I went to see "Moulin Rouge" last night. Due to various circumstances, I had left it until the last week of screenings, which restricted me to one particular theatre way over on the other side of town. I had only been there once before, a long time ago; it is not the sort of theatre you would deliberately go to unless you are desperate to see a movie which is not playing anywhere else.

I am so glad I saw "Moulin Rouge" there. I cannot imagine, now, seeing this movie anywhere else. I'm not going to comment on the movie itself, except to say that if you ever want to know what the inside of my mind looks like, the answer would be 50% "Moulin Rouge" and 50% anything directed by Tim Burton. (I let the two fight it out.) It resonated within my soul, unless that was just the echoey building.

No, the thing I want to comment about is how much atmosphere can be added to a movie by the setting in which you watch it.

The theatre was old. Very old; it was certainly built for showing silent movies. Look down from where I'm sitting, on a cracked seat in the front row of the balcony. The main floor of the theatre is deserted. It's a ruin down there. Wooden floorboards long stripped of carpet, with some broken chairs scattered around. The projection unit is balanced on a homemade wooden framework nailed together in what used to be the main aisle. This theatre dates back to when you needed a stage as well as a screen, but that's down to the bare boards too. On the left of the stage is the podium out of which the Wurlitzer organ would rise, up out of a magic hatch with its organist playing to accompany the silent movie. The last time I was here, it was to see Lon Chaney in "Phantom of the Opera" with that organ providing all his melodramatic chords and ghastly crashing sound effects. Wonderful.

The curtains of the stage and the movie screen are in rags. There are wires hanging out of the ceiling and tattered bits of velvet hanging in shreds down the peeling walls. Once there was probably glitter and glamour and gold paint here; now there are four-foot-long cobwebs draped across the corners of the high scrolled ceiling like banners. There is a musty smell. There are probably rats, once the audience goes home for the night.

I was sitting there, this whole theatre and this whole incredible movie all to myself, in a cracked seat in the front row of the balcony. When I had arrived, I wasn't sure at first whether the owner of the theatre would open the place up and screen the movie for just one person. (Silly question. Anybody who struggles along, maintaining a place like this independently, isn't doing it for the profit.)

Several minutes into the movie, two other people arrived. They were each sitting on their own, too. I wondered about them and why they were here alone at an unpopular theatre at an unpopular time on a week night. One was an old Chinese man eating icecream and one was a middle aged woman who was obviously freezing cold in this old building, wearing an overcoat, gloves, a scarf and a woolly hat to watch the movie.

The woman tried to join me in the front row but chose the wrong seat. When she sat down on it, the back fell off and the whole row of seats wobbled. She moved to the next row back.

As I went out after the movie, the Chinese man passed me on the stairs and said solemnly, "I have seen this movie three times." That was all he said.

I haven't mentioned the weather yet. It was (would you believe?) a Dark and Stormy Night. Over the sound of the movie, I could hear torrential rain slashing against the roof. Once, I swear a dramatic pause in the script was met with a thunderclap from outside. Yes, it really happened. It doesn't get any better than that.

The movie would have been amazing anyway, but everything about the time and the place I saw it could have been planned by the director to add impact. To see this in a modern multiplex -- with a crowd -- with popcorn and Coke -- clean floors and previews of other movies and, I guess, with the real and unromantic world reminding you of its presence everywhere you look -- it's not to be thought about. Decay and decadence and faded glory, drifting with cobwebs, from a time when people knew movies were magic and magic was real. I felt I should have been wearing dusty Bohemian brocade and diamonds.

Brunnen-"a romantic"G