London in film
From Hell (2001), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) and Roman Polanski's 2005 film of Oliver Twist all recreated Victorian London in Prague in the Czech Republic.
Edwardian London has been depicted in several films, notably 2010 Academy Award Winner for Best Picture The King's Speech, Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets in 1949, the Merchant Ivory E. M. Forster adaptation Howards End (1992) and the biopic Young Winston (1972).
Many other comedies have used locations in the city, some of the best known being The Ghosts of Berkeley Square (1947), Doctor in the House (1954), The Horse's Mouth (1958), Mars Attacks!, Independence Day: Resurgence, Nuns on the Run, Mr. Bean, Bedazzled (1967), Brassed Off (1996), Billy Elliott (2000) and Bend It Like Beckham (2002).
The image of "swinging London", partly a creation of Time magazine, helped to fuel a production boom in the British film industry throughout the decade.
These included The Pumpkin Eater, The Knack ...and How to Get It, Darling, Arabesque, Kaleidoscope, Georgy Girl, Morgan!, Alfie, Blowup, I'll Never Forget What's'isname, Casino Royale, Poor Cow, Up the Junction, Bedazzled, To Sir, with Love, The Jokers, Otley, Wonderwall, Smashing Time, Salt and Pepper and The Italian Job.
The city has often been used as the backdrop for romances like Indiscreet (1958) with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman and A Touch of Class (1973), and has become popular for romantic comedies in recent years.
The films follow the awkward love lives of largely upper-middle class characters (aside from The Tall Guy, always including one played by Hugh Grant).
Woody Allen's Match Point (2005), uses a very up-market view of the city to reflect the upper class lives of the protagonists, including locations in Notting Hill, Belgravia, Chelsea, St. James's Park and Tate Modern.
London has since featured in many other thrillers, including Hunted (1952) The Yellow Balloon (1953) Sapphire (1959), Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), The IPCRESS File (1965), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), The Deadly Affair (1966), Arabesque (1966), The Black Windmill (1974), The Whistle Blower (1987), The Fourth Protocol (1987), Blue Ice (1992), The Innocent Sleep (1995) and briefly in Mission: Impossible (1996).
Several American thrillers have also produced mangled versions of London's geography, including Twenty-Three Paces to Baker Street (1956), Midnight Lace (1960) and The Mummy Returns (2001) (#1 in U.S.), which features a chase across Tower Bridge on a double-decker bus and several scenes inside the British Museum.
These include On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) (#1 in U.S.) in which George Lazenby as Bond visits the College of Arms and For Your Eyes Only (1981) (#1 in U.S.), in which Roger Moore experiences a hair-raising helicopter flight over the Docklands area.
The 1999 film The World Is Not Enough (#1 in U.S.) opens with an extended boat chase from the MI6 building down the river to the Millennium Dome, while in Die Another Day (2002) (#1 in U.S.) Bond visits a secret base in a disused Underground station, and makes a rare trip to his club Blades.
The 1967 version of Casino Royale makes extensive use of London locations, including 10 Downing Street, Whitehall, Trafalgar Square (with Nelson's Column replaced by a flying saucer) as well as showing the Changing of the Guard outside Buckingham Palace.
The eerie 1973 horror Death Line stars Donald Pleasence as a Scotland Yard detective who traces a series of murders to cannibals living in the network's tunnels.
The 2002 James Bond film Die Another Day features a secret MI6 facility in a fictional disused Underground Station called Vauxhall Cross.
Other films to have featured the Underground include Passport to Pimlico (1949), The Yellow Balloon (1953), Georgy Girl (1966), The Fourth Protocol (1987), Hidden City (1988) and Tube Tales (1999).
The 1950 thriller Seven Days to Noon featured a scientist who threatens to destroy London with a nuclear bomb, and was notable for its scenes of the city's evacuated and deserted streets.
Despite the great difficulties involved in achieving this, the feat was repeated for the horror film 28 Days Later in 2002, which begins with the hero waking from a coma and wandering across a deserted Westminster Bridge.
The Bollywood sci-fi Superhero adventure Ra.One begins in London, where the protagonist Dr. Shekhar Subramanium (played by Shahrukh Khan) works at the fictional Barron Industries.
(17th century), The First Great Train Robbery (Victorian era), Chicago Joe and the Showgirl (World War II) and The Krays (the 1960s), while 10 Rillington Place (1971) recreated 1940s London, filming in the actual street where John Christie carried out his infamous murders.
(1977), The Long Good Friday (1980), Mona Lisa (1986), Face (1997), Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), G:MT – Greenwich Mean Time (1999), Snatch (2000), Sexy Beast (2000) and Layer Cake (2004).
Examples of these include Up the Junction, Follow Me!, Nil by Mouth, Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises and two out of every three films directed by Mike Leigh.
The 1995 version of Richard III, starring Ian McKellen, which is set in a fictional 1930s fascist version of England, makes imaginative use of London locations such as St Cuthbert's church, St Pancras chambers (the old Midland Grand Hotel), the University of London's Senate House, and the two Gilbert Scott power stations — Bankside serving for the Tower and the decrepit Battersea Power Station as the setting for the final battle scenes.
Terry Gilliam's 1985 Orwellian fantasy Brazil also used the cooling towers of the same power station as a location, as did Michael Radford's 1984 film version of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Similar themes, as well as race, were part of the 1970s set Young Soul Rebels, the debut of Derek Jarman protege Isaac Julien (1991).
Breaking and Entering, a 2006 romantic drama, by Academy Award-winning director Anthony Minghella, shot and set in King's Cross, a blighted, inner-city neighbourhood of London, examines an affair which unfolds between a successful British landscape architect and a Bosnian woman.
In more recent years The Parent Trap (1998 version), Winning London, The Great Muppet Caper, the 1996 live-action remake of 101 Dalmatians (#1 in U.S.) and the 2018 film Christopher Robin all used actual locations in the city, as did the 1975 Disney comedy One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing, which was largely set around the Natural History Museum in the early 20th century.
The film also features several action sequences in the city, including a horse chase through central London and the main characters fighting on the rooftop of a skyscraper.
George Cukor's decision to award the role of Eliza Doolittle to Hepburn was perceived by many as a snub to Julie Andrews, who had played the part to great acclaim on Broadway.
The musical adaptation of Goodbye, Mr. Chips with Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark made use of several London locations, including the dining room at the Savoy Hotel and the Salisbury pub in the heart of the West End.
