The interior of the Regent Street Cinema.
Our latest Curiosity of the Week will be of interest, not only to all the film fans out there, but to cultural history buffs as well. The Regent Street Cinema was the first ever cinema in Britain. It began life in 1848 when a new theatre was added on to the south side of what was then the Royal Polytechnic Institution.
The theatre was purpose built for ‘optical exhibitions’, which the institution had become famous for. Early shows included demonstrations of the latest scientific and technological innovations, lantern slides as a backdrop to live music and drama, and full theatrical performances. On Christmas Eve 1862 a production of Charles Dickens’ ghost story The Haunted Man included the first demonstration of Pepper’s Ghost, and there were many subsequent plays incorporating this unfailingly popular illusion.
On 20 February 1896, the Polytechnic’s theatre became the birthplace of cinema in the UK, when the Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe machine was demonstrated to the press. These earliest of moving images were given their first presentation to a paying audience at the theatre the following day. The Lumière brothers’ show had first been seen by the public in Paris on 28 December 1895 and after London continued its tour to New York, Bombay and Buenos Aires.
Following the Lumières’ screening, the theatre went on to be used for a variety of entertainment and presentation firsts. From 1899, Alfred West’s Our Navy and Our Army films ran continuously for fourteen years, and set a precedent for the theatre’s conversion into a permanent cinema in the 1920s.
The Regent Street Cinema, fully restored.
As a landmark destination in the West End the cinema achieved another first with its screening of La Vie Commence Demain in January 1951. It was the first film to be awarded an X certificate in the UK. After a short period as a venue for musicals in the 1970s, the cinema closed to the public in 1980 and became a lecture theatre.
After a three year fundraising campaign the Regent Street Cinema was restored and re-opened by the University of Westminster in May 2015; reinstating one of the most historic cinemas in Britain to its former grandeur. Echoing its history, the cinema will continue to be a catalyst for innovative education and research, and a showcase for the University’s internationally acclaimed work in film, media and visual culture.
To celebrate the renovation and re-opening of the Regent Street Cinema, its long and fascinating history has been told for the first time in a book The Magic Screen – History of Regent Street Cinema. The book is available to purchase at the Box Office or by contacting archive@westminster.ac.uk.
More info: www.regentstreetcinema.com
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