Film history between culture and economics: admission figures at the Capitole cinema (1953-1971)

Abstract

Traditionally film studies are focused on the stylistic, narrative and cultural history of cinema. Even with the acknowledgement that the movies were cultural yet commercial artefacts traded on a variety of film markets, contemporary film studies favour a socio-cultural film history as a niche. Our contribution examines local film culture based on the analysis of actual attendance figures from the major first-run cinema of Ghent, the Capitole, between 1953 and 1971. It is a historiographic research on unique archival material captured in a database containing data on 801 films. Based on cultural economics, the analysis explores issues like taste-patterns, financial policy and programming strategies in a pivotal period of crisis in the film market. A first analysis describes the programming strategies of Capitole based on preferences in genre of the films, their country of origin and year of production. A second analysis studies the popularity of the programmed films. Finally, a financial analysis of the data on the ticket prices, gross revenues, taxes, admission numbers and net income characterizes this first run cinema in times of crisis. Capitole was an exclusive first-run cinema with a varied programming strategy thriving on a luxurious image and runaway entertainment. This manuscript which draws upon longitudinal analyses, shows that even though cinema attendance dropped significantly over the course of twenty years this did not correspond with equally plummeting gross income