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It was the summer of'69, as the Bryan Adams song goes. Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight paced the streets of New York in Midnight Cowboy, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda took to the road in Easy Rider, and cinema audiences lapped it up in droves.
Fast forward to the summer of 2007 and, for the first time in nearly 40 years, British cinema attendance has returned to the same level.
A combination of bad weather and blockbuster sequels - from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to The Bourne Ultimatum - has lured people back to the movies.
Figures from the trade body, the Film Distributors' Association, show 50.8 million visits to UK cinemas between June and August - an increase of 27 per cent from the same period in 2006 and an increase of 44 per cent compared with 2000.
The last time British cinemas saw such a high attendance was in 1969, when 50.4 million people visited in the summer months and 215 million over the whole year.
British film-going reached a peak in 1946, with 1.6 billion cinema visits.
- Independent
