A comedy with lashings of pathos
FOR those of us who remember the valiant efforts of Liz and Dai Evans and others at the Lyric, the film Save The Cinema is an intriguing and often hilarious mixture of fact and fantasy. Several of the main characters and events are historic, others are not. It is, after all, entertainment not a documentary. To paraphrase a line from the film, “we don’t need reality, we need magic!”
In reality, there never was a plan to demolish the Lyric. Probably the main reason for its demise, like so many other cinemas in the 1980s, was the advent of the domestic VHS video recorder. The Lyric was closed for a lengthy period and in danger of becoming derelict. Enter the Carmarthen Youth Opera. Since its formation in 1979 at the Carmarthen Further Education Centre it had grown to be one of Wales’s most successful cultural societies and needed a new home. Under Liz’s enthusiastic leadership, the Lyric was taken over and cleaned up by a small army of volunteers.
Securing the premiere of Jurassic Park in 1993 was a fantastic achievement, but if any film “saved the Lyric” it was probably Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise some six years earlier. The place was packed on the Lyric’s reopening night in 1987. I remember the queue stretching down King Street way past the former Post Office. Top Gun’s F-14 jet fighter scenes and deafening soundtrack reminded us how watching a VHS at home couldn’t compare with the cinema experience.
Despite the volunteers’ best efforts, to be honest the place was quite a fleapit. So, they formed a trust to buy the Lyric, and extensively refurbished it after securing substantial grants from Carmarthen Town Council, the former District Council and Dyfed County Council and the Welsh Office.
The most recent major investment was one of £1.5m by its present owners, Carmarthenshire Council. By the way, tribute must be paid to council officers and staff who worked hard under difficult circumstances to provide safe and legal facilities for the huge Sky production crew, actors etc.
That’s the reality. What about the magic in the film? I enjoyed the humour, particularly the hilarious over-the-top performance by the cigar chain-smoking baddy mayor. For me, Save The Cinema is primarily a comedy with lashings of pathos, sentimentality, some romance and feel-good scenes thrown in – including a happy ending.
Save The Cinema certainly won’t challenge How Green Was My Valley, which is featured in a scene in the Sky film, as the greatest Welsh film of all times (five Oscars!), but it’s very entertaining and visually depicts our town and county in an excellent light to a wide audience. As well as commemorating Liz the Lyric in a way she’d never have imagined, the film literally places the Carmarthen Youth and District
Opera centre stage. It was for them, after all, that she fought so hard over the years to save the cinema.
Alun Lenny
Carmarthen