London in film
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London has been used frequently both as a
Because of the dominant role played by the city in the British media, the number of British films set in London is huge. It has also been used many times in American films, and often recreated on a Hollywood studio backlot.
Historical London
Historical recreations of London on screen have been relatively frequent. The
Pre-Victorian London
London in the
The Tudor period has also been shown in other films, including the 1966 film of Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons, the 1990s adaptation of Orlando and various versions of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper.
Cromwell (1970) is one of the few films to show the city during the English Civil War, but several have been set during the subsequent restoration of the monarchy under Charles II. These include Nell Gwyn (1937), Forever Amber (1947) and Stage Beauty (2003). The 1995 film Restoration incorporates both the Great Plague and the Great Fire of 1665-66.
Late 18th and early 19th century London has been seen in a number of films, including
Victorian London
One of the most popular images of the city is the Victorian era of
Many films have also been made of the
Holmes also dealt with the notorious Whitechapel serial killer Jack the Ripper in A Study in Terror in 1965 and Murder by Decree in 1978. The Ripper was also featured in Pandora's Box (1929), Jack the Ripper (1959), Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), Hands of the Ripper (1971), From Hell (2001) and several versions of The Lodger, including Hitchcock's silent film of 1926.
Much of the action in the
Other films set in Victorian London include the 1945 version of
Other British cities, such as Edinburgh, or locations in other countries, are now often used for period films instead of filming in London itself. From Hell (2001), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) and Roman Polanski's 2005 film of Oliver Twist all recreated Victorian London in Prague in the Czech Republic.
Twentieth century
(1972).Wartime London has featured in many films, with
The 1950s has been recreated in several films including 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) and Shadowlands (1993). The 1960s has proved particularly popular with film makers in recent years, especially for crime films like Buster (1988), Scandal (1989), The Krays (1990), Honest (2000) and Gangster No. 1 (2000). Withnail and I (1987) economically recreated the Camden Town area in the 1960s.
Postwar London
The Ealing comedies of the 1940s and 1950s made repeated use of locations in the city. Hue and Cry (1947) and Passport to Pimlico (1949) were memorably set in the ruins and bombsites of post-war London. In the 1950s The Lavender Hill Mob made extensive use of London locations, as did the dramas The Blue Lamp and Pool of London, while The Ladykillers used King's Cross Station and its surrounding marshalling yards as the backdrop to its story. The 1952 film The Happy Family is set on the South Bank during the lead up to the Festival of Britain.
Many other comedies have used locations in the city, some of the best known being The Ghosts of Berkeley Square (1947), Doctor in the House (1954), The Horse's Mouth (1958), Mars Attacks!, Independence Day: Resurgence, Nuns on the Run, Mr. Bean, Bedazzled (1967), Brassed Off (1996), Billy Elliott (2000) and Bend It Like Beckham (2002).
Swinging London
With new developments in music, cinema and fashion, London found itself the centre of youth culture in the 1960s. The image of "
Romantic London
The city has often been used as the backdrop for romances like Indiscreet (1958) with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman and A Touch of Class (1973), and has become popular for romantic comedies in recent years. This is at least partly due to the television and film writer Richard Curtis, who has written some of the most successful British films of recent years — The Tall Guy (1989), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999) and Love Actually (2003), all set or partly set in the city. The films follow the awkward love lives of largely upper-middle class characters (aside from The Tall Guy, always including one played by Hugh Grant).
Curtis has been criticised for pandering to the American market by playing to the
Woody Allen's
Thrillers
Landmarks featured in some of these films include the Royal Albert Hall, Westminster Abbey and Trafalgar Square. Both Night of the Demon (1957) and The IPCRESS File (1965) feature scenes filmed in the famous reading room at the British Museum. The 1978 version of The Thirty Nine Steps features a climax on the clock face of Big Ben, an idea borrowed from the 1943 Will Hay comedy My Learned Friend. A similar scene features in the 2003 Jackie Chan film Shanghai Knights.
Several American thrillers have also produced mangled versions of London's geography, including Twenty-Three Paces to Baker Street (1956), Midnight Lace (1960) and The Mummy Returns (2001) (#1 in U.S.), which features a chase across Tower Bridge on a double-decker bus and several scenes inside the British Museum. The 1944 version of The Lodger also features a scene by Tower Bridge, although the film was set several years before it was built.
Britain's most famous spy,
Parts of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises (2012) (#1 in U.S.) were also filmed in London.[1]
London Underground
London's underground railway system, known as the Tube, has featured in several films. The plot of the 1998 film Sliding Doors hinges on whether Gwyneth Paltrow's character catches a particular Tube train or not. Bulldog Jack (1934), Man Hunt (1941), The Good Die Young (1954), and 28 Weeks Later (2007) all include chase sequences across underground tracks.
A number of horror films have also used the subterranean network of tunnels as an atmospheric location, most notably the
Excavations on the Underground unearthed an ancient alien spacecraft in Quatermass and the Pit (1967), and dormant dragons in Reign of Fire (2002).
The 2002 James Bond film Die Another Day features a secret MI6 facility in a fictional disused Underground Station called Vauxhall Cross. The 2012 Bond film Skyfall sets a long chase scene in the London Underground near a makeshift underground MI6 base near the Old Bailey. Another fictional station, Hobbs End, features in the 1967 science fiction film Quatermass and the Pit. Deleted scenes for Shaun of the Dead features the fictional Crouch End station.
Other films to have featured the Underground include Passport to Pimlico (1949), The Yellow Balloon (1953), Georgy Girl (1966), The Fourth Protocol (1987), Hidden City (1988) and Tube Tales (1999). The makers of the children's film The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972) managed to persuade London Underground to paint a tube train yellow.
A rare recreation of the network in the
Aldwych tube station, formerly on a branch of the Piccadilly line, has been used as the location for many films and television productions, especially since the branch and station closed in 1994 and the platforms have been left intact making it suitable for filming and photography purposes, due to the absence of a regular train service. A 1970s tube train permanently is based at the station and heritage rolling stock can be brought in for filming - London Underground have retained one of their 1938 trains which can be used for historic appearances. In more recent years filming has also taken place at the former Jubilee line platforms at Charing Cross station,[2] which were withdrawn from regular use when the line was extended in 1999 avoiding the station.
Science fiction
The 1950 thriller Seven Days to Noon featured a scientist who threatens to destroy London with a nuclear bomb, and was notable for its scenes of the city's evacuated and deserted streets. Despite the great difficulties involved in achieving this, the feat was repeated for the horror film 28 Days Later in 2002, which begins with the hero waking from a coma and wandering across a deserted Westminster Bridge.
Another nuclear threat was explored in The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) which has many notable scenes in London, including the Thames running dry. It also includes a lot of scenes inside the old Express Building on Fleet Street and Arthur Christiansen, the recently retired editor of the Daily Express, effectively plays himself.
Both Things to Come (1936) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) begin with the city being destroyed, by war and alien attack respectively, while the 2004 horror comedy Shaun of the Dead is set in the city during a zombie attack.
The 1960 film
The 1966 film
The
2013 American science fiction film Star Trek Into Darkness is partially set in London of the distant future.
Criminals
Historic periods in the city's underworld have been portrayed in a small number of films. Examples include
Other films have evoked London's underworld in the modern era, including
Set in a dystopian near-future Britain, A Clockwork Orange (1971), featuring youth gangs, was filmed in metropolitan London.
The other side of London
A number of films have depicted the underbelly of the city away from the familiar tourist sites. Examples of these include
The 1967 documentary The London Nobody Knows, based on the book of the same name by Geoffrey Scowcroft Fletcher and presented by James Mason, attempted to show some unfamiliar aspects of the city, as did Patrick Keiller's 1994 documentary London. This approach has since been emulated by the Saint Etienne films Finisterre (2002) and What Have You Done Today, Mervyn Day? (2005). The latter attempted to capture the state of the Lower Lea Valley prior to its transformation ahead of the 2012 London Olympics.
Other films have tried to use less familiar locations in a new way. The 1995 version of Richard III, starring Ian McKellen, which is set in a fictional 1930s fascist version of England, makes imaginative use of London locations such as St Cuthbert's church, St Pancras chambers (the old Midland Grand Hotel), the University of London's Senate House, and the two Gilbert Scott power stations — Bankside serving for the Tower and the decrepit Battersea Power Station as the setting for the final battle scenes. Terry Gilliam's 1985 Orwellian fantasy Brazil also used the cooling towers of the same power station as a location, as did Michael Radford's 1984 film version of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
London Kills Me (1991) portrays the city's immigrant and drug subcultures in the early Thatcher years, in a similar vein as My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). The 2007 film by Ken Loach It's a Free World... considered the ethical dilemmas regarding London's vast trade in illegal workers.
The acclaimed 1996 film Beautiful Thing depicted the lives of two gay teenagers living on the South London housing estate of Thamesmead. Similar themes, as well as race, were part of the 1970s set Young Soul Rebels, the debut of Derek Jarman protege Isaac Julien (1991).
Kids' London
London has been a popular location for children's (and especially
In more recent years
Cars 2 was also set in London.
The
Paddington (2014) features several London locations, and includes modern landmarks such as The Shard and the London Eye.
Musical London
Cliff Richard was a film star with three successful musical comedies in the early 1960s. The first of these, The Young Ones (1961), was set in London. Cliff, The Shadows, and others need money to save their youth club, so they set up a pirate radio station to generate publicity for the show. Although Cliff's second hit, Summer Holiday (1963), mostly took place while driving across Europe, it prominently featured a red London AEC RT bus.
The success of some of these 1960s films helped to make up for London Town, Britain's first Technicolor musical, which was a high-profile flop in 1946.
Mary Poppins (1964) was a critical and popular success, winning multiple Oscars for its editing, music (including Best Song for "Chim Chim Cher-ee"), and visual effects (notably the scene combining live action and animation). Lead actress Julie Andrews won an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Also in 1964, Audrey Hepburn starred in My Fair Lady, the film of the musical of the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion. George Cukor's decision to award the role of Eliza Doolittle to Hepburn was perceived by many as a snub to Julie Andrews, who had played the part to great acclaim on Broadway. This is another film with some famous songs, including Wouldn't it be Loverly, I Could have Danced all Night and Get Me to the Church on Time. Marni Nixon's voice was used in place of Audrey Hepburn's for the songs.
In Half a Sixpence (1967), professional cheery cockney Tommy Steele plays Arthur Kipps, a cockney who unexpectedly comes into some money, in a musical version of H. G. Wells's novel Kipps.
The musical adaptation of Goodbye, Mr. Chips with Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark made use of several London locations, including the dining room at the Savoy Hotel and the Salisbury pub in the heart of the West End.
Punk, one of London's notable contributions to pop music, is the subject of Sid and Nancy (1986), a biopic of Sid Vicious, bassist with the Sex Pistols. Gary Oldman stars as Vicious. Also see the punk-rockumentaries directed by Julien Temple, the first being band manager Malcolm McLaren's take on 'his' invention of punk in his The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle and the more recent return volley by the estranged band members in The Filth and the Fury.
The South London reggae scene is notably represented in Babylon (1980).
SpiceWorld (1997) was a comedy starring pop girl group the Spice Girls. It was a commercial success but widely panned by critics.
Early Victorian London was the setting for 2007's musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
K-On! The Movie (2011) is the first Japanese animated musical film to be set in London, as it features a band whose music is inspired by British rock music. The band performs their original songs at Jubilee Gardens.
References
- ^ "Film locations for The Dark Knight Rises (2012)". Archived from the original on 2012-08-21.
- ^ "Art Night: Disused Jubilee Line, Charing Cross Underground Station". archive.ica.art.