The London Nobody Knows, with James Mason

Cafe Society
1

The London Nobody Knows, with James Mason

Wondered what you guys woud think – a recent Youtube discovery, and I can’t get enough of it, for its:

  1. Funky 60s experimentation in television, but not over the top.

  2. Music hall music: I found myself enjoying many of the saccharine Victorian tunes, and will see if I can find the recordings themselves somewhere.

  3. James Mason’s dry wit and incredible accent. I feel like I’m strolling around town with an entertaining, knowledgable and slightly eccentric uncle as he points out the sights.

  4. Snapshots of interesting and ordinary people most of whom are long gone. Especially the for the compassionate portraits of poor people who would otherwise be lost forever.

  5. Theme of poignance over the disappearing past, which takes on an additional layer of poignance and unintended irony now that many of the show’s own people and places have disappeared.

  6. It puts me in the mood to find other documentaries and shows like this: any suggestions?

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Neither has 1), nor 2) from memory, but parallels that spring to mind are the Robinson films of Patrick Keiller, the third of which is due out soon and IIRC correctly London explicitly references The London Nobody Knows, and Terence Davies’s recentish nostalgic love letter to Liverpool, Of Time and the City.

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Bumpity bump for all you Brits out there