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Wide ScreenToronto’s Cumberland Four Cinema closes its doors after more than 30 years
Sunday, May 6, was a sad day for Toronto moviegoers. With little fanfare, the Cumberland Four Cinema -- one of Toronto's most beloved movie theatres -- screened its last film. The four-cinema theatre, located in Toronto's upscale Yorkville neighbourhood, has long been a destination for the city's cinephiles, playing host to all manner of arthouse fare and numerous film festivals since it opened in 1981.
Never gaudy or flashy like the movie houses that preceded it, the Cumberland looked fairly ordinary. However, the theatre's utilitarian design suited it perfectly, never distracting from the real reason people went there: to see movies. At the Cumberland, patrons could take in the latest and greatest indie flicks and arthouse films from around the world, small movies that would not play elsewhere in the city on their first run. Critical darlings, award-winning foreign films, and fascinating documentaries -- not the blockbusters that populated other theatre screens.
Perhaps the lack of big-budget punch is one of the reasons the cinema had to close its doors, but there were probably other things at play. Toronto has experienced a renaissance of repertory and specialty cinema in the past few years. Between indie rep houses like the Fox and the Toronto Underground Cinema, and larger venues like the newly revitalized Bloor Cinema and the spectacular TIFF Bell Lightbox with its arthouse cinematheque, the cinephiles that once flocked to the Cumberland may have simply gone elsewhere.
With the departure of the Cumberland and the legendary Four Seasons hotel across the street, the Yorkville strip will lose some of its lustre. Long a destination for Toronto Film Festival aficionados and celebrity-obsessed fans, the area won't feel the same without a cinema inhabiting it. The Cumberland's marquee is now appropriately adorned with the melancholy last line from Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner": "It's too bad she won't live, but then again who does?"
Cineplex had been renting the space month-to-month until the Cumberland's landlord terminated the lease. The owners have long planned to redevelop the space, and it will reportedly become a "high-end café" of some kind. While a café is certainly a less egregious use of the space than, say, another condo tower, seeing the Cumberland gutted so that someone can serve up overpriced paninis and lattes is almost as depressing.
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