HOWZAT

But the results are breathtaking, a luxurious throwback to a bygone age. In line with the interior’s “Cunard design” ebony walls, sensuously curved, support heavy golden moulded waves, dotted with giant golden shell light fittings. The focal point is a stunning moulded proscenium arch. Between the rows of magnificently plush seats there is enough leg-room to make first-class airlines blush.

The restored 1938 building shines new glory on the work of David Nye, whose work also includes the Church of Christ the King, in Southwark.

Just days before its opening, carpets were still being laid, the main steps concreted and the broken skeleton of a 1930s projector stand lay outside the main entrance. But at last the Rex will rise again. It hosts special events all week long, before its first commercial screening on Sunday of Orson Welles’s The Third Man, a choice laced with extra significance as Graham Greene was a local lad.

Declaring itself in its newsletter as an experiment in running a “non-greedy” enterprise, the Rex, which will serve quality wines, coffees and teas, with not a branded franchise in sight and absolutely no popcorn, will offer an eclectic menu of classics and art-house films, as well as running the best of new releases a few weeks behind their West End launches. It has the capability to project 70mm prints as well as standard 35mm — usually the domain of multiplexes and IMAX houses.

The opening is likely to be an emotional moment for the original projectionist Alun Rees, who at 73 has agreed to come out of retirement to relaunch the cinema, showing the first film on its screen. “Why on earth didn’t they always have it like this?” he asks today.

• The Rex cinema in Berkhamsted, Herts (01442 877759) reopens on Sunday with The Third Man. Next week: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Hard Day’s Night and Imagine double bill; Moulin Rouge and The Bourne Identity with The Bourne Supremacy
  
  RUPERT MELLOR
  
  The death of an old picture palace always results in a heavy heart
  
  ALTHOUGH I didn’t realise it at the time, I was spoilt rotten by my first trip to the pictures. Not only was it a bizarre double bill of The Jungle Book and Kes (I was six, and luckily not mentally scarred for life), but it was at the Odeon, Redhill.

  Five years after Oscar Deutsch opened his first Odeon in Perry Barr, Birmingham, his burgeoning empire drew in the architect Keith P. Roberts, whose first commission was the Redhill cinema. It was built over a brook, which was channelled down the side of the building, and had six illuminated porthole windows on its tile-clad front.

  On the roof was a red neon sign for everyone to see on the adjacent London to Brighton railway, and at the foot of the driveway (an unusual feature in itself) a concrete tower proclaiming the name Odeon sat proudly beside the iron bridge at the centre of the dour railway town. It was far and away the most romantic and architecturally intriguing building in Redhill. No wonder I fell in love with Odeons.

  A few years ago Odeon decide to rebrand its red neon look with a blue/grey rinse. It ripped out every bar in every cinema. This included the Bond-like charmer, fish tanks and all, in the Odeon Marble Arch, the kind of louche lounge that bars all over the capital were trying at the time to rebuild from scratch. The original doors on the Holloway Road Odeon were binned. The sign advertising the programme outside the Tottenham Court Road cinema was replaced by one that said: “Odeon — Mad about Movies” (yes, but which bloody movies?).

  Fortunately my local, the Muswell Hill Odeon, was listed. It’s been messed about in the past, but the listing has preserved the beautiful linear lighting in the theatre and the double-height foyer with Deco pillars and lighting. Unsympathetic blue and silver has replaced the house colours of cream, green and gold, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed. Odeon has kept it in pretty good nick in case it ever decides to pass the building on to an enthusiast — me, for instance.

  Down in Dorset, the Rex in Wareham has been independently restored. It’s the only gas-lit cinema in Britain, with a wonderfully authentic Thirties atmosphere, although this does build up your hopes that it’ll be showing Grand Hotel or a King Vidor season rather than Bride and Prejudice.

  The tiny Woolton Picture House in Liverpool has happily survived. It is reputed to be the oldest cinema in the North West, and the last time I went they were still stopping the main feature after exactly an hour — no matter what was happening on screen — for an ice-cream intermission.

  The Redhill Odeon has been a nightclub since the Seventies, and although it could theoretically be reborn, like the Rex in Berkhamsted, it’s worth remembering that when it opened in 1938, Redhill’s two existing cinemas closed within a year. It’s always with a heavy heart, but sometimes you just have to let cinemas die.

  BOB STANLEY