The Everyman

In London, in the 1980s, my favourite cinema was The Everyman, the world's first repertoire cinema and where I saw - for the first time - such films as La Belle et la Bête (1946), Days of Heaven (1978), Umberto D (1952), Barry Lyndon (1975), Betty Blue (1986), One from the Heart (1982), The Right Stuff (1983), Les enfants du Paradis (1945), Paris, Texas (1984) and - in one epic afternoon and evening - Bicycle Thieves (1948), Miracle in Milan (1951) and La Strada (1954).

I remember the Everyman as being a bit shabby but they sold good tea and very healthy sandwiches (handy when you're doing a four- or five-hour film marathon.) Now I see it's been tarted up into a more upscale venue, the Everyman Cinema Club. I'll have to visit it when next I visit London.

One day (on the double-bill with La Belle et la Bête) I saw a 40-minute film Partie de campagne (1936) by Jean Renoir. It's apparently part of a longer film he never completed. It tells the story of a Parisian shop-owner who comes to the country for a day's holiday with his flirtatious wife, shy daughter and unfortunate shop clerk. The daughter feels an intense attraction for a local man, while her mother flirts outrageously with the man's friend. But she is meant for the shop clerk. And so it goes... it's about missed chances, family duty, and regret. It's funny, moving, and truly tragic. The dreamy shots along the river and the river bank still come to my mind over 20 years later.