If you’ve been to an art house cinema more than once in you life, this article on Slate will ring one or two bells. I’ve already written about my last NFT movie experience, but I faced far worse back when I attended Cambridge Arts Cinema so often, I actually managed to complete a complete loyalty card (not an easy thing to do). That was on a slope, so whenever anybody lost control of their bag of Maltesers, everyone in the cinema became involved in a mini version of the opening scenes of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then there was the time a French couple turned up, she didn’t speak English, so he had to translate every line of the movie for her.
The best story I ever heard, though, involved Sense and Sensibility, when a group of country types actually setting out picnic blankets in the cinema. And then there was that posh woman in the audience of The English Patient who suddenly exclaimed to her friend, ten minutes before the end, “Oh! The man in the bed! He’s supposed to be Ralph Fiennes!”
