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Movie London
A Potted
History
Out of the
Fog
Villains and
other scary folk have long had a wail of a time in London, at
least according to the city's portrayal on celluloid.
Traditionally,
with its foggy Victorian streets, dark alleyways and dingy river,
filmic London proved the ideal cover for all sorts of nefarious
activities from mass murder to dog theft. Just ask Sherlock Holmes
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1939, plus others). Perhaps
the most memorable of the mass murderer type was Peeping Tom
(Michael Powell, 1960), a disturbing little film about a psychopathic
photographer which Martin Scorsese counts as a major influence.
As an antidote, there is An American Werewolf In London (John
Landis, 1981) which played with all the dingy streets of London
clichés to hilarious effect.
At the other
end of the crime scale, comical small time crooks, complete with
often awful Cockney accents, are a London film trademark not
least in Ealing comedies. Oliver Twist (David Lean, 1948) is
a fine example of the sub-genre, with Alec Guinness going down
market to play Fagin the pickpocket king.
The Second
World War, most particularly Hitler's bombing campaign, changed
the way London appeared on film. Bomb scapes emerged out of the
fog to give London an apocalyptic feel, as in Hue and Cry (Charles
Crichton, 1947) a theme revisited in Hope and Glory (John Boorman,
1987)
Out of the
rubble and hardships of the post-war years bloomed the 60s and
with Swinging London making headlines worldwide it is no surprise
that the capital was the site for a whole tranche of, mostly
dodgy, flowered up movies. Chief among these is Blow Up (Michelangelo
Antonioni, 1966), a terrible, if stylish, movie that has unfortunately
achieved cult status.
More recently
the fog, rubble and flowers have been replaced by a new vision
of London as a modern city bathed in the harsh light of corrupt
commercialism as in Defence of the Realm (David Drury, 1985),
a trend in contrast to the first real stirrings of an ethnic
representation on the screen with movies like My Beautiful Launderette,
(Stephen Frears, 1985). But elements of the old clichés
remain. In the London scenes in Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996),
for instance, dingy London is much in evidence alongside the
new money, and villainy, in the form of drug crime, takes a front
seat, too.
The future?
For an answer let us turn to The Time Machine (George Pal, 1960),
a film based on the HG Wells book. In the year 802,701 London
will witness a face off between a heartless gang of pleasure
seekers and a mass of hard pressed workers who spend lots of
time underground. Or maybe we don't have to wait that long.
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