Reel Locations
Atmosphere...films just wouldn't be the same without them. Sure, in cinema's rudimentary days, when atmospheres were created in the studio with careful imagination, that had its place too. However, there is nothing that will heighten your memories quite more than to look back and recount a film you have seen that was actually shot in the location intended. Here I have highlighted a few iconic places of celluloid that I remember...
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London
The very first auteur to delve in and take true advantage of London's Dickensian gloom was Arthur Woods, who would convey it best, with his 1939 cogent crime release They Drive By Night , still it was Jules Dassin who coloured the city with an authentic noir edge after crossing Atlantic waters to churn 1950's Night And The City. For decades now, London has been testament as the quintessential showcase for seediness and criminal debaucheries , as seen in films ranging from Performance (1968) to John Mackenzie's The Long Good Friday (1980)
The Long Good Friday (1980)
An esteemed cinematic moment, that served its atmosphere well would be none other than 1980's noir salute; The Long Good Friday. What we are also privy to in this film, in concert to it's apposite environment, is an ever incendiary performance by a diminutive giant in the name of Bob Hoskins. Harold Shand - a criminal notorious, in the age of Margaret Thatcher, builds an empire from the bottom - up, only to discover that it is under threat from his nemeses.
While the London of The Long Good Friday is certainly not enshrouded in shadows, it unequivocally possesses a labyrinthine noir-like element and a perpetually dangerous tone, and you can certainly say it is home to no shortage of duplicitous denizens.
A transgressive Harold gives his firm bosses some home truths outside the Savoy Hotel, where they happen to abandon him, right before he is abducted by the IRA. It's eatery on Wigmore Street is where Harold's assistant gets expectorated on during a meal with the underhanded London Councillor. The Villa Elephant Italian Restaurant lends the interior for Harold's casino and the movie's strategically mirrored restaurant was in the Rainbow Room on Kensington High Street. Harold and Helen Mirren's fatale like character entertain the unctuous Americans on their boat, which is moored at St Katharine's Dock in the East End.
Another pub; The Salisbury (located on Grand Parade, Green Lanes) does its double-act as the Irish pub Fagan's St Patrick's Church, Green Bank, which is where Harold's mum marginally avoids getting murdered, which spurs on Harold's quest to avenge. Ladywell Leisure Centre, in Lewisham, contains the swimming pool where Harold's right-hand chap is killed by an IRA member (an ear wet Pierce Bronsan). Villa Road in Brixton is the site of another of the film's gratuitous murders, as it is the home of "Errol the Grass" who gets cut up by "Razors."
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New York
New York has always been at the cutting edge, Kiss of Death (1947) which stars a sociopath Richard Widmark, in his most nefarious moment, and Jules Dassin's The Naked City (1948) were respectively the forerunners of this filmic era in which most of the segments were shot entirely on location. A renaissance of New York location shots in films would be noted in the 1970s, when a seemingly dilapidated New York presented itself in 1976's Taxi Driver, and a lustrum later in the crime classic The French Connection (1971) where although Marseilles was a part of the sketch - the New York scenes were infinitely more prevalent.
The Naked City (1948)
Jules Dassin's documentary inflected noir taught audiences that " There are eight million stories in the Naked City, this has been one of them." What made Dassin's tale in particular so absorbing and inspirational - was the generous location shooting on the streets of New York City. In 1948 that was quite the blue moon experience, as it was done in rare cases and the produced footage was markedly different from the studio-bound one. The police precinct is the 10th Precinct, which is located in New York's Upper West Side, at 52 West 83rd Street to be precise. Many segments of the movie were shot in the epicenter of New York's finance district, Wall Street, and the crescendo climax of a confrontation was filmed on the Williamsburg Bridge, where the villain falls to his death, into the East River.
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Paris
Nightlife and streetlife went hand in hand in Paris' urban wonderland. It actually took the American auteur Jules Dassin to set the stage for utilizing the locations in Paris, unarguably, the most sensual city the world over, where he mindblowingly executes his vision in his heist masterpiece Rififi. Director Jean-Pierre Melville invoked a smoke-filled trench -coat laden atmosphere in Bob le flambeur (1955) and Le Samurai (1967). This was the very personification of criminal suave and there would be a lovesong to come for these celestial celluloid moments in Luc Besson's staggering effort, Subway (1985)
Rififi (1967)
This film hosts the most elaborate heist scene to date and the target for this particular crime was an English jewelry shop called Mappin and Webb, which was then housed on the Rue de la Paiz, very close in proximity to the Place Vendome. The cunning thieves at first case the joint from a nearby cafe, across the street, to which Jules Dassin later intimated was simply a table on the pavement with a window stuck in the front of it (how resourceful)! When Tony (Jean Servais) ultimately locates the abducted son of his companion Jo, he does this by shadowing a man from the Metro stop at Port Royal all the winding way to that proverbial end of the line, which was Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse.
I surmise that seemingly dreadful platitude is truly on the money when it comes to film's perfect ambiance. Location, location...you get the drift.
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