1984 was supposed to be bad year for all of us if you believed George Orwell’s dystopian novel written in 1948. For me it was a memorable year and turning 16 was something I excited about. Being born in August means that the summer movie season is always an important time for me, but the Christmas movie season was also a big event and many of the films that opened around the holidays in 1984 still give me a thrill. Of all the films I saw at that time of year there were two that have special significance for me.
Living in Peterborough, Ontario at the time I was envious of the large capacity cinemas in Toronto. In 1984 a few of the old movie palaces were still in business and none was more spectacular the University Theatre on Bloor Street. The art deco theatre, built in 1949, was the largest cinema in Canada, with 1300 seats and a giant curved screen.
For me, going to the beautiful University was a more spiritual experience than going to church. The sheer size of the auditorium with its grand balcony made you feel in your bones the excitement of movie-going.
In May of 1980 I had stood in line for an hour at the University to see The Empire Strikes Back a day after it opened. The crowd was electric with excitement, for this was a sequel to the most popular film we had ever seen: Star Wars in 1977. The audience (including me) reacted ecstatically to the film.
In December
of 1984 I decided to make a special trip to Toronto and the University Theatre
to see another much-anticipated film, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, the sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s
classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Being of a younger
generation I had never seen 2001 on the big screen, only on
television where its state-of-the-art design and special effects were impressive
but diminished by the reduced size of the image. 2010 boasted the
cutting edge of model and camera effects available to filmmaker Peter Hyams
during this era before CGI. I can remember holding my breath and gripping the
armrest while anxious astronaut John Lithgow executed a very long and dangerous
spacewalk between two spacecraft. I was stunned and a little frightened by the recreation
of the vast airless expanse of space near Jupiter. This was the first film I
had ever seen starring Helen Mirren, whose Russian heritage made her ideal casting
as a Soviet cosmonaut. Leaving the cinema that afternoon I felt like I had
experienced as close as I would ever come to space travel.
Later that same
day I went uptown to the Hyland Cinema at Yonge and St. Clair, where I saw the controversial
adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune. The Hyland was
not as grand as the University, but with 790 seats it was still bigger than any
cinema we had in my hometown. Still buzzing from my previous voyage into space,
I was completely unprepared for this mind-blowing film. From its strikingly
original production design and costumes, to its eclectic international cast of actors,
Dune was a unique product that resulted from Dino De Laurentiis,
a very commercial producer, hiring an idiosyncratic artistic filmmaking talent,
writer-director David Lynch. With no points of reference for its singular
world-building story, anyone watching the film who hadn’t read the book felt
like they had been dropped in the ocean and told they had to swim to shore
without any aid. At first, I felt overwhelmed by the detailed sci-fi mythology
and unpronounceable names of characters. However, I very quickly decided to just
let the film wash over me, keeping track of who and what I thought important while
enjoying the other-worldly atmosphere created by the filmmaker’s imagination. I
appreciate what Denis Villeneuve did with his version of Dune
in 2021, but having survived this challenging film in 1984 has meant that Lynch’s
vision will be what I measure all others by.
After my trip
to Toronto, I enjoyed many other films during the holidays of 1984 including City
Heat, the only film starring Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds; Starman,
director John Carpenter’s sentimental sci-fi romance film; Runaway
starring Tom Selleck as a cop in the future fighting evil robots and high tech
weaponry; Johnny Dangerously an hilarious gangster comedy
starring Michael Keaton; and finally A Passage to India, the
multiple Oscar nominated last film of David (Lawrence of Arabia)
Lean. None had the impact or sense of an event that I had sitting in those two
now long forgotten cinemas.
1984 was a pretty
good year for Hollywood movies, but I will remember it for my trip to Toronto,
when I took a cinematic journey to the far reaches of space and beyond.
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