The London Nobody Knows

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?"

A brilliant and pretty obscure look at the flip side of swinging sixties London. Narrated by a rather sardonic and sometimes scathing James Mason, we are taken on a tour of the underbelly of London. The film is artfully edited and offers straight factual history with real life characters/ street performers/ vendors who seem very unaware of the camera. The documentary has extremely surreal and quite tragic scenes by turn and encapsulates a London undocumented in the media of the time. The film is too short and could easily have been extended to a series of particular areas of London. The film has occasional screenings in art-house cinemas and should be seen by anyone interested in the history of London and documentary makers.

In stark contrast to the colourful, "swinging" imagery of 1960's London we are all too familiar with, The London Nobody Knows, displays the dying, decaying underbelly of old Victorian values, practices and architecture. We are shown proto-delboy's hawking goods in now-dead street markets. Bizarre buskers and street performers act out their defunct acts to grey, bewildered onlookers. Old forgotten men pay 6 shillings a week for bed and breakfast in Salvation Army hostels, the memories of the war lingering in their haggard faces.

Written by Bolton-born artist and art critic, Geoffrey Fletcher, based on his own book of the same name, he illustrates a world that is fundamentally changing. A mournful tome to the decrepit, and disappearing 19th century city. James Mason narrates; he informs of historical anecdotes, and guides us through the multitude of eccentrics, losers, and hopeless characters cluttering the streets, and displays their almost archaic interests and habits.

The London Nobody Knows is a perfect artifact of a Britain before the almost complete Americanisation of its streets, industries and culture, that as to come in the late 1980's and throughout the 1990's. Like the Free Cinema movement of the '50's (headed by the likes of Lindsay Anderson), and the British transport film, and GPO documentaries, this represents a view of a very different, almost alien Britain to the one we live in now. Beautiful, horrifying, insightful, strange, and even emotional. A film that should be seen by anyone interested in the Britain of the past.

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This is a good film to see if you're into this sort of thing: history, local culture, hidden meanings and so on. A number of people he mentioned the difficulty in accessing the film, but it can be seen at the British Film Institute on the Southbank for free, six days a week in their Mediatheque. It's well worth a visit as you can see other similar movies too, grouped by genre, location and so on. As i happens, the St. Etienne film, 'Finisterre' (2006?), was based on this film i think. It can also be seen a the BFI! Enjoy... It says I need to write some more to submit. The narration is really well done, and creates a sinister feel. However in this viewer's opinion it's perhaps a little overblown: the images and interviews speak for themselves, and don't need the colouring of his style of narration. Londoners will enjoy drawing parallels between the London of the film and the city of today, and I suppose that's one of the most enjoyable aspects of watching the film 40 years on - the opportunity to identify consistent London themes that run and run regardless of the particular fashions and stylings of the time.

An excellent and all too short documentary on post-war London. Made in 1967 and narrated by James Mason, it shows the side of 60's London that most commentators either conveniently forget or more likely are blissfully unaware of.

A strange documentary nonetheless. I never had James Mason pegged as one to go wondering around the back streets of Spitalfields (where, then, some were still alive who could remember the Ripper murders....), old theatres in Camden, and Salvation Army hostels interviewing the unfortunates there.

A must-see if you have any liking of London history and the 60's in particular. Watch and see the past once more, and learn how much has changed, and how certain modern preoccupations (how areas improve and sometimes gentrify) remain with us still today. Very hard to believe today that some parts of London were so different in character a mere 40 years ago.