LONDON

UPFRONT

City of the Imagination

Text by NEIL MITCHELL

FROM THE BIRTH OF CINEMA onwards, London has been ever present on the big screen in films shot wholly or in part in the city, via Hollywood studio recreations and through other locations posing as England's capital. London's geographical collision of tourist attractions, white and blue collar workspaces, leafy middle class suburbs, parklands, liminal spaces, and economically deprived areas have proved to be fertile cinematic territory. In keeping with film representations of any frequently used major city London's onscreen identity is as fluid, contradictory and diverse as it is in real life. From Hitchcock's atmospheric The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1929), which uses both the crimes of Jack the Ripper and the historic 'pea soupers' that once engulfed the city as its narrative and visual basis, through to Alfonso Caurón's adaptation of P. D. James' dystopian novel Children of Men (2006), the city has been host to every conceivable genre of film covering all manner of narratives, historic events, fantasy visions and cultural zeitgeists. Victorian set films (of which there have been nearly two hundred Dickens adaptations alone) along with film visions of Edwardian England, wartime London, the Swinging Sixties, 'Thatcher's Britain' and contemporary multiculturalism as seen in Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things (2002), have all charted, challenged, re-interpreted and celebrated London and its residents.

As the River Thames winds its way through the city's landmass so the evolution of the city itself threads its way through the films where London is portrayed. As the 'face' of the city has changed, architecturally, demographically and culturally, so have its onscreen representations. Issues surrounding race, class, gender and sexuality have all played out in the private and public spaces of the city throughout the decades. The city signifiers of old London – St. Paul's Cathedral, Big Ben and The Houses of Parliament, and the contemporary landmarks of The London Eye, The Gherkin and The O2 Arena, coupled with the equally ubiquitous Routemaster buses, black cabs, red telephone boxes and iconic Underground typography, physically locate these movies. When contextually aligned with historical facts, media representations, other artistic visions, and cultural, social and political upheavals (either within Britain or on a global scale) the 'idea' of London in a narrative is better grounded and informed. As its iconography is visual shorthand for the city so London is, or at least was for many years, cinematic shorthand for England, and by extension Britain, its powerful allure highlighted both by its regular appearances onscreen and as, annually, either the most visited or second most visited city on the planet. The East End, Camden Town, the more exclusive enclaves of Knightsbridge and Mayfair, the licentious streets of Soho and the South Bank are all distinct physical environments which also exist concurrently as ideas in the imagination of visitors, residents and film audiences alike.

As in all collections of films, crime is one of the most enduring and frequently utilized genres, and in many cases London crime films exemplify the social climate of the era in which they are set. Basil Dearden's The Blue Lamp (1950), John Mackenzie's The Long Good Friday (1980) and David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises (2007) for example all portray the city in very different ways. Where Dearden's film is a 'localized' view of post war crime around the streets of Paddington, The Long Good Friday's East End gangster Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) is drawn into the wider politicized dealings of the IRA and American business interests at the dawn of Thatcherism. By the time of Cronenberg's film the globalized twenty-first century London criminal underworld is portrayed as being dominated by Eastern European criminals, who have infiltrated and colonized large parts of the city.

Striking contrasts occur frequently in visions of London. Gary Oldman's coruscating Nil by Mouth (1997), a tale of dysfunctional working class lives blighted by alcohol and drug abuse in the neglected environment of a South London council estate, is visually and thematically light years away from George Kukor's family friendly musical My Fair Lady (1964). What they have in common though, is a concern with psycho-geography: the effects of the environment on emotional states. Psycho-geography is an increasingly prevalent concern when dealing with city life onscreen, and given London's diversified living spaces it has played an intrinsic part in many of its narrative representations. Sarah Gavron's Brick Lane (2007), Saul Dibb's Bullet Boy (2004) and Stephen Frears' My Beautiful Launderette (1985) all make direct connections between physical environment and mental states. A number of films set in the Notting Hill area make the same causal links but with differing results that in turn also act as a microcosm of the overall film visions of London. Horace Ove's Pressure (1976), an angry portrait of racial discrimination and social alienation, Michael Apted's little seen gangster thriller The Squeeze (1977) and Roger Michell's Richard Curtis-penned romantic comedy Notting Hill (1999) all paint decidedly contrasting portraits of this famous district. In these films Notting Hill is alternately an ethnically diverse melting pot, a slum ridden crime zone and an upwardly mobile, photogenic bastion of 'Englishness'.

All of these 'Londons' work individually as narratives and collectively in offering up alternate visions of the city in the imagination. The most overt manipulation between location and imagination becomes manifest in the various horror and science fiction films where London has a major role to play. Never merely a backdrop, the city, and here specifically the Underground, River Thames, backstreets, alleys and parks, become sites of terror, murder, destruction and the supernatural. With unearthed aliens, lyscanthropes and mindless killers on the loose London turns from home, playground, workspace and tourist destination into a nocturnal hunting ground where the lost, foolish or plain unlucky meet their demise. Whether accurate, clichéd, fanciful or antagonistic, film visions of London seep into the consciousness of audiences and attract, appall and contradict in equal measures. As the city continues to evolve and adapt so to will the cinematic representations where London is brought to life as a living, breathing character in its own right.

THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG...