The London Nobody Knows

[davidb]

thanks for that , saves me buying a wonky copy on ebay

[Rennie]

name='sippog']THE LONDON NOBODY KNOWS - just released on DVD in the UK

Includes a rather eerie conducted tour of the rear yard of No 29 Hanbury Street, London, where one of Jack The Ripper's victims was murdered. This is on Youtube.

[Steve Crook]

I meant to get a copy of this. Who was selling it?



Steve

[sippog]

name='Steve Crook']I meant to get a copy of this. Who was selling it?



Steve

Studio Canal

Retailed by the usual suspects - Amazon etc

[SwingingLondon]

Amazon only seems to have one, used copy for £18.38...where's the new release?

[crunchie]

Released 3rd March 2008:-



Optimum Releasing: London Nobody Knows / Les Bicyclettes de Belsize

[DB7]

name='SwingingLondon']Amazon only seems to have one, used copy for £18.38...where's the new release?

Play.com (UK) : The London Nobody Knows / Les Bicyclettes De Belsize : DVD - Free Delivery

[mariocki]

Just been featured on London Tonight on ITV with another instalment tomorrow night featuring street markets. Showed the footage of St Pauls' and Fournier Street with a nice then & now comparison. Apparently, Optimum decided to release it as it's the most requested film at the BFI?

[harryfielder]

I saw that as well ,,Looks good..(My old stamping ground)



Aitch,

[pod1969]

Right, I'm convinced. I mentioned the DVD at another thread - sorry for the repetition. Having read so much about both films now, both here and elsewhere, I'll definitely pick up a copy.

[Klark Crass]

name='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

'When the eating is over and done, there's always the undertaker at your service.' LOL. Yes - no more fresh eels, just stewed eels and liquor. Love this film - especially the bit a round Camden/Chalk Farm - the Roundhouse locations. Cheers for the extra info.

[R-T-C Tim]

Before you pick up this release, Optimum have just announced that this title will be available in a "London Box-set", consisting of:



Pool of London

The Small World of Sammy Lee

The Yellow Baloon

London Nobody Knows/Les Bicyclettes de Belsize



To be released June 1st this year.

[JohnB_Toronto]

name='R-T-C Tim']Before you pick up this release, Optimum have just announced that this title will be available in a "London Box-set", consisting of:



Pool of London

The Small World of Sammy Lee

The Yellow Baloon

London Nobody Knows/Les Bicyclettes de Belsize



To be released June 1st this year.

Glad we're starting to see some detail of what this set contains. Let's hope these are quality prints.

http://www.cinedelica.com/2009/03/coming-soon-london-dvd-boxset.html