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I used to live in Collingwood. Every Saturday night the whole family would pack into the Zephyr and crawl our way to the Cinema Italia in Clifton Hill where we barely watched and mostly talked through bad Italian movies. Every 4 years, something strange happened. My dad and other guys claiming to be my uncles would take me there on ‘Secret Men’s Business’. Prior to direct TV coverage, Cinema Italia would run special film screenings of World Cup matches. As a kid, it was totally bizarre watching grown men wearing red, white and green scarves, pretending not to know the result of a game they’d listened to live on radio over a month before. At first gradually, then precipitously, the cinema went into decline. My grandfather was literally the last person to see a film there. In the mid- 80’s it became a ballet studio until it had its front windows shot out by a passing car. When the proprietor died a few years later, his wife wanted to
sell up and go back to Naples. She asked if I could help with the
conveyancing. In return I could keep any movie I wanted. After hours
of sifting through countless stacks of spaghetti westerns and swords
and sandals epics in the basement of their warehouse, I finally
found it — my lost classic. |