[CLOSED] Cinéma Crystal

I don't know how many times I walked past this fine building on Calais' Rue Royale before realising it used to be a cinema.  If you were to visit Calais as a foot passenger, you could walk to this building in around 15 minutes from when the passenger bus dumps you at the front of the ferry terminal.  Once you know of the Crystal's history, it's painfully obvious that this was once a movie palace; the exterior remains largely unchanged, with a "Casino" sign now in place of the one which once read "Cinema".  The Crystal was constructed in the 1950s, alongside countless other buildings which were put up as part of a massive rebuilding programme in the city following WW2; Calais was virtually razed to the ground during the war, although the magnificent 13th-century Tour du Guet -- a mere stone's throw from the Crystal -- somehow survived.

Sadly, Cinéma Crystal wasn't around for all that long, and by the 1970s the 600-seat establishment had closed down, with the building subsequently housing a casino which is still going strong -- meaning it's now been there for roughly twice as long as the cinema was.  It's a pity that the cinema's lifespan was relatively short, but I suppose by the 70s the market was changing -- as were tastes and fashions -- and the increasing popularity (and availability) of TV was also chipping away at the status of cinemas.  You're quite free to have a wander around inside, and it all feels quite grand.  While its current use may not be the one it was originally intended for, it's nonetheless heartening to think of how this building -- like so many in the city -- sprang from the rubble of 1945.

[CLOSED] L'Eden

There's something rotten in the city of Havre -- at least, there seems to be if you've followed the shenanigans surrounding the closure of two of its cinemas, both of which were shut down within a year or so of each other (you can read about Les Clubs' misfortunes here).  All of this occurred at the beginning of this decade, a period in which I was no stranger to Le Havre yet, to my regret, I never made it to a screening at L'Eden -- although I did visit the striking Volcan building which housed the cinema.  The Volcan is the home of France's very first maison de la culture, which opened in 1961 at what is now the excellent Museé Malraux, before moving on to the Volcan via the Théâtre de l'Hôtel Ville.

Museé Malraux

The maison's first site was where Jacques Rivette's legendary Out 1 enjoyed its first public screening, and it's only right that the museum now carries the name of the man who, in launching the maison de la culture initiative, helped make the French arts scene a lot less Paris-centric.  André Malraux was appointed France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs by Charles de Gaulle, and in 1962 both men survived assassination attempts.  The attempt on Malraux's life -- which nonetheless had dreadful consequences in that it resulted in the blinding of a four-year-old girl -- was carried out by the OAS, a right-wing organisation vehemently opposed to Algerian independence; in 1963, Malraux's future son-in-law Alain Resnais would make the staggering Muriel, a film heavily informed by the Algerian War.

The Volcan's temporary home: la Gare du Havre-Maritime

But I digress.  The Volcan opened in 1982, with the cinema operating right from the off until January 2010, when it "temporarily" closed for renovations which were set for the following year.  Promptly after this closure, the cinema was told that the keys needed to be returned for good; apparently the fermeture was actually definitive (although the building actually did undergo a makeover, during which the Volcan set up a temporary home at one of Havre's old train stations).  The reason given by the suits for the sudden winding up of L'Eden was -- wait for it -- that three security agents (!) would be required to watch over each screening.  Unless they were planning to screen nothing other than workprints from the likes of Scorsese and Tarantino, why on earth would such security measures be needed?  There's something very, very wrong about all of this -- the justification for L'Eden's closure seems not only completely implausible, but ill-thought-out; an Allociné interview with the cinema's ex-directrice Ginette Dislaire makes for a most interesting read.  Oh, I almost forgot to mention: a shiny new 12-screen Gaumont had opened in the city just a few months prior to the curtain coming down on L'Eden.

Website (for Le Volcan)