posted February 20, 2008 04:54 AM                    

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“It must be a disease or something – once you get into it, you can never leave the damn thing alone… It gets into your blood and then that’s it!”

They could be the words of a government anti-drugs advert, but they in fact belong to Gwynn Philips, the man who runs what he firmly believes is the smallest cinema in the country. It is certainly the only cinema to be found in a railway wagon. He has shown films for most of his life in many cinemas, but being a projectionist has never been his living.

It all began in 1942 when he was 12 years old. A Tarzan film with Johnny Weissmuller was showing at the Lido and he’d arranged to go to the matinee with his friends. He got held up at his piano lesson and on arrival at the cinema, the doorman told him that his friends had already gone in and that there were no more seats left.

Seeing his disappointment, the doorman asked if he wanted a job. Gwynn accepted it. He was given a can of film and told to take it down to the other nearby cinema. This was the newsreel, which had to be shared between cinemas during the wartime due to the shortage of celluloid.

I don’t know whether Gwynn would say this incident was an act of God or merely stoked up the fire of an existing passion. Whatever the case he found himself with a regular after-school job.

At first he simply took the cans to and fro. Then the projectionist showed him how to put the film onto a reel, then how to put the reel onto the projector. Before long he was not just carrying the newsreel but showing it as well.

The good side of the job was the money, “I was the only 14 year old with a wrist watch”. The bad side was that he had little time for friends, being immersed in the cinema every night.

At age sixteen, his mother told him that he had to get himself a trade. He replied that he already had one – the cinema. She was having none of that. Like thousands of parents through the years she wanted her son to have a real job.

And so it was that he spent his days training to be an electrician, a career that he followed most of his life. But at night he was back in the projection booth, dimming the house lights and rolling the reels.

He built his first cinema in a redundant coal shed in 1953. It held 16 people and used a pair of 16mm Bell & Howell projectors. However the 1960s brought Cinemascope to 16mm and disrepair to the coal shed, after ten years it was time for change and he decided to buy a railway wagon.

He was rather stuck for a name. He considered calling it “The Wagon” but thought the name seemed rude. Eventually a friend suggested “La Charette” which he liked a lot, especially when he was told it was French for ‘the wagon’.

La Charette has been progressively improved over the years and now boasts a high level of comfort and technical specifications. The first projectors were Bell & Howell 621s, which were replaced by Debries. These had to go when the parts became too expensive and were superseded by four Elf projectors, which gave a brighter picture and superior sound.

He has raked the seats making the rear of the hall 18 inches higher than the front and put in three steps. He has also dug out the floor and built a solid brick wall to insulate the projection room. The 23 seats came to him from a local cinema, which was being converted into a bingo hall. The manager was a former colleague and he persuaded him to do him a favour for old times sake. This the manager did telling the owners the seats were water damaged and passing them onto Gwynn cheaply. These went in 8 years ago. The most recent improvement has been the addition of a small entrance foyer.

He has a Pearlux mini perforated screen which can be masked off to show any picture ratio from standard to Cinemascope. The hall is lit by green, yellow and red lights.

Everything is operated from a well-equipped projection room. He has a winder, electric splicer and tape splicer and a ‘long runner’, which enables him to put the whole show on one reel in the event of an emergency. One feature from the past is a slide, which can be placed in front of the projector to put up messages for people at the bottom of the screen. Remember “Could the owner of the red Vauxhall please move it”?

Gwynn lives in Gorseinon, a small town near Swansea. When he stated his own cinema there were five others in the locality. Now there are none. In 1969 he put on the final roll of film at the last remaining picture house – the Lido where it had all begun. He still remembers the film: it was ‘The Dirty Dozen’.

He screens films once a month, showing each one three times. For future presentation we have: The Last Emperor, Hope and Glory and Empire of the Sun. It is far from cheap to hire recent features, but his is no ordinary audience, they are true film fanatics.

Some people will suggest a film they would like to see and Gwynn will check on the availability and price. If it is a popular choice, the film is hired and the cost split between all the audience. All the showings are fully booked. You could say it is the ultimate film club.

When the video explosion happened he really thought it was the end of his little cinema. In the event, about ten regulars fell away, but there were ten more waiting to replace them. Now that the novelty of video has worn off, he says that the lost sheep want to return to the fold.

His customers complain to him about their experiences at the Odeon in Swansea, recounting how they have to sit through three-quarters of an hour of trailers and adverts in order to see the film. No such problem at La Charette. With shorter movies, Gwynn selects a suitable supporting film, usually an interesting documentary.

His work does not stop there. He has another projectionist who has been with him for 17 years. They take the two projectors out on the road to provide a mobile film service, showing sports films for local clubs, documentaries for pensioners, holiday films for travel agents and feature films at community centres. He can even screen films in Cinemascope on a 22ft portable screen.

His personal film favourites are the MGM musicals, especially South Pacific, West Side Story and My Fair Lady. By strange contrast, his modern favourites are Clint Eastwood films. Well, I suppose Clint did not appear in Paint your Wagon.

He considers that his wife is more of a television person. She does like to visit the cinema, but they rarely have the time. Gwynn, does, however claim that the cinema is the reason that they never argue. “If I feel the air getting a bit heavy in the house, I escape out to the cinema and I shove on a reel of film that I may have seen a dozen times before, and when I come back it’s cooled off a lot. “You’d be surprised how well it works”. Certainly very unconventional marriage guidance advice.

He claims that he has attempted to give up the cinema, but could never break the habit. “I’ve tried leaving it go… I really have tried… I did leave it go once for six months”, he says, “but after five o’clock I didn’t know what to do”.

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Mike

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Auntie Em must have stopped wondering where I am by now...