In these early stages of the Berlanga Year, it seems appropriate to dedicate some of these Sunday retrospective pages to the cinema. The city where Luis García Berlanga was born has been the cradle of many talents on the screen and on the stage, as well as numerous film shoots. In 2021, when the 125th anniversary of the arrival of the cinematograph in our lives will be celebrated, we are going to search the pages of LAS PROVINCIAS for dates, data and traces that will help us to reconstruct the Valencian history of the so-called Seventh Art.
The historic arrival of the cinematographer in Valencia took place on September 10, 1896 at the Apolo theater, located on Don Juan de Austria street. Patented in February 1895, the Lumiere brothers’ invention was presented to the public on December 28, 1895, at the Indian Salon of the Gran Café in Paris. So the first thing that strikes you is that nine months have not yet passed since the world presentation of the invention when it was available to Valencians.
The diffusion of the Lumiere cinema in Europe was very fast. He arrived in Madrid very early, in May 1896, and in Barcelona in December. Distributors from the nursery took to city tours, carrying projectors and the first pack of eight or ten films; so the invention was in Alicante in November and in Castellón in December, before the novelty was one year old. Seville and Bilbao would have it later, in 1897.
Before the Lumiere cinematograph, show business had various projection systems and “magic lanterns”; and he even enjoyed Edison’s kinetoscope since 1892. But there is no record in the press that this type of vision passed through Valencia, neither in fixed theaters nor in Christmas street vendors. The arrival in the rooms of the Lumiere innovation, which was projected before large audiences, as in the theater, ended any previous format, including Edison’s, which required individual vision in a complex apparatus wrapped in furniture.
The cinema, at the Apolo theater
The Apolo theater manager, Mr. Roig, has the honor of having brought cinema to Valencia. Nothing recalls the event in Don Juan de Austria Street, where the room stood until the 1970s. The fact is that Charles Kall, or Calb, or Kalb, who has written his surname anyway, was the first to arrive with his projector and his films for a season that ran from September 10 to October 26, 1896.
The Apolo, which functioned as an acrobatic circus for part of the season, was easily adapted to the screening, which the public liked from day one. After the premiere, our newspaper spoke of a “spontaneous and noisy success achieved in the first exhibition attended by a large audience, which will increase as the show becomes known.” Because “the living pictures, which faithfully copy lively scenes, some great and others hilarious, were highly applauded by the large crowd, to which Mr. Kall corresponded with another view as turns.”
Born in 1866, Kall is supposed to have died around 1909. He was a traveling exhibitor who, from Valencia, brought the great invention to Murcia. But in his little known history it appears to have shot at least one film, the “Arrival of a train to Segorbe”, from the same year 1896, premiered in October at Apolo. On 15 September he offered three new tapes: “No Posters Allowed”, “Troop Parade” and “Terrible Night”. And on the 16th, the Valencians were able to see a color film – undoubtedly hand-painted – where the dancer Louise Tullier moved a ribbon of colored streamers; but “it did not have a very good effect, undoubtedly because of the low power of the electric bulb that illuminates the apparatus,” according to LAS PROVINCIAS. The first sessions had technical problems, which was not an obstacle for the public to ask to see the dancer again.
Combined with theater performances, the cinema was gaining public. Especially if there were new tapes, like “Place de l’Opéra de Paris,” “The Roundabout of the Tuileries,” or “Street Musicians” that sold out. A great success of the opening days was “The Coronation of the Tsar in Russia”, a documentary of an event that had taken place on May 26, just four months earlier. Greater speed of distribution had “The arrival of the tsar in Paris”, which took place on October 6 and was screened at Apollo on the 20th. Kall, who at the end of September was already offering ten films, announced on October 1 new purchased productions in London and Paris and repeated the entire repertoire so that Valencians who had been on the summer could catch up on the news.
Ruzafa also gives movies
On October 17, while elegant theaters were sprucing up – the Princess renovated its stalls and the Principal introduced electric lighting for the new season – another theater, the Ruzafa, announced that it was introducing cinema into its popular programming. It coincided with the first announcement that Kall had to leave Valencia and continue his tour, a fact that took a couple of weeks. But it was clear that technical skill mattered: the Ruzafa projector “had a screw broken” and the second time the incident forced a stop and play, the audience attacked the poor comedians. “And here was Troy!” Says THE PROVINCES. “The audience broke into a horrible shouting” and began to ask for his money back. The actor Llorens came on stage three times but they didn’t even let him speak; businessman Rafael Díaz suffered the same fate and only at the end, when he offered to give a password for the return of the money, did the spirits of a night of scandal calm.
However, Ruzafa implanted the cinema and, like the Apollo, he was simultaneously doing it with the theater, on days of recognized success and evening and night performances. Because it was not until December 1896 that two theaters began operating in Valencia – it would be better to speak of temporary barracks – dedicated to giving an exclusive cinema program. The first, the Lumiere Cinematograph, opened its doors on December 20 on Zaragoza Street; the second, the Eliseo, was located in Barcas, number 3. So on December 28, 1896, one year after the first exhibition of the Lumiere brothers in Paris, the Valencian billboard tells us that these two rooms were active and that the Ruzafa and the Princesa, mixed cinema with theater. The Christmas campaign served to familiarize Valencians with the invention, which was exhibited in Ruzafa for two reais (50 cents of a peseta) but which barely cost 25 cents at the Elíseo. In sessions that ran from three in the afternoon to nine at night.
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