'The London Nobody Knows'

You‘ll only see the real London in documentaries like ’The London Nobody Knows‘ (now on DVD), says Peter Watts

Conventional cinema captures the idea of London better than its reality. In part, that’s because this is a difficult city to film. Things get in the way: people, traffic, street furniture.

The streets are too narrow, awkwardly constructed but without the cramped charm of Prague, Lisbon or Barcelona. Then there’s the iconography of the place, which swamps the viewer and seduces filmmakers. To see the real city, you have to look beyond feature films into the world of documentaries, newsreels and wartime propaganda – films like ‘The London Nobody Knows’ narrated by plum-voiced James Mason, wandering around Spitalfields and asking housewives if he can nose around their gardens for the remains of a Victorian courtyard in which Jack The Ripper gutted a victim.

‘The London Nobody Knows’ is a 1967 doc loosely based on Geoffrey Fletcher’s book of the same title. Mason tramps in Fletcher’s footsteps on a tour that takes in lamplights, lavatories and Lisson Grove, bomb craters, buskers and Salvation Army hostels. There’s an intense sadness here, and not only at what is about to be lost; it’s just there, hanging in the air like mist. Although made for TV, ‘The London Nobody Knows’ comes across more like contemporary video art, director Norman Cohen holding shots of broken buildings for minutes at a time while the soundman goes loopy with the Moog, before panning out to show two tramps scrapping on derelict streets against an eerie silence. No wonder it’s proved a hit when dusted off for screenings at the ICA.

Patrick Keiller, director of ‘London’, is an expert on such films and runs through an awesome list of documentaries that say more about London than Working Title ever will: ‘One that I love is “London, Autumn 1941”, narrated by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. It’s a document of London after the Blitz and is propaganda intended to minimise the amount of bomb damage shown. But it features lots of moving shots taken from cars. Most films don’t show much of London – you only get fragments.’

Keiller continues: ‘Another great one is “All That Mighty Heart” from 1962, which shows a day in the life of London as seen through the eyes of London Transport. And there are very good docks films, “Waters of Time” (1951) and “City of Ships” (1939). Then there are newsreels that cover things like the Siege of Sidney Street.’

These are the films that also influenced Bob Stanley of St Etienne, who in recent years have made their own London films. Stanley is a fan of ‘The London Nobody Knows’: ‘There is romance and adventure, but mostly there is malnourishment. London looks like a shithole.’

He’s right. As with Kieller’s ‘London’ and the St Etienne films, ‘The London Nobody Knows’ has a dual purpose: it serves as an attempt to capture those parts of London about to be lost, but it also offers a document of the city’s atmosphere and appearance at the time it was made, away from the fakery of the West End and the City. Its legacy endures. Says Stanley: ‘The ambiguous melancholy of “The London Nobody Knows” has inspired a new generation of cranks.’

‘The London Nobody Knows’ is released on March 3 on DVD.