upon at Berlitz courses. As a result, she undertook the translation and sub-titling of films in both languages. “Dialogue” and “spotting list” were terms often heard at home.

At The Curzon, the period up to around 1951 was notable for films depicting the harshness of contemporary Italian life. Vittorio da Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves” ran for 22 weeks in its original release (it was revived on several occasions later on) and attracted no less than 150,000 admissions. Although still a child, I was allowed to see it. I could not make out what the father had bought his son to eat in a restaurant scene – they were the principal\characters - and was told it was called pizza and that this was to show their poverty!

A Golden Era
If there is one film that is imprinted on my memory from the 1950’s, it is Max Ophuls’ adaptation of Schnitzler’s play, “La Ronde” (recently re-adapted for

the stage by David Hare and presented at the Donmar Warehouse under the title of “The Blue Room”), not that I was allowed to see it at the time, at my tender age. Curzon and family legend has it that it was the film that brought the X certificate into being in the UK. Up till then, the only certificate available to protect under 18’s from being corrupted and depraved was the H, standing for Horror. “La Ronde” was no horror film but its relentless and cynical roundabout of sexual encounters was deeply shocking, at the time. Fortunately, the film Censor recognised the quality of the work and, so I was led to believe, invented a new certificate as a means of allowing it through uncut. Well over half a million people saw the film at The Curzon and it ran, initially, for 76 weeks, a record that will never be endangered. I can still hum the tune of Anton Wallbrook’s theme song that links the scenes.

This was a Golden Era for The Curzon in the sense that almost all films played there exclusively. Not every one, by any means, was either a masterpiece or a hit, but plenty were both: Thor Heyerdal’s film of his Kon Tiki voyage, Jacques Tati’s classic wordless, but not silent, comedy “Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday”, Fellini’s “La Strada”, with Anthony Quinn speaking dubbed Italian, Jacques Cousteau’s “The Silent World”, Clouseau’s thriller “Rififi” featuring a daring robbery at Mappin & Webb in Paris and the inspired “Black Orpheus” – Orpheus & Euridyce to samba beat at the Rio Carnival. All in all, a memorable collection of films was brought to British audiences via The Curzon during the 1950’s and early 60’s.

Redevelopment
In 1960, or thereabouts, my father was able to acquire the freehold on which the Curzon stood. Restrictions about building above cinemas having been relaxed, he commissioned Sir John Burnett, Tait and Partners - the successor practice to the original architects - to design a new building making denser use of the site. Planning permission was eventually obtained for a development comprising a restaurant, offices and seven floors of apartments - and, of course, a new cinema with around 100 more seats and a much larger screen than its predecessor. After construction got under way my father retired and emigrated, so it fell to me to supervise the work, commission the completed building (which is now, somewhat to my surprise, a Grade 2 Listed Building) and reopen the new Curzon.

Flying Restart
The opening film, on April 7, 1966, was “Viva Maria”, Louis Malle’s romp set in an anonymous, Mexicanesque, Latin American country and starring Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau as travelling burlesque entertainers. Struggling valiantly to control a restive audience, they improvise by removing their clothes in time to the music, thus “inventing” striptease. This was followed by 23 weeks of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” – the superb Burton v Taylor heavyweight contest over 15 rounds. An even greater hit was to follow: Claude Lelouch’s “Un Homme et Une Femme”, starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, who spends much of the film driving through the night to a background of scooby-doo music, being reunited with Anouk Aimee. Romantic tosh maybe, but Gallic romantic tosh of a most elegant kind, that attracted audiences for 27 weeks.

In the following year, 1967, a more startling film burst on to the Curzon scene, Luis Bunuel’s “Belle de Jour”, with the irresistible Catherine Deneuve as a married woman who elegantly acts out hers and her male clients’ sexual fantasies by way of passing the afternoons. As a result of having continued the policy of being an occasional distributor, as well as an exhibitor, I was responsible for the release of this film. Being untutored in contractual billing, I chose a striking poster and display design in which the wording was confined to my view of the essentials – Luis Bunuel. Catherine Deneuve. “Belle de Jour”. Curzon. After it appeared in the press, one of the producers phoned me from Paris, having been told that his name was missing. He asked: “my brother thinks you are a crook; I think you are merely stupid; which of us right?”

The Test of Time
Looking back over the next two decades, I am struck by how many of our successes have stood the test of time. True, a few, such as “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” (four in a bed, wow!), “Z”, Costa Gavras’s political thriller inspired by the Greek Colonels, and “La Grande Bouffe”, whose combination of gluttony and sex attracted a private prosecution of the Curzon under the 19th century Vagrancy Act (we were acquitted), all of which were substantial hits in their time, would now seem a touch dated. But Peter Bogdanovich’s “Last Picture Show”, for example, bears re-seeing, and not simply because of the cast members who went on to greater stardom.

Sergei Bondarchuk’s "War & Peace" (1969) should also stand the test of time, but, sadly, not in the version we showed. This had come by a circuitous route. It was a component of a typical Soviet era barter trade deal. The trader had sold on the movie to a US distributor. He cut the film into two parts instead of the original three and dubbed it into American. During the drunken officers’ party near the beginning of the film, Dolohov shouts “let’s all go downtown!” See what I mean?

The French being "French"
During the 1970’s I learned the nice way that British audiences often fall for French movies which depict the French behaving as the Brits would like to think of them behaving – that is to say being wittily adulterous. “Pardon Mon Affair” (the English title for the untranslatable pun “Un Elephant, ca Trompe Enormement”) had been a hit in France. But when I went to Paris to screen a film entitled “Cousin Cousine”, the producer seemed almost surprised that anyone from abroad should be taking an interest in it. Nevertheless, it ran for no less 22 weeks on its initial release in 1976; was revived for 5 weeks the following year and, incidentally, introduced Marie-Christine Barrault to a British audience.

Truffaut and Malle
Both these giants of the French cinema loom large in my Curzon memories. They emerged from the “Nouvelle Vague” of the 1960’s to develop into film makers with a consistent skill in reaching large audiences through intelligent cinema.

Francois Truffaut’s “Les Quatre Cent Coups” (The Four Hundred Blows), which is reputed to reflect his own turbulent childhood, played to an average weekly audience of 5,000 for 12 weeks in 1960. Interestingly, Ken Loach recreated the film’s closing shot in his recent “Sweet 16”. Truffaut’s last two Curzon releases were over 20 years later, in 1981, with “Le Dernier Metro” (The Last Metro), which dealt with theatrical life in occupied Paris and in 1982, when Fanny Ardant was “La Femme d’a Cote” (The Woman Next Door”).

Louis Malle reopened the Curzon in 1966 with “Viva Maria” and the association thrived for nearly 30 years after that. For personal as well as professional reasons he spent long periods in the USA, which resulted, inter alia, in “Atlantic City” in 1981. A mood piece, beautifully underplayed by Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon, it ran for 21 weeks. Malle’s next to be released at the Curzon was, in my opinion, his masterpiece, “Au Revoir Les Enfants”. Unbearably sad, but at the same time life-affirming, the film was inspired by Louis’ own memories of his boarding school days during the Second World War. He once remarked to me that, although he loved America, he felt that he could only do his best work in France. Nevertheless, his valedictory offering, in 1994, was set in New York City, in fact in a dilapidated Broadway theatre about to be taken over by builders. “Vanya on 42nd Street” was a project that grew out of rehearsals, under Andre Gregory, for a theatre production of Uncle Vanya. The actors wear everyday clothes; there is no set. The film opens with the performers and director arriving and chatting and then, without the audience at first realising it is happening, we are immersed in a magical performance of the play. With Julianne Moore, as a luminous Yelena, and Wally Shawn as Vanya, Louis Malle and Andre Gregory have only, in my experience, been equalled by Sam Mendes, with his recent production of Uncle Vanya at the Donmar Warehouse.

It saddens me still that both these masters of their art, Louis Malle and Francois Truffaut, were taken from us prematurely by illness.

Merchant IvoryIn 1972, an old friend of mine who was living in New York told me he had given my name and telephone number to film producer Ismail Merchant. It did not register with me that he was the producer of the delightful “Shakespeare Wallah”, which I had seen. When Ismail arrived for his appointment, he just about squeezed through the door of my office, laden as he was with posters and press books for his film “Savages”, directed by James Ivory from a script by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. This was neither one of the best nor one of the most successful of their films, but something told me that this was a trio of film makers to follow. They were intent not only on making movies, but on being their own boss. In other words “auteur” cinema, which I had hitherto thought of as an activity confined to those making films in languages other than English.

My reward came. “The Europeans”, based on the novel by Henry James, was the first of Merchant Ivory’s now famous literary adaptations. The making of the film introduced me to some of the excitements and near disasters that I came to learn were Ismail’s stock in trade. But the final result, starring a radiant Lee Remick, charmed our audiences for no less than 36 weeks, from June 1979 until March 1980. By the time the film was released, I found that I had, without realising it, become an honorary member of the extended Merchant Ivory family (my wife, Jennifer, likewise).

There were many “family reunions” in the years to come. “Heat and Dust” was Ruth Jhabvala’s adaptation of her own Booker Prize winning novel. Its parallel stories capture the nostalgic romance of the Raj and the colourful but somewhat chaotic quality modern India, a quality echoed in some of the contemporary accounts reaching the UK from the shooting location in India. The audience leaving the premiere in February 1983 was abuzz with enthusiasm for a newly discovered star who had “stolen the show”, Greta Scacchi. It was another massive hit, playing for 35 weeks to 160,000 admissions.

Merchant Ivory went back to Henry James in 1984, with “The Bostonians”. Elegantly made but a bit cold for audiences’ liking, the film starred, among others, the talented and unpretentious Christopher Reeve, who is now fighting the consequences of a riding accident with determination and dignity.

The best was still to come. “Room with a View”, adapted from E.M.Forster’s novel, is one of those rare films whose title has entered the vernacular and constantly pops up in various forms and connections. If “Heat and Dust” had been a “massive” hit, “Room with a View” was colossally massive. It was as if it was the film that audiences had been waiting for. Not the least of the accolades bestowed on it was to be jovially derided in a contemporary cartoon in Screen International for being in the “Laura Ashley school of film making”. That same school of film making went on to produce “Howards End” in 1992 and “Remains of the Day” in 1993, both with Emma Thompson playing opposite Anthony Hopkins and both huge critical and box office successes.

I’m glad I took that phone call in 1972.

A New Chapter
Times have changed. The economics of large single screen cinemas have become increasingly difficult, however illustrious their past. The purpose behind the twinning and the enlargement of the foyer with a new bar area is no more than to allow the Curzon Mayfair to continue to do what it has done in the period I have tried to describe – to offer fellow film enthusiasts a place to meet in congenial surroundings and to watch movies in ideal conditions. See you there, I trust.

Roger Wingate

Curzon Cinemas