THE CELLULOID STREETS OF LONDON

As its Good Friday, it got me thinking about The Long Good Friday, the 1980 London gangster film directed by John Mackenzie who went on to direct A Sense Of Freedom the brutal Glasgow set biography of gangster Jimmy Boyle. Barry Hines who penned naturalistic pieces with political leanings wrote ii and the stars Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren would become mainstays of British cinema.

The day from hell for mob boss Harold Shand is depicted with grit, realism and a bruised glamour. We see Shand, unable to face progress on anything other than his own terms, gradually lose control and his hubris leads inevitably to his down fall brilliantly crystallised in the wordless ending scene; one of the greatest final scenes in cinematic history.

London is an underused backdrop in movies and with this in mind I’ve had a look at films set in London that manage to capture the flavour of the city in some way. Many of the blokesploitation films that were launched off the back of Guy Richie’s fanciful idea of London’s underbelly have not aged well or are caricatures of London life therefore no place for them in my list of 10 favourite London films. Nor is there room for the Ian Curtis middle class rom-com and its numerous copies as it, again, paints a very niche idea of what upwardly mobile Londoners get up to.

1. Performance (1970)
2. An American Werewolf In London (1981)
3. The Long Good Friday (1980)
4. Nil By Mouth (1997)
5. Oliver Twist (1948)
6. Night And The City (1950)
7. Blow Up (1966)
8. Naked (1993)
9. Repulsion (1969)
10. Bronco Bullfrog (1969)

Honourable mention to Pressure (1976) & Babylon (1980) two early examples of films charting the Black British experience in London. Hard hitting, unflinching while retaining a real humanity.