Who forgets their first visit to the cinema? For J G Ballard it was Disney's Snow White. "That vicious queen took up residence," he later wrote, "inside my six-year-o1d brain for months afterwards." Peter Greenaway was dragged screaming from "a Technicolor western of a greenish hue" at the Odeon Cinema in Newport.
For Julie Walters it was going to see a Norman Wisdom film at the Essoldo Cinema in Birmingham in the fifties. "When we came out, there was an absolute blizzard. The whole evening was unforgettably magical." For E J Hobsbawm it was Chaplin at the Maxim-Bio in Vienna in the early twenties. And Jonathan Miller emerged "reeling with excitement out of the cinema", after seeing Disney's The Reluctant Dragon at "six or seven".
These images of terror and wonder are part of our modern folklore. For anyone born between 1920 and 1950, cinema was part of growing up. No longer. We have moved on, from Saturday mornings at the Essoldo to "family entertainment" at the purpose-built multiplex; we now have popcorn and Pepsi, not magic and wonder.
At half-term this autumn we went to our local Warner "Village". There are eight screens and there were precisely two films that an under-15 could get into: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and the new Disney, Tarzan. New? Well, it had just been released. But, in every other sense, this was old and familiar and derivative: an animated George of the Jungle with characters and bits of plot familiar from most of the Disney films of the past 20 years.
That was it. That is "choice" in the nineties. If children want to go and see films, let them watch them on TV or rent a video. Cinemas might as well have a 60-metre Imax "Keep out" sign. The Bates motel is a more welcoming place to take your children.
Look at what's coming this month: The Iron Giant (an animated sci-fi fable based on Ted Hughes's children's classic: boy meets metal giant, ET with rust); Anna and the King (Fox's re make of The King and I); Inspector Gadget (Disney's live-action version of the children's TV programme). And then, in the New Year, Toy Story 2, which has already made $89 million in its first two weeks in the US.
This is film distribution on the 28 bus principle. You wait for ages, and then along come four at once. Yet how many of these films sound unmissable? Will Inspector Gadget "take up residence" inside your six-year-old's brain? Will he or she come "reeling with excitement" out of Muppets from Space? Children's films are now so few, and so disappointing. It would seem that, to speak the only language the film-business understands, the industry is determined to ignore what is, after all, an important segment of the market.
For, though children have all kinds of failings, one thing can't be denied: they like spending money, and their parents and grandparents like spending money on them. Step into Borders or Waterstone's: the children's sections are huge, bursting with Harry Potter, Jacqueline Wilson, Philip Pullman and Roald Dahl. Children's books (and audio-books) are booming.
Books are cheap, you hear the Wackford Squeers of Warner's reply: films, unfortunately, are more expensive. Not as expensive as CD-Roms, buster. A copy of Barbie Super Sports will cost you anything from £25. Disney's Villains' Revenge goes for £29.99. And Tomb Raider - The Last Revelation costs anything from £39.99 to £49.99.
All right, it's not about cost; it's about home entertainment, the Scrooges of Sony respond. We can sell them videos, CD-Roms, computer games, even books, because they don't have to leave home to enjoy those. The problem with cinema-going is that it involves getting children out of the house. It's dangerous out there, and parents won't let their children out of their sight; in any case, today's children are so dosed up on fizzy drinks and turkey dinosaurs they can barely move from the video. Home entertainment is the name of the game.
Which explains the popularity of cinema's arch-enemy, TV. It was the rise of TV, especially Saturday morning children's TV in the sixties and seventies, that destroyed the old Saturday matinee culture. Thunderbirds, Stingray and The Man from UNCLE ran head to head against the Saturday morning films. In the seventies came Tiswas and Swap Shop.
It wasn't just about audience share. TV also had the money. Selling a film to television made more money than renting it to matinees. In the sixties, the total number of cinemas running matinees fell from 1,000 to just over 700. By the mid-seventies it fell below 300. Odeon wound up its matinees in 1981. Cinema couldn't compete with the small screen - and that was before the children's channels on cable and satellite, Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel.
Yet despite a thriving stay-at-home children's culture, there is a new and bustling industry that draws youngsters up from their couch and out of their front door. Half of London's smarter high streets have franchises where kids can paint pottery at enormous cost. There are about 50 theatres in London and the South-east where you can see a children's play or musical this Christmas - anything from Sooty's Treasure Hunt in Walthamstow to Peter Pan at the Royal Festival Hall. And there are enough workshops, courses and exhibitions to satisfy the most Stakhanovite of parents.
So, if it's not about price and it's not about leaving the house, why are there so few children's films around?
The obvious answer, in a business driven by money, is that kids' movies don't pay. It's teenagers who pay the bills. Give them high-school versions of Shakespeare, slasher movies, modern witch stories and comedies about sex, and you can carry your money home in a bucket.
Children's films are a riskier proposition. Look at the flops in 1999: Midsummer Night's Dream (even with Calista Flockhart) grossed barely £1 million, Doug's First Movie grossed only £5,000 more, My Favourite Martian and Madeline grossed only £2 million each and Mighty Joe, though top of the list, still grossed less than £5 million. Put these together and you've hardly got a film industry. The popcorn makes more money.
Look higher up the charts, though, and the picture changes. Six of the top 12 box-office hits in the UK this year were children's (or family) films - Star Wars, A Bug's Life, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, The Rugrats Movie, Tarzan and Star Trek: Insurrection. These six movies grossed almost £140 million between them - and Tarzan was only released in November.
Children's films may be expensive to make, usually calling for special effects or the best animation; but they are also money-spinners. Never mind the box office. That's the least of it. Think of the merchandise (Disney and Warner Brothers have stores in London as well as the US), the theme parks, fast-food deals, the TV, cable and video rights, the CD-Roms and the computer software and the TV spin-offs. Tarzan Activity Centre, a CD-Rom from Disney Interactive, sells at £29.99. That's a family outing to the cinema.
In 1990, Coca-Cola and Disney signed a new global agreement ensuring that Coca-Cola's soft drinks will be available exclusively in all Disney theme parks; and that Coca-Cola would have the right of first negotiations for joint promotional programmes with Disney motion pictures in the beverage category and exclusive rights in the same category to use Disney characters in its promotions.
Everywhere you look, Disney has led the way. Think of the ice shows and the Broadway musicals. This Christmas you can see Disney's Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King in the West End. Or rather, you can't. The Lion King is sold out till the summer. That's at £15-£30 a ticket.
Disney's revenue in 1998 came to almost $23 billion. $10.3 billion came from "creative content revenue" (films and books), $7 billion from broadcasting revenue and $5.5 billion from theme parks and resorts. Not so much Disneyworld as Disney's world.
Children's films are not only few and far between; they are also mostly dull and unimaginative - and American. Children's films (and all the rest) are in the vanguard of the Coca-Colonisation of our culture. Of the 13 films that could loosely be called "children's films" that are on show in London at the moment, only one is British - and that was made in 1951 and stars Alastair Sim. The British, despite the so-called renaissance of our film industry, don't make children's films any more. Strange, given the quality of our children's TV drama. Think of the BBC's The Borrowers or The Magician's House; or Gulliver's Travels and Merlin, both shown on Channel 4. No one makes better children's TV drama. Yet no one makes fewer children's films.
Chris Smith's in-tray must be about to explode. But in the spirit of Christmas, let's offer some constructive advice. Put some money into children's films, Mr Smith. Isn't it time someone spotted the Dumbo-sized gap in the market? Invest in magic and wonder. It might even make Britain as rich as Disney.
