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Remembering Vincent at the death of ‘Delite’

B Meenakshi Sundaram · 11 Feb 2024

In an age when many movie halls have been converted into shopping malls and apartments in the city, the movie-viewing experience at an upmarket multiplex is simply not the same as the overwhelming enthusiasm on the day of a film’s release.

The latter witnesses celebrations by fans who ebulliently approve of the action scenes featuring their idol. The lead character’s pithy or catchy dialogues prompt loud whistles.

Earlier a movie was released at one theatre and sometimes ran to a packed house for more than 100 days.

The present trend of releasing the same movie at several centres to run for just about 10 days at each indicates the commercial strategy of film producers to reap a huge amount of money in a short period with no consideration whatsoever for a fan’s admiration for his favourite heroes and heroines.

While looking back to a time when dashing gentlemen moved slowly across the silver screen, we come across the story behind the first-ever movie hall in South India that was set up right here.

Besides screening silent movies, the theatre also had a commentator who narrated the story sequence to the audience before the scenes unfolded on the screen. Moreover, the theatre entertained the viewers with a variety of programmes like musical performances, a magic show, and even a wrestling match within the movie’s running time!

The credit for establishing this movie hall goes to Samikannu Vincent, a Coimbatorean. Resigning his boring desk job (he was a draftsman clerk in the Railways), Vincent bought a film projector from Du Pont, a French film exhibitor, for Rs 2,250.

Being the first to exhibit films in India, Vincent travelled all across the country and exhibited films after pitching tents close to major towns. In 1914, he established a permanent movie hall in Coimbatore.

Though Coimbatoreans are familiar with Variety Hall Road, not many here know that it was named after the movie hall wherein the audience was entertained with a ‘variety’ of programmes.

Following the establishment of Variety Hall, Vincent set up many other movie halls in Coimbatore. They were Palace, Light House, Edison, and Radha. These were renamed in due course as Nazz, Kennedy, Swamy, and Murugan. Interestingly, famed Indian English writer R K Narayan mentions these movie halls in his popular novel The Dark Room.

Until its demolition began last Friday, Variety Hall stood as Delite, just to ‘delight’ a handful of movie buffs who like to watch their favourite MGR and Sivaji Ganesan starrers.

Delite shopping malls upmarket multiplex Samikannu Vincent MGR Sivaji Ganesan R K Narayan Indian English writer

Remembering Vincent at the death of ‘Delite’

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