Hidden Stories | From a 1910s shed to a Neo-Classical landmark: The forgotten story of Pune’s very first movie theatre
In 1931, the Napier Cinema in Poona Cantonment had transformed into a West End cinema. Among the American films being screened at Napier was The Broken Coin (1915), an adventure-mystery series directed by Francis Ford.
In the book, Mehera-Meher: A Divine Romance, by David Fenster, there is a mention of American films being screened at Napier, and among them was The Broken Coin (1915), an adventure-mystery series directed by Francis Ford. (Express photo) The history of going to the movies in Pune started in a shed in the 1910s. This was Napier Cinema, considered the first theatre in the city. In the era of silent films, this makeshift space in Poona Cantonment would transport paying audiences to other worlds, demonstrating the abiding power of cinema.
In the book, Mehera-Meher: A Divine Romance, by David Fenster, there is a mention of American films being screened at Napier, and among them was The Broken Coin (1915), an adventure-mystery series directed by Francis Ford.
“Every week there was a new episode, but they eventually became tired of it as the story went on forever with no conclusion,” Fenster mentioned in the book. Around the cinema were landmarks, such as a fountain and a bandstand where The Napier Cinema Band would play.
Mustansir Dalvi, an architect and professor of architecture, in a blog post, A Cinema House in Poona, “with time and waxing popularity, the Napier was refurbished by 1919, or thereabouts, into a fairly well-boned neo-Classical building, with timber framing and a stone gable, punctuated with a Baroque-ish front”.
“The Napier was very popular, and is mentioned in several accounts of Poona at the time. One peculiar feature was the screening of (what we today call) serials, short features of interminable stories that attracted the masses to the theatre weekly,” writes Dalvi.
He was introduced to the cinema in his childhood in Pune. But by then, Napier was no longer called that. It had transformed into a West End cinema in 1931. Even in the new building, which carried the name, West End, twice on the facade – on the second floor balcony balustrade and once on the vertical mast on top of the building – one could see the gable and the timber staircase of the old theatre. The premises had a low boundary wall, with posters of the shows prominently displayed.
“While West End was not an Art Deco building, the new front, which had a cantilevered porch, fake arches, and vertical ornament striping its sides, fit the fashions of the time. The West End shows some proto-Deco flattened ornament, sloping chajjas, and a Palladian symmetry. This can be seen in the protruding porch supported on concrete brackets,” says Dalvi.
He says that, by the late 1960s and early 1980s, the cinema was screening films of dubious merit from around the world, such as the American production Sssssssnake, whose tagline was ‘Once this motion picture sinks its fangs into you, you’ll never be the same’, and 3 Fantastic Supermen from Italy that is campy and, according to some critics, has acquired cult status.
“I, particularly, remember being taken to watch Lost in the Desert from South Africa as an outing from school when I was in Class II or III. It was a horribly traumatic choice for us considering the terrible things that happen to the child in the film, including being spat in the eye by a venomous snake, after surviving a plane crash,” writes Dalvi.
The West End was demolished in the 1980s, bringing down the curtains on an era of cinema-going in Pune.
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