Use in Films and Television Programmes
As a self-contained section of the London Underground closed at weekends and for extended periods during weekdays, Aldwych station before its closure and the branch from Holborn were popular locations for filming scenes set on the Tube. Since closure, film production usage has continued, with the station appearing as itself and, with appropriate signage, other parts of the network. Despite being closed since 1994 the track and infrastructure are maintained in operational condition, and a train of ex-Northern line 1972 tube stock is permanently stabled on the branch. This train can be driven up and down the branch for filming. The physical connection with the Piccadilly line northbound tracks remains, but requires manual operation.
Films and television productions that have been shot at Aldwych include:
- The Gentle Gunman (1952)
- Battle of Britain (1969)
- Death Line (1972)
- Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1986)
- The Krays (1990)
- Creep (2004)
- The Good Shepherd (2006)
- V for Vendetta (2006)
- Atonement (2007)
- 28 Weeks Later (2007)
- The Edge of Love (2008)
The pre-war operation of the station features in a pivotal scene in Geoffrey Household's novel Rogue Male, when the pursuit of the protagonist by an enemy agent sees them repeatedly using the shuttle service on the branch line. A chase through Aldwych station ends with the agent's death by electrocution on the track. A much modified and expanded version of the station appears as a level in the video game Tomb Raider III. The music video for The Prodigy's song "Firestarter" was filmed in the disused eastern tunnel and one of the unused lift shafts.
Read more about this topic: Aldwych Tube Station
Famous quotes containing the words films and/or television:
“The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn’t.”
—Jean-Luc Godard (b. 1930)
“What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.”
—Salvador Dali (1904–1989)