The London Nobody Knows

I caught this (2022) on UK's wonderful, free Talking Pictures channel. It's from 1967 BTW not 1969. All reviewers here comment fully on its thoughtful, gritty, sad look at the underbelly of London.

There's an obvious and unavoidable nostalgia at viewing this sort of work, even though much of the human conditions here are dire; if only London has "improved" from those 1960s days-sadly not.

I like James Mason's neutral commentating.

Good to view as a companion piece to the ITV series "Disappearing London" from 2006/7 fronted by the Madness member Suggs.

If you enjoy the "off the beaten track" walks and can see beyond the banality of an everyday street, "The London Nobody Knows" is for you. Based on Geoffrey Fletcher's book of the same name, it follows a path round London's more seedy and incongruous locations. Despite being made in 1967 many of the locations visited still remain today, while some are sadly gone forever. This film makes a viewer want to go out and explore their own "town/city nobody knows" and realise that there is always a lot more around them than first meets the eye. Narrated and presented by James Mason, this film really should be seen by fans of Psychogeography.

Like most films of the sixties, we begin with the then obligatory shot of the Post Office Tower.

The title of Jeffrey Fletcher's original book was deeply ironic since, as earlier viewers have already observed, from the moment this film hit screens it became as much a piece of history as the bygone world whose passing narrator James Mason laments; recalling the era when older residents of Spitalfields still remembered Jack the Ripper and the sixties destruction of Victorian London which began with the destruction of the Euston Arch was already well advanced (and has continued to this day).

Recalling that the East End of London in the sixties "is still recognisable as the world of Sickert", Mason seems genuinely concerned with the problems of the locals. While making no secret of his disdain for modern architecture and admitting that "most Victorian architecture was pretty hideous", he still hold out the hope that the sixties development of London was finally going to rid us of the Dickensian squalor the film sometimes graphically shows (such as a couple of winos fighting over a bottle of meths). But that was before a certain Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, and her political heirs continue to be determined turn back the clock even as I write.

A time capsule that reveals what the wrecking ball in 'Withnail & I' was busy tearing down. I wonder what contemporary audiences made of it. The end credits state that the production dates from 1967 not 1969, only deepening the sense of dislocation that permeates this documentary, which shows the remnants of Victorian London being swept away wholesale by Sixties developers. The faceless modern buildings being erected at the time have themselves now been woven into the fabric of London (I think one shot is of the then new, but empty-for-years Centre Point). James Mason is our unlikely guide, and notable in his narration is both a lament for the old and lost, and the sensible reminder that it was mostly pretty dreadful in the past, that the new is the conduit for improvement. The film wisely opts to focus on the smaller scale details: The public urinals (Peeing is something of a repeated theme), a street market, a rail yard, a cemetery, a ruined music hall, a single house, a deli, an eel and mash café, a Sally Army hostel, and then adds colour to these locations by including characters for whom (in every sense) time is running out: Street buskers, market traders, the on-their-uppers flotsam for whom meths drinking has actually become an option. Hearing them speak, we hear the reality of being down-and-out at a time when National Assistance and the National 'Elf could not be relied on to turn lives around. It's the old story, rents go up, poor people suffer. Times change. And for the average Eastender, scraping a crust from selling on street markets, or another long-gone trade? Popular and bustling Mark's deli has disappeared into oblivion, following the Grand Palais Yiddish Theatre, which leads onto another aspect inadvertently captured in the timing of the film: Demographic replacement. Look at the faces of the elderly in the Whitechapel slums, or the kids in the Tower Hamlets playgrounds, and what do you see? Something you would never see today. Today, Jewish life is all but driven out from Spitalfields and Brick Lane. There is a scene towards the end where a man in a wide brimmed hat repeats that he had tried to improve things for himself, but it hadn't worked out. He then proceeds sings a moving hymn, in Yiddish, which for me was the most poignant of all the individual voices on camera, heard over scenes of children's faces and the wrecking ball pulverizing bricks and mortar, confirming, as the final sequence playfully suggests, that the End Is Nigh, but no-one cares. Note: One great song made famous in the 1930's by Leslie Sarony plays over an earlier scene of derelict Victorian graves and statuary, entitled 'Aint it Grand to be Bloomin' Well Dead?"

Factual. This is really a film version of a guided walking tour around some arcane bits of London in 1967. James Mason plays his part very well, but the script and the locations the film makers dig out are what make this such a valuable document. Just about all the places this film mentions are massively changed / disappeared now. You'll do well to ever see this film 'though - it's a real rarity.