Preface
Brick by brick, grass and tree, people and things, the houses in the city, just like the square Chinese characters, write the vicissitudes of the city for a hundred years, and the great changes. They came together into a beautiful poem, a generous passage, the content of the text, the story that belonged exclusively to the house and its owner.
In the streets and alleys of Huangpu, there are many buildings with stories like this.
That room, that person, that thing, is the exclusive text that belongs to Huangpu.
Once on the beach, the Hungarian architect Hudak left many wonderful architectural works for the magic capital, and the Daguang Cinema on Nanjing West Road is one of the best, because it was known as the "First Cinema in the Far East" until the 1950s.
The 200,000-yuan theater was built on December 23, 1928, on the site of the Kalden Dance House, and the theater gate opened on Pike Road (now Yellow River Road). At that time, more than a thousand people from all walks of life at home and abroad gathered in the hall of the theater, Mr. Mei Lanfang, a master of Peking Opera, personally came to the scene to cut the ribbon for his opening, Zheng Zhengqiu, Zhou Shuangjuan and other cultural celebrities competed to speak, and Zhou Shuangjuan, editor-in-chief of the supplementary magazine of "Declaration", specially wrote an article entitled "Mei Kai Guangming Record".
In 1931, due to the impact of the movie "Not Afraid of Death", the business was depressed and declared closed. In 1932, the Chinese-American Lugen and the manager of the American International Mortgage Silver Company formed a joint venture to form a joint film company, spending 1.1 million taels of silver to demolish and rebuild the old theater, while purchasing the surrounding scattered plots of land to expand it, the new building was designed by the Hungarian architect Hudak, and the gate of the theater was moved from the original Pike Road to 216 Jing'an Temple Road (now Nanjing West Road). The newly built Great Light Theater is a Western modernist building, the audience hall is divided into two floors, with 1913 soft seats, arranged in concentric circles. The new theater opened on June 14, 1933, and the Declaration evaluates the new great light as "the only great and rich cinema palace in the Far East".
The Great Bright Theater, rebuilt in 1933
Poster of the Great Bright in the 1830s
Movie ticket price coupon
In order to allow the audience to better appreciate foreign films, in November 1939, New Bright took the lead in introducing the "Translation Wind" simultaneous translation headset equipment. At that time, a small square box was installed behind each seat, and there were wires connected to the pronunciation machine. For an extra dime, the audience can rent headphones and connect to the small square box and hear the pure simultaneous translation of the "Translation Wind" ladies. It is reported that among the first generation of "Yiyi Wind" misses, there is Lu Yan, a famous film star who is now well-known in the film industry at home and abroad.
Translation of the film "The Legend of the Wind and The Strange Man"
Movie instructions for all kinds of theaters
In May 1949, gongs and drums were beaten on Nanjing Road, and Shanghai was liberated.
The entrance of the Great Bright Cinema is still bustling with traffic, and it has welcomed a batch of PLA troops stationed in Shanghai to watch the film. In 1953, it was taken over by the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture and renamed "Great Bright Cinema".
Today's Daguang Cinema has been an excellent architectural protection unit in modern Shanghai, and after the fanghua years, generations of Shanghainese have reminisced about its past, and its legendary story is still intriguing and new.
Reporter / Song Qing
Edited / Gao Lei
Source / Shanghai Collection Association
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