The Smallest Show on Earth (1957)

Struggling writer Matt Spenser and his wife Jean are delighted to hear they have inherited a cinema from a forgotten relative, until they discover it is the Bijou, a crumbling flea-pit squeezed beside a railway bridge, where the whole building shakes whenever a train goes by. The plan is to sell it to the owner of the grand rival cinema across town, but the couple become attached to the place and its devoted elderly staff: a doddering projectionist played by Peter Sellers, a genteel cashier played by Margaret Rutherford and a doorman played by Bernard Miles. A gentle British comedy from the Ealing tradition, the film is a much-loved affectionate tribute to old picture palaces and the people who kept them running.