Pongrácz Erzsébet: The Cinemas of Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1998)

The Csalogány (1912-13)

proliferate all over the streets and squares of Budapest, so much so that at the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 Budapest’s citizenry, a population considerably smaller than what it is today, had about 110 permanent cinemas to choose from. The situation is brought into sharp focus by some 1913 statistics. The survey provides a list of Budapest’s more than a hundred cinemas, arranged according to the city’s districts.

What first meets the eye is that it was on the outskirts of the city that cinemas especially prospered. The neighbourhood of Haller utca had three cinemas then, though none today. All the small picture houses have been closed in the outer seventh district. Inner József Town has also seen the demise of this form of popular entertainment with the closing down of one dirty but cosy cinema after the other: the Magyar, the Hazám, the Mátyás, the Nép and many more.

The war did no good to the cinema business, reducing the number of picture houses drastically. CJntil October of 1920 the police had the authority to issue cinema operating permits as well as other types of public entertainers permits. The new, 1920, regulation transferred this function into the jurisdiction of the minister of the interior. Besides the issue of permits to operate cinemas, the cinematographic industry itself was placed under political control. Due to censorship policies, the Hungarian film11