The most remarkable thing about the film THE LONDON NOBODY KNOWS is how much of that old city is still there, and unchanged after some 42 years or so. (A similar, contemporary THE GLASGOW NOBODY KNOWS would have resulted in a very different story.) The eel and pie shop, which I bet they filmed because they thought it wouldn't last much longer, is still there on Chapel Market. Still exactly the same, as is most of the street itself. Ditto Fournier Street, runing between Spitalfields and Brick Lane. It was a decaying slum when they filmed it, almost begging to be knocked down - but now all the buildings have been restored and it's one of the most "desirable" streets in London. Cardinal Cap Ally which Mason so dolefully appraises is intact too, smack bang in the middle of the major toursit triangle of the Globe Theatre, Tate Modern and the wobbily bridge.
Those strange men breaking eggs east of Tower Bridge have been swept away forever though. Probabaly due to Edweena Curry forcing John Gummer's daughter to eat omlets on live television during the potato stikes in 1985. Or something. It's all nowt but posh boutiques down there now.
THE LONDON NOBODY KNOWS as a film really grew from the truly dreadful 1964 mondo movie, LONDON IN RAW.
London In the RawCinematographer Stanley Long, co-producer Michael Klinger, co-directors Norman Cohen and Miller, editor Stephen Cross (and narrator David Gell) clearly saw some mileage from such London type pictures, as they were later involved with making PRIMITIVE LONDON and in 1968 THE LONDON THAT NOBODY KNOWS. Odd that just a couple of years later co-producers Tony Tenser and Michael Klinger would help create two masterpieces, REPULSION and CUL DE SAC, found Tigon and be important players in the horror film world. Long would shoot THE SORCERERS, ending his career working on the dreary ADVENTURES “sex comedies”. Cohen and Klinger would have a similar fate with the CONFESSIONS series. Proof of what odd CV's a life working in the British film industry could generate.