Nice Time

One of the BFI's Free Cinema productions, this impression of nightlife around Piccadilly Circus is much less scolding in tone (sarcastic title apart) than O Dreamland, with which it's often bracketed. Big city poetry is what its directors are reaching for, with their snatched images cut to numbers by the Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group: hookers on parade to a whistled 'Greenback Dollar', wee small hours shots coupled with 'She Moved Through the Fair'. It's pretty small beer, but full of absorbing sociological minutiae: the scarcity of black faces, the quantities of uniformed servicemen milling around, the enormous, sternly regimented cinema queues.