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.

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.

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.

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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A thought provoking and funny (at times) documentary. James Mason makes the narration of the documentary all the better.

In this production you see facets of London life long since forgotten. Street markets and their entertainers, residential slums, you witness the toughness of what it is to be homeless in a time where financial aid was not available as easily as it is today.

The scene of the egg breaking plant was strange at first but it does show the strange sense of humour that people had in this decade. The vibrant mix of people that occupy London is shown fully in the short fifty three minutes.

It can be rather sad at times to see people at their lowest but gratifying to see some of those people trying to make their lives a little better in any way they can.

James Mason makes a valid comment on the new buildings sprouting in and around London and makes the point that the demolition of old buildings is something that should not be mourned as the same fate awaits the new buildings in years to come.

I think in this he meant to say that change is inevitable and can be for the good sometimes. Overall I think the production was excellent, I give it ten out of ten.