Got off to a dodgy start a couple of days ago with my tiny, three-student advanced English class.

To my opening gambit of “What did you do today before you came to this lesson?”, the answers were:

“I was sick all day and I didn’t get out of bed till half an hour ago.”

“I had to take my brother to the hospital. He is very sick, he has cancer.”

“I went to the doctor and on my arm he found a growth that he will have to cut off.”

Not the most upbeat opening I’ve ever had to a lesson.

In situations like that, you just have to press on with the lesson until the gloomy opening fades.

On a more positive note, I got paid last night.

That happy event led to a binge on the wine at Bate Popo in Costa da Caparica, followed by a couple of beers at Paradise bar.

Today a wonderful bowl of soup at Pic-Nic café restaurant on Rossio has revived me in time to enjoy Oliver Reed, Charlton Heston, Christopher Lee and others in a showing of Treasure Island at Cine Camões in Bairro Alto.

Cine Camões is located just off Rua do Alecrim.

Its entrance is under a large sign for Underwood Cash & Carry.

Inside the cinema a dozen shabbily dressed men are loitering by the bar.

There are no women here at all.

The posters on the wall are an eclectic mix. Old prints of Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward share wall space with Emmanuelle and others of that ilk.

This cinema used to be a theatre. It looks like it has fallen on hard times.

Thankfully, just before 2.15 p.m. when ‘Treasure Island’ is due to start, a couple appear, followed by three female pensioners and a mother with two kids.

The presence of these latecomers dissipates the unpleasant voyeuristic atmosphere that had until now pervaded the bar area.

The ticket is very cheap, 180 escudos for the balcão area. Up here about eighty brown leather seats give a good view of a decent-sized screen.

‘Treasure Island’ is a well made, enjoyable, tongue-in-cheek film.

As Long John Silver, Charlton Heston spares no piratical cliché. Timbers shiver, bottles of rum are summoned with yo-ho-ho’s, and the obligatory parrot on his shoulder squawks about small denomination coinage.

The cast seem to be loving it all, hamming it up most entertainingly.

Sitting behind me in the audience are a couple of coughing and belching Oliver Reeds in addition to the real one playing Captain Billy Bones up on the screen.

Another spectator near me in the balcão area guffaws when Jim Hawkins’ terrorized mother kicks Reed’s prostrate body to see if he is dead.

It’s lowbrow stuff for sure but surprisingly beautifully filmed at times, with gorgeous deep blue seas for the pirate’s boat to drift in, atmospheric and elegant onshore town locations and taverns for the press-ganging of the boat’s crew, and hints of menace and evil that save the whole affair from degenerating into a facile parody.

Taking it with the requisite pinch of salt, I enjoy this gallivanting 1990 version of ‘Treasure Island’.

I’m unable to read the final credits because at the end of the film everyone leaps up out of their seats and bolts for the exits, a distinctive habit amongst Portuguese filmgoers.

Afterwards I take a ride down Rua da Bica de Duarte Belo on the tiny yellow funicular.

It descends past old faded houses with green balconies.

Twice, I accidentally stand on a small metal bar set in the floor of the funicular, which makes the bar clang like a bell.

This Ascensor da Bica passes a handful of cheap eating places at the top of the hill, descending between fine old street lamps with intricate iron grillwork.

I like this tranquil part of old Lisbon.

At the end of the funicular ride, a couple of doors down from the terminus I drop into a cheap restaurant for a bitoque, a steak with a fried egg on top. Most of the walls in this restaurant are lined with four-deep rows of port, whisky and Madeira bottles.

Someone who looks like Jean Cocteau sits down at a neighbouring table.

I finish my bitoque and walk along Rua de São Paulo.

Opposite the restaurant Popular da Bica there stands a beautifully tiled chemist’s called Ultramina. This well preserved old chemist’s is graced with paintings of various medicinal plants and herbs, such as polygala, chamomilla, menthe aquatic, and borrago officinalis.

I have never known a city that brims with as much style and elegance in its streets, shops, bars and cafés.

Related Post: ‘A Cool Fish’, Broadway Cinematheque MOMA (BC MOMA), Beijing, China; ‘Ao Fim da Noite’, Amoreiras and ‘Zandalee’, Cinema Nimas, Lisbon

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Cinemateca Portuguesa, located on Rua Barata Salgueiro in the centre of Lisbon, is a wonderful place for cinephiles.

Great posters and marvellous black and white stills from the 1940s adorn the foyer walls: Bogart in All Through the Night, Howard Hawks’ The Thing from Another World!, Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine in Rebecca, Spencer Tracy in Edward, My Son, Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep, Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce, René Clair’s I Married a Witch, and Basil Rathbone, definitely the best Sherlock Holmes, here in Errol Flynn’s 1938 version of The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Cinemateca has a single screen and what glorious seats! Even better than the ones at 7ᵃ Arte, these Cinemateca seats recline in decadent luxury.

I’m half-expecting an usher to approach garbed in a toga, dangling a bunch of grapes before me.

A fine old polished piano stands to the left of the stage complete with two pairs of brass candlesticks to allow the pianist to read the music in a darkened auditorium.

There is no allocated seating, which means that I am free to sit wherever I want.

The ticket price is a very reasonable 175 escudos, roughly eighty pence in British money.

An arty, black-clad crowd of forty or so is present at today’s showing.

Today’s film is The Window, a 1949 RKO production directed by Ted Tetzlaff.

It stars Bobby Driscoll as young Tommy, a boy whose imagination causes him to cry wolf one time too many; Barbara Hale as Mary Woodry; Arthur Kennedy as Ed Woodry, Tommy’s exasperated parents; Paul Stewart as Joe Kellerson; and Ruth Roman as Jean Kellerson. The Kellersons are the villains of the piece.

Tommy, excellently played by Bobby Driscoll, is a compulsive teller of tales.

He tells his pals that he and his family are going to leave New York for a ranch out west, that they are going to kill whoever they need to in order to make it safe there, and so on and so on.

This is one story too many for his parents, who subsequently refuse to believe him when he claims to have witnessed a murder committed by the Kellersons, the couple living upstairs.

The Kellersons are outwardly respectable, but in reality a seedy pair.

The plot revolves around the refusal of the police and Tommy’s parents to believe him, and also the efforts of the Kellersons to make Tommy have an ‘accident’ so there will no longer be a witness to their crime.

‘The Window’ is a terrific thriller.

Music is used brilliantly, building up to nerve-wracking crescendos interspersed with heavy, ominous silences which in turn are broken out of with considerable virtuosity.

Manuel Cintra Ferreira’s Cinemateca notes use a very apt Portuguese adjective to describe the mood of this film: ‘hitchcockiano’.

Bobby Driscoll steals the show as Tommy, but he gets classy support from Barbara Hale as his mother. She radiates goodness, even though her patience is tried beyond its limit by Tommy’s antics. It’s a nicely understated performance from Hale.

Arthur Kennedy as Tommy’s father is also an admirable figure, despite the hint of whimsy in the earnest moral lessons he imparts to his over-imaginative son.

Ruth Roman plays Jean Kellerson as a dishevelled but not yet desperado individual. She is not as evil as her husband Joe is.

As Joe, Paul Stewart oozes unredeemable malice. They make a great, disturbing couple.

‘The Window’ first showed in Portugal in 1950.

It then reappeared in 1965.

It’s back now in 1991.

If it recurs with similar frequency and if I’m in Lisbon in 2011, I’ll happily take the opportunity to watch it again.

After the film I drift out of Cinemateca down Avenida da Liberdade to the beautiful funicular that ascends Calçada da Glória.

Built by General Electric in 1904, this wonderful old funicular takes me up to the edge of Bairro Alto.

On the other side of the street stands the Port Wine Institute, which shares a building with the Portuguese Cinema Institute.

I’m now sipping exquisite twenty year old port, meio seco and aloirado, in the refined ambience of the Port Wine Institute bar.

There are wooden beams across the ceilings, and exposed brick walls. Low-slung, comfortable armchairs and stools are set around dark glass tables. A fifteen-foot long bar counter has eight stools lined up along it, with an array of tempting port bottles in the background.

Subtle illumination is provided by lamps of various shapes and sizes strategically placed around the two-level drinking area. Two intricately patterned lampshades are placed at ground level near where I am sitting. Their light throws an almost stained glass window effect onto the walls.

A taciturn waiter in black trousers, white shirt and maroon waistcoat drifts discreetly around the room.

What a great place to wind up after a film.

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Cinema Terminal is sold out for ‘Barton Fink’.

So I take a quick look at SE7E’s film listings and see that in a quarter of an hour Fink is showing at São Jorge, ten minutes walk away up Avenida da Liberdade.

There I scurry, only to find a queue so long that I would have missed the start of the film.

Schwarzenegger to the rescue! Terminator 2 is showing in Almada at 9.30 p.m.

Plenty time to get there, and it’s on my way home anyway.

In the meantime, I can’t resist taking the Glória funicular up from Restauradores to Rua São Pedro de Alcântara.

It’s a scene out of one of those wonderful old Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce: a turn of the century funicular tram trundling through smoke drifting up from chestnut vendors’ charcoal fires, an evening of mist and mystery.

Hanging inside the tram is a framed copy of a municipal edict dated April 21 1927, stating the rules for passengers travelling on this vehicle.

Paragraph 4a states, “It is absolutely forbidden for anyone to descend anywhere en route. Penalty 20 escudos”, easily the lowest fine I have ever seen, about twelve pence in British money, although back then it would have been more of a deterrent.

I walk down Rua do Alecrim to Cais do Sodré, where the 1936-built ferry Setubelense takes me across to Cacilhas.

The April 25 suspension bridge is looking good off to the west, illuminated gracefully in green and orange.

By the dockside at Cacilhas a musician is simultaneously playing a battered old tin accordion and a penny whistle. It’s that jolly sort of music that gets everyone grinning.

A small group of passers-by has gathered to listen.

Realizing that he has got an audience, the musician really gets into it.

His elbows pump like pistons whilst his right foot stomps the beat on the pavement.

His ditty squirts to a finish.

One of his mates cheers. The rest of the onlookers just smile and wander off.

When I get to Almada’s Academia cinema for ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’, the box office cashier is busy knitting a yellow pullover.

“One ticket please.”

I didn’t pick up anything at all from her reply.

“Sorry, I don’t understand.”

“For today?”

“Yes, today.”

“For nine-thirty?”

“Yes. Near the front, please.”

“No no no. At the front you can’t see.”

“At the front is ok, it’s ok!”

“No no no. Here you are.”

She hands me my ticket for seat number 21 in row R, about halfway back, plum in the middle of the row. It’s a good place to sit so I forgive the box office person for refusing to give me a seat at the front.

But it can be good to be right up by the screen, where the colours and movement flow over you.

Maybe I’ll sneak down to the front during the interval.

Academia is a great cinema, with a massive screen.

It’s a rowdy crowd in here tonight for Arnie’s Almada premiere.

I am intrigued as to whether this hi-tech movie is going to be an exhibition of mindless machismo or, as some have claimed, a witty and ironic condemnation of violence and current American adulation of such.

You could read the poster for ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ either way: Arnie looking extraordinarily slick and mean mounted on a beast of a bike, brandishing a weapon that looks like a portable cannon.

Kurosawa’s ‘Rhapsody in August’, which I saw recently, was great in an earnest arty way. But in its own way, ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ here tonight is equally superb cinema.

Thrilling and hilarious and full of dry humour, ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ goes down a storm with the Almada locals, who erupt with frequent cheers and applause.

From the opening moments of the film with Dwight Yoakam singing Guitars, Cadillacs, I know that this is going to be something special.

At the end of the film I leave the cinema feeling totally exhilarated.

Everything about ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ is magnificent.

The actors are perfectly cast.

As Sarah Connor, Linda Hamilton sustains her justified obsession in the face of constant institutionalized persecution, her commitment to the cause temporarily overriding her motherly emotions towards John Connor the future savior.

John Connor, played by Edward Furlong as the ultimate sensitive semi-delinquent, bosses around ‘his’ terminator.

Schwarzenegger is assured enough to indulge in self-deprecating incidents like the scene in which he stands on one leg merely because Furlong tells him to.

The reflective desert scenes are beautifully shot.

As Hamilton and Schwarzenegger and Furlong gather their strength, the tranquil skies and soft breezes blowing over the desert and glowing hills remind us of what they are fighting for.

Arnie holds up a baby at arm’s length, the killing machine turning human.

The special effects in ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’are astounding, but they never overwhelm the story or the performances.

Roll on Terminator 3.

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