The London Nobody Knows / Les Bicyclettes de Belsize (OPTIMUM)

[JamesM]

I see that Optimum propose to release these two 1960s documents of London on DVD with a slated release date of March 3rd 2008.

[Pam1927]

I'm so delighted that my fave film 'Les Bicyclettes De Belsize' is getting a DVD release. Fantastic!

And I could do with a better copy of 'The London Nobody Knows' too!

[smudge]

Yes - an unusual combination of films, but much appreciated nonetheless. Look forward to it.

Smudge

[colonel32]

Yes, looking forward to this!

[Redstar]

Recent release on DVD of this lovely documentary narrated by James Mason. Made in the late 60's I remember this was shown before the main feature. Wandering through the back streets of London James Mason points out some very interesting places (Victorian pubs, public conveniences, horse yards former music halls) and events that happened there. Probably a fair few do not exist anymore. It is coupled with a short I have never seen "Les Bicyclettes de Belsize" filmed in Hampstead village during the late 60's "swinging London" by Wolfgang Suschitzky, it tells of a love story between a cyclist and a poster girl.

The London Nobody Knows / Les Bicyclettes de Belsize - DVD - Movie Mail UK

[s20076037]

Cool. I think I saw a clip of this, where James Mason is talking about Jack The Ripper, then knock;s on an old woman's door. "May I come in?" Hope this is the same doc.

[Redstar]

Yes I remember that scene and I am sure it is the same documentary

[Joe Fraguela]

Originally Posted by Redstar Yes I remember that scene and I am sure it is the same documentary

Yes it most definitley is. Some really quaint pieces of a by-gone era, especially when he visits an old music hall and lots more besides.

[Freddy]

This appears to be a great double offering. LNK always gets a good write up here and Les Bicyclettes is a joy. Judy Huxtable, the girl featured in it used to be married to Peter Cook.
LBdB is often mentioned on here.

Freddy

[Mark O]

Thanks for the info Redstar, I like to have a wander of London's back streets now and again, it's surprising what you can find there!

[Redstar]

Before the developers moved in parts of docklands and Bermondsey was very atmospheric and was full of alleyways and steps leading to different places and one would often come across a little pub or super old cafe. Some of it is still there but the characters have long disappeared replaced by city whizz kids, wine bars and flash restaurants.

[Steve Crook]

Originally Posted by Redstar Before the developers moved in parts of docklands and Bermondsey was very atmospheric and was full of alleyways and steps leading to different places and one would often come across a little pub or super old cafe. Some of it is still there but the characters have long disappeared replaced by city whizz kids, wine bars and flash restaurants.

But it's still interesting to wander around, get lost in down those alleyways and steps leading to different places and discover some old pub or cafe

Steve

[julian_craster]

A capital film
Jude Rogers on the London we should all know
Friday March 7, 2008 The Guardian


"You know we're shooting a 15-minute documentary about disappearing London? Well, now we've got James Mason to star in it." Brian Comport, sipping tea in his book-filled sitting room in south London, is remembering how Norman Cohen told him that his tiny film project was about to get bigger. It was 1967, and Cohen, a future director of Till Death Us Do Part and Dad's Army, was adapting Geoffrey Fletcher's book The London Nobody Knows, with Comport helping to write the script. It wasn't a project that would normally attract an actor who had worked with Stanley Kubrick and Carol Reed, but then Cohen, according to Comport, "was a man who could talk the apples down from the trees". He'd asked Mason to narrate his film while editing his war drama, The Blue Max, and was astonished when the star said yes. "And the funders went, 'James Mason? Oh. Would you like another half-hour, then?'" The London Nobody Knows, the resulting 45-minute documentary, was forgotten for many years, but has become better known in recent times, and has now been released on DVD.

This strange little film captures the magic, melancholy and mournfulness of a city teeming with history that somehow never stopped moving with the times. Wrecking balls and skyscrapers frame its opening scenes, long-legged girls in mini-skirts warm up its middle, and people suffering poverty and homelessness remind us that the 1960s did not swing for everyone. It was postwar London in a nutshell. Comport, a film student when Cohen approached him to finish off the screenplay Fletcher had started, remembers the time with fondness and melancholy. "I was in my 20s in the 1960s; a boy getting used to the idea of peace. London had had the Olympics and the National Exhibition, and pop music was starting to give the city a lift, but it was still getting used to the effects of the war years." Industrial London was also spluttering its last, smoky breaths. In a mesmering scene in which Mason walks along the south bank of the Thames, we see Tate Modern as it once was - Bankside power station, with smoking chimneys, and working ships travelling up the Thames like apparitions. Still, some things haven't changed. James & Sons' umbrella shop on New Oxford Street, described as a Victorian anomaly by Mason, is 177 years old and still going strong. Manze's Eel and Mash shop in Islington's Chapel Market still serves up potatoes and liquor, although hot pies have replaced the live eels.


Comport says now that he regrets some of the film's more intrusive moments - there are uncomfortable scenes with alcoholics and homeless people - "But we were trying to capture the spirit of the city, and people down on their luck are very much part of that. After all, the city is its people." He is most proud, unsurprisingly, of hearing James Mason delivering his lines. "He said one of them so perfectly that I nearly collapsed with pride. It was a very dry line: 'When the eating is over and done, there's always the undertaker at your service.'" He's also proud of his contributions to the film's modern, ambient soundtrack. He added clacking type writer sounds to the film's final scene, in which a man wearing a placard reading "The End Is Nigh" wanders round one of the city's last empty spaces. It's funny now, Comport says, that he is the last person left alive who worked on a film about a disappearing city. But he adds, just like London, he's still working too, having just finished his autobiography, The Mackerel Handshake. "But it's nice to get to my age and hear your son saying, 'Dad, you're a bit of a cult.'" He smiles very warmly. "And it's lovely that our film that desperately tried to remember things isn't being forgotten." ·


The London Nobody Knows/Les Bicyclettes de Belsize DVD is out now on Optimum

[blacknorth]

There's a telling moment towards the end of The London Nobody Knows which shows children playing in an old inner city area - the scene changes to children playing at the base of one of those notorious 60's flat complexes, and Mason's narration states, at last these kids are being given a chance.

Of course those 60's flat-blocks are being pulled down now and widely regarded as a planning disaster.

I'm happy to see this on DVD at last - the last time it aired on UK television was as a last minute schedule change on C4 in the afternoon - about 15 years ago.