The whole wide world of cinema

The home archives of the Makowski family have preserved some fragments of 1930s business correspondence addressed to the cinema in Jezuicka. They are enough to give us some idea of its character and its abundance. Mieczysław Makowski, the son of Romuald who managed the cinema in the interwar period, recalled the following:

There were representatives of international film studios in Warsaw who always had a full set of release prints of their productions. The cinema manager, who had an idea of the preferences of its audience, would order a specific film, of course at a certain fee. Similarly, domestic film studios distributed their own copies.

These representatives would promise a guaranteed box office success in their correspondence, seeking to persuade the manager to order films from their catalogues, they would include promotional materials for specific titles: leaflets, posters, sometimes collector’s gadgets. But they also sent polite but firm requests to return the release prints or pay overdue fees. Just like today, but entirely on paper, with a company logo on it, and often intricately decorated.

There are no extraordinary conclusions to be reached on the grounds of these scraps, but one thing is certain: this little provincial cinema was in close contact with the whole wide world of cinema.