London in Film - Thrillers

Thrillers

Alfred Hitchcock probably started the fashion for using London landmarks for spy films, starting with Blackmail in 1929, which was set entirely in the city and finished on the dome of the British Museum. Many of his other thrillers followed a similar pattern, including The Man Who Knew Too Much (both the 1934 and 1956 versions), The 39 Steps (1935), Sabotage (1937), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Stage Fright (1950) and Frenzy (1972). 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). This trend was spoofed in the films Otley (1968) with Tom Courtenay, and more recently in The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997) with Bill Murray and the Austin Powers films. Anthony Minghella's film Breaking and Entering (2006) with Jude Law is named also a Romantic drama.

Landmarks featured in some of these films include the Royal Albert Hall, Westminster Abbey and Trafalgar Square. Both Night of the Demon (1957) and The IPCRESS File (1965) feature scenes filmed in the famous reading room at the British Museum. The 1978 version of The Thirty Nine Steps features a climax on the clock face of Big Ben, an idea borrowed from the 1943 Will Hay comedy My Learned Friend. A similar scene features in the 2003 Jackie Chan film Shanghai Knights.

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), which features a chase across Tower Bridge on a double-decker bus and several scenes inside the British Museum. The 1944 version of The Lodger also features a scene by Tower Bridge, although the film was set several years before it was built.

Britain's most famous spy, James Bond, generally spends little time in London, other than to receive his orders from his boss 'M'. However, some of the films do feature locations in the city. These include On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) in which George Lazenby as Bond visits the College of Arms and For Your Eyes Only (1981), in which Roger Moore experiences a hair-raising helicopter flight over the Docklands area. In the more recent Pierce Brosnan films, the Secret Service's headquarters are identified as being the new MI6 building on the River Thames at Vauxhall. The 1999 film The World Is Not Enough opens with an extended boat chase from the MI6 building down the river to the Millennium Dome, while in Die Another Day (2002) 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 the Changing of the Guard outside Buckingham Palace.