London Medley is the 1933 follow-up to Bonney Powell’s 1931 Fox-Movietone Manhattan Medley. Like its predecessor, London Medley announces itself as a contribution to the “city of contrasts” discourse that was so central to the city symphonies of the 1920s and 1930s, although here the language of the film’s opening title is much less hyperbolic. In fact, the impression that’s given is much more consistent with the travelogue genre: “Intimate glimpses of life in the Old World’s greatest metropolis. Here is the seat of international finance, the home of millions, the capital of an Empire – a city of both sparkling lights and deep shadows.” Indeed, much of the film stays true to the form of the travelogue, offering a vision of London that’s much more traditionally touristical than what we typically see in the city symphonies genre. Thus, the film begins with a picturesque shot of an old salt in a sailor’s cap lighting a pipe in silhouette in the foreground, while the busy Thames and Tower Bridge are framed in the background. This opening shot establishes the tone and approach of London Medley, and, sure enough, its viewer is treated to a tour of many of the city’s major monuments, including the Palace of Westminster, Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column, and St. Paul’s.
What distinguishes London Medley as a city symphony is its dawn-to-dawn structure, its interest in the rhythms and patterns of daily life in London (the morning rush, lunchtime, tea time, the evening commute, et cetera), its attention to London’s modernity (the Underground, Piccadilly Circus’s spectacular displays of electrical illumination), and its focus on the city’s vivid nightlife. As was the case in Manhattan Medley, the film ends with a flurry of scenes that capture the energy of nighttime in London, including its active theater district, its whimsical electrical advertisements, its busy restaurants, and its vibrant and exotic nightclubs, where jazz bands play, the Champagne flows, and Britain’s elite classes take in the risqué charms of the Can-Can, oddly.
Thus, London Medley delivers on its promise of “sparkling lights,” but its treatment of London’s “deep shadows” is superficial, to say the least. The vision of London that’s provided is certainly not the benighted city of William Blake, William Booth, and so many others. Instead, its final shots have little to do with class and much to do with the restoration of order after another hectic day: a city worker hoses down Piccadilly Circus’s statue of Eros at 3:00 a.m.; a London bobby conducts his night watch, checking to see that nothing is amiss at Barclays; a tipsy reveler getting into a hackney cab and heading home under the paternalistic gaze of another bobby; and a cat prowls along a fence at dawn.
Anthony Kinik
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