London in the movies

There seems to be an increase in major films using London as a setting or a theme. This has no doubt been helped by the setting up of FilmLondon a few years ago by the London Development Agency and the UK Film Council to make getting and using locations in the capital easier.

Walking around the city I can imagine a lot of locations looking good on film but you have to wonder if the actual cost of working in London will put the brakes on making it a mass movie making city, the James Bond people are talking about taking a lot of the production elsewhere for the next one.

The latest London based film out is Breaking and Entering a romantic drama directed by Anthony Minghella and starring Jude Law and in the last couple of years there’s been the two Woody Allen films Match Point and Scoop both with Scarlett Johansson, the Mike Nichols love story Closer starring Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman and Jude Law and the excellent 28 Days Later from director Danny Boyle who made Trainspotting and The Beach and writer Alex Garland who wrote The Beach.

28 Days Later is about animal right activists releasing infected monkeys who pass on a virus that makes people uncontrollably violent and murderous. 28 days after the release the main character wakes up in a deserted hospital unaware of what’s happened and finds London completely deserted. There are some great shots of him wandering around central London with the streets totally empty.

Notting Hill and the two Bridget Jones movies are set in London but as I’m not a big Hugh Grant fan or into films about neurotic women I haven’t seen these.
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch are two films from Guy Ritchie that are fun, knockabout films about cartoon cockney characters with funny names. Brad Pitt does ok as an Irish gypsy.

Going back a bit further there’s Fever Pitch, the 1997 British version, which stars Colin Firth as the obsessed Arsenal fan who moves to the Highbury area and it obviously helps watching it if you’re a Gooner. A really funny film that shows off London fairly well is A Fish Called Wanda and Kevin Kline is absolutely brillant in it although John Cleese, Michael Palin and Jamie Lee Curtis are also at their best.

An American Werewolf in London is just a classic made by John Landis when he was at his peak. The effects aren’t as astounding as they seemed at the time but the story still stands up well.

If you want a romantic vision of Victorian London who have the choice of Oliver, the 1968 musical version in which Ron Moody and Oliver Reed are great or Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist, although this was filmed with Prague taking the place of 19th century London.

My favourite London has to be The Long Good Friday from 1980. Bob Hoskins, in the best thing he’s ever done, is Harold Shand the crime boss of London. When he returns from setting up a deal with the Mafia in New York, members of his gang start getting killed and his property blown up. He doesn’t know who’s doing it and starts putting the squeeze on local gangsters but nobody knows anything. Eventually it turns out a member of his crew has double crossed the IRA and they’re out for revenge.

Just one of the best British films of the last 30-40 years, superb from start to finish with a twist at the end and it shows London at a time when it’s just on the point of getting massively redeveloped in the 1980’s. The scene where Harold is walking along the disused old docks with Parky, a crooked cop, and Parky says ’so this is where nignogs are going to do the long jump at the 1988 Olympics’ and Harold replies ’stick a rocket up their arse, then they’ll jump’ reflects the times. The docks got an incredible makeover in the next 20 years but the Olympics wouldn’t be in London for another 32.