The London Nobody Knows

The documentary covers the London of the sixties by turning its face away from the places everyone knows. The camera goes into abandoned music halls, egg breaking factories, markets and streets that are falling apart. James Mason guides us, and across the walk we see the side of the city that does not get shown, together with the people living in it. It was adapted from the book by Geoffrey Fletcher. Against the bright image of London in those years, the film keeps a record of a city coming down. In forty six minutes it covers about as much ground as a walk and never lingers anywhere; but every place it shows is one of the things that would not be there a few years later. Much of what the account is worth today lies in that record. Norman Cohen’s forty six minute British documentary was completed in 1968.