Cinema arrived in Ireland a little over 100 years ago as a form of mass entertainment. Initially viewed with some suspicion by authorities, very quickly there was a cinema in most villages across the nation.
But what were those early years of cinema like and what was the 'vigilance' movement? Denis Condon, Lecturer in Film at the Department of English and Media Studies at NUI Maynooth and Tommy Graham, Editor of History Ireland joined Sean O’Rourke in studio to give him a front-row seat to the history of cinema in Ireland.
Denis described a pre-cinema world for Sean, in terms of how people spent their leisure time.
"They went to the pub. They went to the theatre, where there was theatre. But there was very little theatre around the country apart from in the cities. They played sport. And they read. They read both literature and newspapers."
The time commitment audiences would have invested in a cinema trip was about the same in the 1910s as today - around 2 hours. However, the makeup of the programme was a little different. Denis told Sean that as well as the star-driven feature film audiences would expect today, there were also short comedies featuring the likes of Charlie Chaplin, episodes of serials and newsreel footage before the main feature. Tommy put the period in context, to give listeners an idea of the kind of newsreel footage audiences may have been seeing.
"At the time, of course, you have political crisis. You’ve the Home Rule Crisis. The Lockout. You have suffragettes breaking windows… the thing is that this then provides a popular medium for people to find out about it. It acts as a conduit. Getting these ideas abroad."
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This medium was inevitably used by political parties to draw attention to their efforts after an initial - as Tommy put it - "social panic" about the new medium from some quarters. He joked that some parties were quicker to adopt the new technology than others.
"Sinn Féin and the Republican movement, they got in straight away. So, for example, Thomas Ashe’s funeral, it would have been hours and clips [of it] would have been shown in the cinema in Phibsborough…That really sums up Sinn Féin’s attitude to new technology. So, you know, the use of the motor car as well. So, if you like, if the motor car was associated with Sinn Féin, it was the poor aul‘ pony and trap still for the Irish Parliamentary Party."
The trend of cinema-going was not without its detractors. Denis explained that the 'vigilance' movement, which had previously focused on literature it deemed obscene, tried to "introduce a Catholic form of censorship" into Ireland. Tommy believes it wasn’t just about what was being shown on screen.
"It’s not just the content, it’s the very act of going to the cinema because it’s another opportunity for "company-keeping..." hanging out with the opposite sex. Especially in a darkened space, you know. So, my God, you know, the world was going to hell in a hand-cart from the point of view of the clerical hierarchy and so on."
Listen back to the full discussion on Today with Sean O’Rourke here.
