The Alvalade evenings
By: Jorge Mourinha
Tags: Film, Memoir, Cinema

The Alvalade in its original 1953 form: the “cheap seats” balcony, the “deluxe” mezzanine and the stalls.

I remember I liked sitting in the first row of the balcony — in the first row you’d be facing the screen with nothing blocking your view of the entire auditorium and of its architecture. But my Dad much preferred the stalls. Especially aisle seats — because it meant he could get up and leave as soon as the film ended and didn’t need to be caught up in the crowd.

Of course, when my Dad went to the movies, in the 1940s and 1950s, there really weren’t end credits. There were double programmes in neighbourhood theatres like the Lys or the Imperial; at the end of the main feature there would maybe a card with the cast of characters, or a “The End” card. I didn’t care much for the stalls when I was a kid because, even though I was tall for my age, you could always get somebody taller blocking your view. Even though it was a pretty big screen.

I kept a lot of tickets.

I remember that, in the 1970s and 1980s, before they changed to the later machine stubs, the printed tickets were orange for the stalls and brown for the balcony —excuse me, “tribune”, because it was a small balcony, only six rows in, the best and more expensive seats in the house. Plus there was an actual balcony above it, with cheaper seats. When it first opened, in 1953, the Alvalade had 1187 seats; by the time I started going there, in the 1970s, the entire balcony was closed, and two rows had been removed from the stalls, bringing the seating down to 717.

The Alvalade’s seating plan at its 1953 opening. By the 1970s, the balcony was no longer in service, and only the stalls and the mezzanine “tribune” remained active.

Later, when I was a teenager, before the cinema closed for good in 1985, I remember trying to discover what was happening beyond the area I knew — where did all those exit stairs lead. I was afraid I’d be caught by the ushers. Though probably at that time, and judging by the empty seats at the weekday matinées, they really couldn’t care much. Still, the stairs led really nowhere. I mean, they led up to the now-out-of-bounds balcony, and down to the street-level emergency exits. I could imagine crowds getting off it after an evening show. But I only saw the Alvalade at capacity a couple of times.

The foyer at the “tribune” level. The wall artwork was commissioned from artist Estrela Faria and is the only thing that remains of the original building, demolished in 2003.

The Alvalade was where I saw a lot of the Disney animations. There and at the Tivoli. At the time they were still dubbed in Brazilian — I don’t think I ever saw a Disney in the original language in Portugal until the 1990s, when the studio first started releasing subtitled copies, not even on television (well, maybe once or twice on TV, but I’m not sure).

I still haven’t seen most of the Disney classics in the original English (maybe except for Snow White). Was it there or at the Tivoli that I saw the 1970s Robin Hood? I do remember that the Alvalade was where I saw a British children’s film that I loved at the time and never saw again — this was Swallows and Amazons as I found later — as well as Melody, the British film with music by the Bee Gees that my brothers loved, when it was re-run in the 1970s. And Karel Zeman’s Verne adaptation The Deadly Invention (or was it his Munchausen?). On that screening, which I remember was pretty empty, my Dad said that if he’d known what it really was like we wouldn’t have gone.

The Alvalade in its glory days as a first-run cinema. The project dated back to 1945 and was designed by the architects Lima Franco and Filipe de Figueiredo.

This is how I remember the Alvalade, as this amazing mid-fifties, grandiose yet modern building. It’s strange how your memory saves these little things. It also saved, for instance, that my Dad said that the Alvalade, which was a first-run cinema in a 1950s zoning development only five metro stops from our house, was “out of the way” when it first opened —it was only in 1972 that the underground metro network was extended there (it was the only metro station that had a double-sided platform).

Why do I remember these things?

The Alvalade cinema in Lisbon opened in December of 1953 with the Brazilian film Cangaceiro and closed in 1985, though it remained open on and off as a venue for church meetings and the occasional pop concert. The building was torn down in 2003, making way for a residential complex with a 4-screen cinema in the ground floor and basement. The original artwork panel in the foyer was saved from demolition and installed in the foyer of the “new” 4-screen Alvalade, opened in 2009. The photographs in this page, originating in the Lisbon Municipal Archives and the Gulbenkian Foundation Art Collection, have been sourced online, with the exception of the cinema tickets that were scanned from my personal collection. Some of the information was sourced from the Restos de Colecção blog.