There's something about films made and/or set in the New York City of the 1970s that always keeps me coming back for more, and the same goes for the London of the same period. Maybe it's because childhood visits to both of these cities vividly imprinted themselves upon my fragile eggshell mind; while these were clearly not easy cities to live in, the vibrant energy of citizens going about their daily business against a backdrop of faded grandeur and crumbling glory captured my youthful imagination in the same way that Hubert Robert's paintings of "life among the ruins" would later fascinate me. Though there were signs of decay everywhere, there was also beauty in that decay — a beauty so profound that even a midwestern boy raised on TV and the intrinsically American philosophy of "newer is better" couldn't fail to notice.
I recently finished reading Rob Chapman's Psychedelia and Other Colours, a fascinating and occasionally frustrating book that is less of a history of the original psychedelic era than a series of free-associative essays about why and how LSD impacted popular music the way it did. One of the best aspects of Chapman's book is the way he lays out the differences between American and British psychedelia — not just stylistically, but also culturally. In his British chapters, he repeatedly underlines just how dingy and drab life was in post-WWII England, especially when compared to the space-age shininess of life in the US; and how even at the height of "Swinging London," most of the grumbling grey city still felt barely a few years removed from the traumas and deprivations of life during The Blitz.
If Chapman's book didn't exactly turn me on to any great psychedelic records that I wasn't already aware of, it did lead me to The London Nobody Knows, a haunting documentary filmed in 1967 by Norman Cohen (but apparently not released until 1969), which was based on the 1962 book of the same name by Geoffrey Fletcher. Narrated by James Mason, who also serves as the film's tour guide, the film explores London's seamy underbelly (and its Victorian remnants) at a time when the wrecking ball of progress was really starting to kick into high gear.
Chapman cites The London Nobody Knows as being particularly illustrative of how shabby the city really was, even at the peak of its pop cultural influence, and the film certainly doesn't disappoint in that regard. Though a few sequences here are speeded up a la Benny Hill for comic relief, the London we see here is a bleak place, indeed, one filled with rusting Victorian urinals, rotting pubs, splintering tenements, toothless street performers, and open-air markets filled with wriggling eels and shady pitchmen. The few minutes devoted to the city's fashionably-attired youth seems almost jarringly out of place, like they were only added (and possibly under protest) after the producers begged to see some of the mods and mini-skirts that London was famous for.
Again, though, there is beauty in the decay — and with his dry wit and seemingly unflappable countenance, Mason is perfectly suited to guiding us through it. Whether wryly cocking an eyebrow at the ugliness of the newer buildings along the north side of the Thames, or begging the pardon of a market patron that he's inadvertently bumped, he comes off more like a savvy local than a movie star. In one particularly moving sequence, he unselfconsciously sits down with several senior residents of the local Salvation Army, and lends a sympathetic ear to their hard-luck stories. (I'm guessing he prudently chose not to mention his own brush with Thunderbird wine.)
My favorite moment in the film, however, is a non-Mason one: A shirtless street performer of indeterminate age hectors passerby to bind him with a length of heavy chain, from which he then performs a Houdini-like escape. While the man's performance is quite entertaining in its own right, and certainly harkens back to an earlier London — there were almost certainly escape artists doing the same trick on the city' streets in the 19th century, if not hundreds of years before that — what blew me away was the realization that I had actually seen this very gentleman in action, seven years after this sequence was filmed. While I knew that I would recognize some of the London I experienced in '74 in this film, I had no inkling that I would actually recognize one of the people I'd encountered while I was there.
That year, my sister and I were living in Leamington Spa with my father, who was on sabbatical at Warwick University. On weekends, we would often take train trips to other parts of the country, and of course London was on our hit list. While my most vivid memory from our London trip is of ordering a plate of ravioli at a restaurant, only to find that there was nothing inside of said ravioli — London dining was significantly less worldly than it is today — our visit to the Tower of London also stands out for me, and not just because of the thrill of coming face to face with nearly 900 years of English history. On our way to the Tower entrance, we came upon this very same shirtless gent, who had attracted a rather sizable audience with his salty pronouncements and his impressive feats of escapism. (There was also a younger partner working with him, who was similarly swathed in chains and locks.) After busting free, the man passed the hat, and then cussed the crowd out for not putting enough into it. "There's not enough in here to get me into a pay toilet," he cried. "I hope every last one of ye gets bloody diarrhea tonight!" Oh, how my sister and I howled with laughter; I think I even asked my dad for a few coins to contribute to his cause, simply because I was impressed that anyone would loudly wish diarrhea upon a group of tourists.
Obviously, that's the sort of thing that sticks with you for decades after the fact, and when my wife and I visited the Tower of London last spring — her first visit, and my first time returning since 1974 — I half-expected that this guy would be standing outside the tube station, haranguing us into tying him up. He wasn't there, of course; I'm guessing he'd be around a hundred years old today, if he's even still alive. Still, it was a real thrill to see him again in this documentary, and to feel viscerally connected for a second to the London of 1967, even though I didn't actually experience the city until seven years later.
Anyway, watch the film. You won't regret it.