The Poignancy of Place: London and the Cinema

Charlotte Brunsdon

Abstract

The author tries to look at the manner in which London is portrayed in the cinema in two ways. On the one hand, she employs a documentary approach to trace the changing patterns of the representations of real places that are also subject to change in a course of time. On the other hand, she realizes that the cinema, among others, affects our image of the city. London, as a complicated superimposition of narratives, figures and tropes, precedes the cinema and at the same time is created by it; therefore, there are many versions and representations of a cinematic London. The importance and credibility of the representations as localization is determined not by the real set but by the manner the localization is used cinematically. Thus, the city becomes a place of drama. Analysing the representations of London in Wonderland by Michael Winterbottom and High Hopes by Mike Leigh, the author points out the existence of the historically changing and frequently represented capital and a concrete history and conventions of the cinema.

• The text is a translation of the article The Poignancy of Place: London and the Cinema. Originally published in: Visual Culture in Britain 2004, no. 1, pp. 59-73. © 2004 by Manchester University Press.

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