The Enduring Magic of the Goya Cinema

These four letters are not pronounced, they are exclaimed, they denote the sound identity of the National University: the “Goya”. It was created in 1946 and attributed to José Luis Rodríguez “Palillo” (1934-2005), then a student at Preparatory School 1, located in San Ildefonso, in the Old University District, when he invited others to sit in the seats of the Goya Cinema.

The building, now defunct (1925-1967), was located at number 44 on El Carmen Street, in the Historic Center of Mexico City. It will celebrate a century since it was built and, in addition to being part of the capital culture, it maintains a permanent history shared with university students of several generations, one of them Jorge Ayala Blanco (1942), dean professor of the National School of Cinematographic Arts of the UNAM.

“I not only knew it, I frequented it, I went there often. It was another world, because nowadays, they are shopping malls and back then there were many theaters near the University District, one of these was the Goya, so it was not the only one, but it was the one that programmed what the kids of the time, or of the times, liked the most,” he shared.

We have to put ourselves in context, in the 20s of the last century, there were triple, even quadruple premieres, people lived in the cinema! “They were impressive ‘jacalones’, there were not, yet large cinemas like palaces, like the Roble, the Chapultepec, the Opera, among others,” he said.

The Goya “seems to me to be the great tribute to cinema, it is not at all dreamlike, it is like a kind of expansion of the spirit, it is taste and pleasure for this art, which comes before logical intelligence, emotional intelligence, the theaters are the ones that ultimately develop your emotional intelligence and sensitivity. I even think that it was a necessity to go to the cinema for students who were not only high school students, but also from other schools of the University, such as Medicine and Law,” said Ayala Blanco.

The winner of the 2006 National University Award, Salvador Toscano Medal, received at the 53rd edition of the Ariel Awards, described the Goya of the late 1950s:

“It had a narrow lobby, the ticket office in front, you could enter from the left or the right, and it was one of those rooms that had only one level, it had nothing extraordinary, the interesting thing is that it was practically integrated into the University District, it was like a kind of border with the other streets.”

As one of the greatest historians of the seventh art, the university academic also highlighted one of the things that most captivated young people about the venue:

“It was three times cheaper than the most popular theater in that circuit, which was the Salón Rojo: it was the most attractive place on Earth! That's why the cry “Let's go to the Cine Goya!”, we skip classes and go, because there they showed adventure films, romantic films, comic films, pirate films, exotic films, it was extraordinarily attractive.”

It was not the only theater in the University District; for example, on Argentina Street there were the Alarcón, Máximo and Cairo cinemas.

“On El Carmen Street there was a church that was the headquarters of the National Newspaper Library. I started going there in 1955, I looked at newspapers; two old men with beards were constantly there, and the people in charge of the place would pull the rug out for them: they were Alfonso Reyes and José Vasconcelos!”

According to information from the newspaper El Universal on January 31, 1925, the day of the Goya's inauguration, "the decoration of the hall is simple and elegant, the seats are spacious and comfortable, the boxes and amphitheater are very well-equipped for cinema, and the gallery is undoubtedly the largest and best studied in Mexico, three thousand spectators can be comfortably accommodated in the magnificent stands: and surely the appearance of the gallery full of attendees will be similar to that which we have surprised in our Stadium."

Ayala Blanco mentioned that three films were released that day: "The Sea Hawk"; "The Beautiful Liar"; and "His Majesty Money", all silent, the entrance cost 50 cents.

Before its demolition in March 1967 — it is said that it may have been damaged by the “Angel Earthquake” that occurred on July 28, 1957 — the last film to be released was “The Insatiable Sinner” on November 6, 1964, recalled the university professor.

“A film that would be very important in American cinema because it is the adaptation of the trilogy of the great American determinist novel by James T. Farrell, directed by Irving Lerner. The film was released mutilated, it is a curious fact, it gives the idea that the Goya Cinema was already part of a large circuit,” concluded Jorge Ayala.