FictionalCities :: London films

Affinity The darker type of the fiction written in and about the Victorian era usually deals with hidden and repressed sexuality or the contemporary obsession with spirits and contacting the dead. Sarah Waters' novel mixes both these concerns and throws in the treatment of prisoners. Margaret Prior (played by Anna Madeley) is a middle-class woman recovering from the death of her father and the loss of her lover who's recently married her brother, and attempts to lose herself in becoming a prison visitor, offering support and hope to women incarcerated in the Bankside Prison. She becomes obsessed with a quiet inmate who has a reputation for spookiness and was locked up for a murder linked with her spiritualist activities. The waif in the whitewashed cell is played by Zoe Tapper, who also impressed mightily as the tart with no heart in the Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky adaptation reviewed at the bottom of this page. This ITV adaptation by Andrew Davies (who else?) was one of the highlights of telly over the 2008 Christmas period and makes some fine and thoughtful viewing out of the novel. There's a bit of discreet lesbian action, but nothing to embarrass elderly relatives. The ending adds a romantic bit of business to an otherwise stark outcome, but can almost be forgiven as it looks great! As does the special effect of the Bankside Prison (right). But most of the location work seems to have filmed in Bucharest. Out on DVD in the US and the UK.
		Blowup One weekend in the life of David Hemmings, a photographer in Swinging 60s London. He emerges from a doss-house, where he's been photographing poverty and suffering, hops into his Rolls Royce and returns to his studio to photograph skinny 'birds' with too much make-up and lots of 60s hair. Later he visits a park and photographs a secretive couple, one half of which (Vanessa Redgrave) freaks out and follows him to his studio. He finds foul play in blowups of the photos he took and...stuff happens. It's a weird mix of big-studio values and odd 'European' artiness, with slow passages, non-natural dialogue, and a strange jeep full of mime artists which appears at the beginning and the end of the film. Much of the filming is in South East London around Woolwich - the park definitely and the doss house and studio too maybe, but it has a West London mewsiness to it. The park is Maryon Park in Charlton. The mime artists appear at first in a modern bit of development behind Piccadilly, which must have just been built when the film was made. Later Hemmings drives down London Wall past waste ground which is now the Museum of London (below). The 'drug-party' house is in Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. Oddest of all is the strange neon sign which looms over the park (left below), and which must've been specially erected. And was there a street with all the shops painted red and owned by the same company (above left)? All in all an enjoyably puzzling film, of its time but not jarringly dated. Illusion, perception, reality...whatever.
Closer Famous, at least in these parts, for the Postman's Park plot device at the end, this has lots of London in it, but lacks that certain something in most other areas. The vista in the screen capture is NOT from the restaurant in the bookshop now occupying the old Simpsons shop in Piccadilly, as I initially (and lazily) thought and wrote, but seems to be from a mystery location behind the National Gallery. Death Line a.k.a Raw Meat A classic horror film of the 70s, and a classic London Underground film. Cannibals haunt the Piccadilly Line and when a peer disappears at Russell Square (a station which acquired an even more gruesome reputation after recent bombings) the police have to act. Which gives Donald Pleasence a chance to grouch it up hugely as a cockney version of Inspector Morse. His performance makes the film, as do the gruesome slow tracking shots through the cannibal's lair and some fine creepy tunnels. These tunnels are rumoured to have been shot at some disused railway properties in Shoreditch. (More info on this would be welcome.) But there's not much more location fascination, to be honest. The last cannibal, who loses his pregnant wife at the beginning of the film, is, for a murdering, drooling and shambling would-be rapist, a sad character in the Frankenstein mould, whose only English is 'mind the doors'. Death Line also uses the long-closed (British) Museum Station in the plot and verily has many moments. It was remade as Creep in 2004.
Two from Fingersmith		The Fallen Idol From the same writer/director team that gave us The Third Man - Graham Greene and Carol Reed - comes a less wonderful, but still great, film set in post-war London. It's the story of Phillipe, a French ambassador's son, who idolises the embassy's butler but thereby becomes involved in murder and is forced into a series of progressively more serious lies. The butler, Baines, is played by a somewhat youthful Ralph Richardson and Phillipe by Bobby Henrey, who only made one other film and now lives in Connecticut. The black and white photography is striking, and there are some impressively plush Belgravia locations, featuring wide roads, narrow alleys and some fine old cars and an over-used horse and cart. The embassy itself is now the HQ of St John's Ambulance in Belgrave Square, and the mews with the pub and tea rooms that Baines frequents is Belgrave Mews; but nasty modern buildings have robbed the latter of atmosphere. Also worth a mention are a trip to Regent's Park zoo and Phillipe's night-time dash in his 'jamas through spooky damp back alleys. Fingersmith Another fine BBC adaptation of a Sarah Waters novel, but this time not involving Andrew Davies. I reviewed the novel here, so I'll just comment on the adaptation here . The first half sets things up and takes us through the plot, before a twist messes with our preconceptions and takes us into the second half which revisits the first half in the light of the twist, and then moves onto a rollercoaster of more twists. Elaine Cassidy and Sally Hawkins shine and excel as the leads, the latter going on to annoy in Mike Leigh's Happy-go-lucky and impress in Twenty thousand streets under the sky (reviewed below). Imelda Staunton is as good as ever and Charles Dance does his crusty and threatening thing once more. London locations are provided by Somerset House (see left) whose courtyard stands in for streets, as it has done in almost all period-piece dramas on film and TV in the past decade. The wells under its windows are also pressed into service as over-buttressed alleyways like there never were in London, a trick learned from the film of Wings of the Dove. Lant Street, the squalid Borough location, looks like a set to me, although the building behind the scaffold (to the left of the screen capture below left) might be real. And the eagle-eyed might notice that the servant who the young Maud chucks her gloves at is Sarah Waters herself. Finisterre Made in 2003 in somewhat self-conscious thrall to The London Nobody Knows (see below) for the band Saint Etienne, this is more than a mere album promo, but less than the work of art it's claimed to be. There's a portentous voice-over and chat from the band's mates between the music, but the visuals, although pretty, are a bit too static for me. There's some nice scenes filmed from Primrose Hill and of London in torrential rain, but the coverage of graffiti and the scowling council estate kids, for example, is a bit predictable and obviously 'now'. Maybe the film needs a few decades of hindsight to find its place. The commentary on the DVD, by film-makers Kieran Evans & Paul Kelly and St Etienne's Bob Stanley, actually adds interest, by telling you who's talking and stuff about the places filmed. Franklyn This film did not get well reviewed on release, but I have to admit that I liked it a lot. There are three characters in three plot strands set in present day London. They are all people dealing with loss and vacancies in their lives. The forth character is also dealing with a similar painful loss, but his way of coping is to retreat into an alternative city, called Meanwhile, and so his strand is distinctly sci-fi. This vaguely steam-punky (and very gothic) city is neatly meshed with the real London, with regard to both the plot and how the vast computer-created vistas blend with bits of real architecture. There's much filming around the Naval College in Greenwich, as ever, with the roofscape of the Victoria and Albert Museum featuring too, I think, and the interior of the Royal Courts of Justice. On a personal note the artist's loft with the restaurant over the road are just up the road from my old school, in Leonard Street, between Shoreditch and the City. In one shot you can just catch a view of the edge of a very churchy-looking old hall which our class only ever used once, and which was as dilapidated and dustily gothic as many of the locations in this film. I think that if this film had done without the sci-fi bits and had a name like Michael Winterbottom attached to it it would've got better reviews, and been very much less interesting. Frenzy In the opening credit sequence here a helicopter flies along the Thames and through Tower Bridge, looking pretty grimy before it got a cleaning. It's interesting to see the river while it was still full of barges and life. The action of Hitchcock's 60s serial killer story is set mostly in Covent Garden, and it's interesting to see this area when it was still a busy fruit and veg market. It's also odd to see Anna Massey as a sexy barmaid and Bernard Cribbins playing a bastard. The film is not without its shaky bits of script and acting, but the Hitchcock touch shines through and makes for a reliably gripping entertainment. Good to hear the actors speaking proper Cockney-type English too, and not the unconvincing Hollywoodised version we mostly get. Fans of classic Hitchcock should beware, though, of the nasty rape scene, amongst others, along with some ripe dialogue, which earned the director his first 18 Certificate, or X as it was known back then.
Hue and cry An Early Ealing comedy set in the post-WWII London of riverside ruins and bombsites, this features Norman Fowler as one of a gang of urchins who live amongst these ruins. He went on to become a TV rent-a-cockney supporting face in later decades but here, as a somewhat unyoung child star, he stars credibly. The story involves his gang uncovering criminal activities which are communicated to the crooks themselves through a children's comic. The comic is called The Trump and is based on more text-based early comics, like The Rover and the stories are Sexton Blake-like. As the kids match the fictional stories to real-life crimes they meet up with the author (an eccentric performance, even for him, from Alistair Sim) and then try to convince the police with, of course, little success and have to track down the villains themselves. It's all good gripping fun played out against a crumbling back-drop of bombed-out houses and dockside dilapidation. All very evocative if you like that sort of thing, and I do. The final showdown is especially full of fine scenery, with some geographical liberties played too, like transposing the steps by the ICA to the City riverside. Lots of mysterious and yet familiar locations to identify - more stills here.
		London Belongs to Me Set in a house in a Victorian terrace in Kennington, this tells some intersecting odd stories of the house's inhabitants, which include Alistair Sim as a seedy 'medium' and Richard Attenborough as a lad tempted by criminality which leads to murder. It's a quirky tapestry-of-life job, like an Ealing comedy with less laughs. It's set just before WWII and feeling strangely like the prequel to Sarah Waters' novel Night watch. It feels like real London too, although I'm not sure there were indoor funfairs in Streatham, but maybe. The opening credit sequence features a swoop over the river from Southwark to Westminster frustratingly obscured by the titles. This was made in 1948 by Launder and Gilliat, from a novel by Norman Collins which was filmed again as a Thames TV series in the 1970s.
		The London Nobody Knows A short film based on the book of the same name by Geoffrey Fletcher, this sees James Mason picking his way around London's less groovy and more endangered locales in 1967. Derelict theatres, Victorian lavatories, a gas-lighter in the Temple, pie & mash shops (below) and squalid Spitalfields with its local meths drinkers are all included and bid farewell to, mostly. But the tone is unsentimental, and the fact that some of the film's subjects might not be missed is readily admitted. There's some fine views of the still-busy Thames (left) as well as mini-skirts in Chelsea and street markets in Islington and Marylebone. The reputation of this film has grown in recent years and it has become the Citizen Kane of the psychogeographically inclined, and inspired the likes of Finisterre and Patrick Keiller's London. Having lately only been watchable as excerpts on YouTube The London Nobody Knows was recently (February 2008) released on DVD in the UK coupled with a complete waste of time called Les Bicyclettes de Belsize. They are depressingly billed as 'two gems of swinging-sixties cinema'.
		Match Point When this film came out there was much talk in the reviews of how Woody Allen couldn't write authentic dialogue into the mouths of real Brits, and how he'd resorted to tourist-cliché London locations. Well, convincing as these observations sound, when you come to see the film they turn out to be tosh. Jonathan Rhys Meyers, the lead actor, sounds pretty wooden at times, but overall the (mostly British) actors sound fine. OK maybe the two cops at the end are a bit stilted too, but that's about it. The locations seem pretty appropriate too - everyone is going to the bloody Tate Modern these days, and where better for a courting-couple stroll than Green Park? And the film itself in its themes and pace and style is refreshingly un-Woodyish, if not exactly great.
Piccadilly For a silent film made in the 1920s this 0ne seems very knowing and modern. It's the story of the owner of a Piccadilly nightclub who transfers his affections from the dancer in his regular pairing to a Chinese girl who he finds dancing in the scullery, and lives to regret it. The fact that the regular pair of dancers are called Vic and Mabel places this film in more innocent times, but this is nonetheless a pretty sexy film, with its broad hints at naughty goings-on. It's also pretty stylish, with some particularly lovely lighting, and indeed light-fittings. Not much in the way of recognisable locations, as the camera technology wouldn't allow much roaming, I think, although the camera does move around quite nippily at times. Some fragrant Limehouse locations are well evoked, though, well before the Limehouse opium den became such a low-life cliché in period films and TV. Pool of London 1952 A ship sails into the bustling Pool of London and berths opposite the Tower. Two of the sailors from the ship - one American, one Caribbean - come ashore for some recreation, and soon become involved with jewel thieves in need of someone to do some smuggling. There are blonde girlfriends, a posh acrobatic music-hall turn, Alfie Bass, and lots of London. Slimy alleys around the docks with gantries above, Borough Market when it was real, the Thames when it bustled and bristled with cranes, St Paul's and surrounding bomb sites, tram rides, Southwark Cathedral looking dirty... the locations just keep coming. The acting's a bit shaky at times, but not as much as you'd expect, and the plot grips nicely. The inter-racial romance is dealt with in a way which pulls no punches but also doesn't dwell or explore. (Earl Cameron, the actor who played the black sailor, went on to become a fixture of UK TV, appearing in Danger Man, Doctor Who, The Prisoner and Dixon of Dock Green, amongst much else.) But it's London that's the star here, and you'll admire the realism of its performance. Susan Shaw (real name Patsy Sloots) who plays Pat in Port of London, also starred in London-film gems It Always Rains on Sunday and London Belongs to Me. She later married Bonar Colleano, the American actor who plays the central sailor. He died in a road accident in 1958, after which Shaw left acting and went into an alcohol-fuelled decline. She died penniless in 1978 at the age of 49, from cirrhosis of the liver Her funeral was paid for by The Rank Organisation, and attended by none of her ex-colleagues. The DVD of this film is included in a boxset called The London Collection, which also includes The London Nobody Knows (reviewed above) and sundry others (to be reviewed soon) including Sparrows Can't Sing and The Yellow Balloon. Sherlock Holmes 2009 A Sherlock Holmes for our times? Well the gay undertones are nothing new, and the strong hints of Se7en, Indiana Jones and The Da Vinci Code are hardly revolutionary. But it all swings together into a very enjoyable romp - the more so for the charismatic leads and the very sparkly Victorian London CGI-fest. Lots of night-time street full of flickering lamps and flames, and some nicely embellished location sequences. The use of the under-construction Tower Bridge was widely reported (see right), but there's also some views of a nicely unbombed St Thomas's Hospital (see above right) opposite the Houses of Parliament. Having the villains turn out to be Masons works less well over here, though, as they are more figures of fun than fear in this country, what with the trouser-leg rolling-up and all.		Three from Pool of London Two from Sherlock Holmes
Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy This superb BBC adaptation of John le Carré's story of spies, moles and betrayal is more of an acting-fest than any kind of London location-spotting treat. But it deserves a place here for Episode 1 featuring a lingering opening shot of the Cambridge Circus roundabout how it used to be (see right). Well I got all nostalgic and excited by it. The building to the left is supposed to be the spies' HQ. I don't think that the building ever housed MI6, but I do seem to remember reading about their having some offices in Charing Cross Road up towards Centre Point. My memory may be faulty on this point, though.
		Tipping the Velvet The first Sarah Waters series from way back in 2002 is a story much more about lesbian love than the later adaptations, and is consequently a fair bit spicier. It concerns the career on Nan Astley as she leaves behind her family's Whitstable oyster restaurant for the glamour of the theatrical life in London. She has her ups and downs, as you can imagine, but the skill of the author and lesbian perspective prevents predictability. Rachael Stirling is eminently loveable as Nan and Sally Hawkins is in this one too, before her bigger part in Fingersmith. There are good turns too from Hugh Bonneville and Jodhi May. The use of London locations offers a mixed bag of the predictable and the odd. The well-filmed street of bow-fronted shops around Duke's Road near Euston Station (see left) gets a look in at least four times. More unusual is the use of St Michael's Alley off of Cornhill (see below) for the pub Nan and Flo leave and get jeered at by lesbophobes and for the alley they run off down after Nan gives them a tongue-lashing. And oddly Borough Market stands in for Charing Cross Station (see below left) with the help of a somewhat obvious nozzle pumping out steam.
		Twenty thousand streets under the sky Having read and loved the book I was shocked to see that a BBC adaptation had appeared and utterly passed me by. Thank goodness for DVDs. The series compressed the book into three episodes - one for each character's story. It thereby excessively compresses the first part - barman Bob's story - but moves bits of that story to Bella's tale at the end. The DVD merges the episodes into one, but Bob's story still zips past a bit too quickly, with his meetings with the prostitute Jenny now totally dominated by his partings with his hard-earned cash. Exterior location filming is suitably back-alley based and smacking of Soho and Fitzrovia. They even used The Prince of Wales Feathers, the pub that Hamilton based the fictional pub, The Midnight Bell, on - the feather design is there worked into the pub's windows. It's a fine and fitting adaptation: not slavish but capturing the time and atmosphere well with washed-out colour and quaint dance tunes. The three leads are not over-familiar, although the actress playing Bella the barmaid (Sally Hawkins) has this year (2008) made a splash in the new Mike Leigh film. As usual, though, there's the sterling Brit talent you expect, but can rarely put a name to, in the smaller parts.
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