1956 Lima, Peru
Zoila Vasquez Bernasa
Born in 1945
First movie memories from Lima, Peru
Interviewed on 01/18/2019
by Marianna Sierra
I assume it was around 1956: Holy Week was coming up, so I knew it’d be time to go to the theater once again. The first time I went, I must have been eight or nine years old, maybe younger, but no more than nine. My mom dressed me up in my favorite shirt, with my favorite matching socks; I remember that. It made the ordeal of having to go to the theater a little more bearable, at least. We hopped in the car and she drove me over to my cousin Sofi’s house.
Once I arrived, most of my other cousins were already there. I was the youngest of the eight, but we all got along pretty good, even the boys. Sofi lived in Miraflores, which was my favorite city to spend time in. The theater was couple blocks down the street, so we’d all just walk as a group and talk and make jokes and laugh. Spending time with them was always the best, even if it meant having to go to the theater…
Before we’d walk in, we’d make sure to stop by the ice cream vendor who’d always be stationed outside the theater. One of my favorite parts of going to the theater was probably getting my zambito cone from the D’onofrio ice cream stand; it was a scoop of vanilla ice cream dipped in that chocolate covering that gets hard in a minute. It blew my mind as a girl. Since I didn’t actually enjoy going to the theater— and wouldn’t until I got into my teens— this was definitely the best part of that whole experience.
It was called Cine Leuro, it was on Av. Benavides, and it was one of the biggest theaters in all of Lima, which meant it was probably one of the biggest theaters in the whole country. But even being the biggest theater at the time, it was nothing compared to the theaters we have now. It only had a single viewing room, which fit a lot of people, but meant that the theater could only show one movie at a time, and most movies would be on the bill for a month or more at a time. And when Holy Week rolled around, that movie would always be The Ten Commandments.
After having gotten our zambitos, I remember being shocked by the dreadful mood of the theater. The lobby was too dark and everything seemed to be the same color: a sad shade of gray. What shocked me the most were the people. Everyone was dressed in black, from head to toe. I wouldn’t understand why until I got home after the movie and asked my mom. She told me it was because they were mourning the death of Jesus Christ.
Once we got into the actual viewing room, the eight of us sat and nearly took up half the row. Unsurprisingly, the seats were… gray, but at least they were comfy. I mean, they had to be: movies back then were just too long for you to even be the slightest bit uncomfortable. The first time I saw The Ten Commandments, it was in black and white, and I kept fixating on the fact that the actors’s mouths didn’t match the words they were saying. (I was too young to know the movie was made in English, and then dubbed in Spanish so Latin American audiences would be able to view it).
Now, you’ll have to forgive me, but I’ve forgotten most of the nitty-gritty details of the movie because it made me too sad; it really wasn’t for children, and I don’t know why the adults always insisted on making us watch it. Although, now that I think about it, I don’t remember anyone else leaving the theater as upset as I would, they all seemed so unbothered. For some reason, it really got to me.
Overall, the movie showed Jesus’s life, the ten commandments, his suffering, his death, and his resurrection, yada yada yada. But the part that will never escape my memory is the scene where they whip Jesus as he carries the cross, blood splattered everywhere. I felt like the man on the screen was my very own father. It physically hurt me and I couldn’t bear to watch. As if that scene couldn’t get any worse, a couple years later, technicolor became a thing. It made me sick to my stomach and sad for days. We had to sit through at least three hours of it! That director had no pity.
Later that night, once my mom had picked me up from Sofi’s, I ran inside my house and looked everywhere for my dad, thinking that he might have actually died right then and there in front of my eyes. I gave him a big hug, and I’d do that every year after getting back from that god-awful film.
Once I got older, and started going on dates, the theater became everything to me, so the trauma didn’t stick for long. We also got better theaters and better movies. But to this day, when they play that movie on TV, I will always change the channel.
Oh, and you’ll never catch me in black.
