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The London Nobody Knows (1967; 2008)
Produced and Directed by Norman Cohen
Distributed by British Lion Film Corporation (theatrical)
Optimum Home Entertainment (DVD)
www.optimumreleasing.com
53 min.
Adapted from architectural historian and draftsman Geoffrey Fletcher's book of the same name (published 1962), The London Nobody Knows is a quirky, personable documentary concerned with finding the lingering elements of the Victorian and Edwardian eras in mid-1960s London. As narrated by actor James Mason, the film isolates curious locations on the brink of disappearance, extinction, or obsolescence.
Fletcher's book is organized by area, but the film chooses to order its selections in more thematic ways. The film begins at a construction site, and soon displays a very idiosyncratic style, showing ultra-modern office towers cut to the rhythm of playful music. The tone abruptly changes - a tactic used at several key points in the film - and cameras enter the inside of the decrepit Bedford Theatre, once a famed venue from the halcyon days of music hall performance, now reduced to putrefying ruin with a hole in the roof. These sequences establish The London Nobody Knows' governing...