Interview
Maria was born and raised in Mexico City in the 70’s. I asked her what it was like to go to the movies when she was young, how it felt emotionally, and how her experience compares to watching films today. As she talked, I realized I wasn’t just collecting facts about movie theaters; I was listening to a story about how movies impacted her life.
She started going to the movies when she was about five or six years old. In her family, the cinema was not a rare luxury but a normal part of life, especially because her father loved movies. They probably went at least once a month, sometimes more. Even though it was normal, she still remembers it as an event. From the moment they decided to go, there was a sense of excitement: getting everyone ready, driving across town, and walking into a huge building that existed only for watching films.
One of the biggest differences between her memories and today’s experience is the architecture of the theaters. She described “immense” auditoriums with giant screens that filled her field of vision. There was even a velvet curtain covering the screen. Before the film started, the curtain would slowly rise, much like in a theater. For her, the theater itself was part of the spectacle. Many of the movie houses were stand-alone buildings in trendy neighborhoods, rather than inside malls. They had their own parking lots and elaborate façades, the way we might imagine an old opera house. In the more popular, middle-class neighborhood where she lived, there weren’t any cinemas. They had to drive to those “nicer” areas of the city.
The economic story of going to the movies also reveals how much has changed. As a child and teenager, she remembers movie tickets as very affordable. In her adolescence, a ticket cost around 25 pesos ($2 U.S. dollars today), an amount she describes as “what anybody had in their bag.” If she and her friends were bored, they could decide on the spot to go to the cinema without worrying whether they had enough money. Later, though, when she reached her late twenties and thirties, she noticed a clear shift: ticket prices rose faster than the general cost of living. What had once been an easy, almost spontaneous outing started to feel like something you had to budget for. The cinema did not become an elite luxury, but it did stop being the default cheap activity you could choose when “there was nothing else to do.”
Snacks were another important part of the experience. She remembers the classic items, popcorn, soda, hot dogs, but with a twist: the candies in the theater came from specific brands you couldn’t find in regular corner stores. The cinemas had their own providers, and she actually didn’t like many of those sweets. On top of that, the prices were higher than convenient stores. Because of this, her family sometimes brought their own candy hidden in bags, partly to save money and partly because they preferred other brands. Even so, she insists that the outing as a whole was still much cheaper than going to the movies is today.
The cinema moved along with her into different stages of her life. As a child she went with her parents and siblings, and occasionally cousins. As a teenager she shifted to going with friends or boyfriends, with family outings becoming more occasional Sunday activities. The movies created shared references for her generation. The films that “marked” her, were not just personal favorites; they were moments that defined eras in her life and gave her generation a common language: the first Star Wars movie, the early Superman film, Disney classics like Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Dumbo, Fantasia, and later The Blue Lagoon with Brooke Shields.
Back in the day, there was no cable, no Blockbuster yet, and of course no streaming platforms. If you wanted to see a new movie, you went to the cinema. Today, that logic has totally flipped for her. She now has streaming services and a TV at home, so she almost never has to leave the house to watch something. She laughed about how magical it still feels to be able to pause a movie to go to the bathroom and not miss anything, something that simply did not exist in her childhood. Back then, her father made everyone use the restroom before entering the theater because if you left during the film, you could easily miss ten minutes and lose a key part of the story.
Physical comfort has also evolved. In her earliest memories, the seats were wide and comfortable. Later, theaters began shrinking. She remembers narrower seats and backrests that barely reclined, similar to airplane seats. At that point, if you arrived late and the show was full, you might end up sitting separated from your friends, or even on the stairs, because she preferred that to climbing over an entire row of strangers. The worst case was getting stuck in the first row, where the screen was so huge you had to almost lie down in your seat and still left the theater with neck pain.
As an adult, she witnessed yet another shift: the introduction of VIP theaters in Mexico. For her generation, this was revolutionary. These rooms are more spacious, with reclining electric seats, small lights to read the menu, and waiters who bring food during the movie. And overall, a cleaner, more curated environment. She admits that she was willing to pay extra for VIP tickets because they felt like a return to that sense of specialness.
Today, however, she rarely goes to the movies at all. If she goes once a year, that’s already a lot. Interestingly, she now lives very close to a mall that has a cinema, only about three minutes away, so distance is no longer a barrier. Instead, two main factors explain the change: the cost and the convenience of watching films at home.
She feels real nostalgia for the era when going to the movies was a big event, partly because there were fewer distractions and fewer ways to “kill time.” The cinema concentrated everyone’s attention and energy. For her, theaters were once the center of cinematic life and are now an expensive option she rarely chooses. Maria’s memories create a kind of time capsule: giant curtains slowly rising, enormous screens, non-assigned seats, people sitting on the stairs, checking the newspaper for showtimes, and a father warning his kids to use the bathroom before the lights go down because there is no pause button.
In the end, what hasn’t changed is that movies still create shared experiences and emotional memories. Whether they are watched in a grand cinema in 1970s Mexico City or on a streaming service today, they continue to mark moments in people’s lives. Her nostalgia for that earlier era doesn’t cancel out her appreciation for the present; instead, it highlights how each technological change quietly rewrites what it feels like to be part of an audience.