Cinema and television viewed each other as enemies from day one.
For a long time there was coexistence, television claimed the larger audience numbers and the cinema the bigger stars and the greater reputation.
But one day it had to come to a showdown.
In 1970, legendary French director Jean-Pierre Melville gave a series of interviews to critic Rui Nogueira.
Melville had just shot his third masterpiece in a row - "The Ice Cold Angel", "Army in the Shadow", "Four in the Red Circle" - was at the height of his career and yet was a pitch-black pessimist.
“I don't know what's left of me in 50 years”, he dictated to Nogueira on the tape.
“All my films will probably be terribly old-fashioned.” Then it came: “And the cinema no longer exists.
I guess cinema will go away around 2020.
And there will be nothing more than television. "
We have now reached the year 2020, and a virus cocktail is actually threatening to wipe out the cinema.
It takes revenge that the multiplexes are increasingly relying on fewer and fewer horses, sometimes leaving 19 out of 20 canvases to the newest "Harry Potter" or "Wonder Woman".
This pillar is breaking away.
And not just them.