The first movie Guillermo del Toro saw at the cinema: “A shocking, religious experience”
Mexican director Guillermo del Toro is a true titan of the cinema works. He’s taken home three Academy Awards, as many BAFTAs and even an Emmy. His films, such as the Spanish-language Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, often explore themes of beauty through a lens undoubtedly influenced by fairy tales and the world of horror.
Del Toro has also offered his fair share of English-language movies to the world too, which still explore the same themes of religion and politics through narratives that often include monsters. This section of his filmography consists of works like Blade II, Hellboy, Pacific Rim, The Shape of Water and the recent stop-motion animation Pinocchio.
During a conversation with FilmStruck, del Toro once opened up on the first time he ever went to the cinema. “Going to the movies, there were movie palaces back then,” he began. “They were 3000 seaters, and then there were second-class movie palaces that were a little more run down. I went to one of those the first time. I think it was called the Aztec cinema.”
The director continued: “The movie that was playing was Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier. You got into your good clothes and went to the cinema. I was very young; I was four. I was so intensely affected by the gothic images that I fell asleep; I was exhausted.”
Wuthering Heights was directed by William Wyler, and the 1939 film starred Merle Oberon and David Niven alongside Olivier. It is, of course, an adaptation of Emily Bronte’s 1947 novel, although it only tells around 16 chapters of the novel’s original 34, omitting the second generation of characters.
Continuing to tell of his first time at the cinema, del Toro noted: “When I woke up, there were more gothic images. It was really very shocking and very thrilling. Back then, movies were almost a religious experience. They were a transcendental, enormous form of culture and narrative. So they were a big deal.”
According to the director, every time he and his family went to the cinema, they considered it a “big outing”. He went on to explain the wonder of watching a film in a room with many other people. “Seeing a movie and laughing with a lot of mammalian entities makes you feel part of a group at an anthropological level that has no equal,” he said.
Check out the trailer for the first movie Guillermo del Toro ever saw at the cinema, Wuthering Heights, below.
