Leonard here. The following column is written by my colleague Mark Searby highlighting British cinema past and present. Please enjoy A Bit of Crumpet.
A name synonymous with premium quality British TV dramas is Stephen Poliakoff. Close My Eyes, Perfect Strangers and Dancing on the Edge are just three of Poliakoff’s much lauded work for British television. Prior to writing for TV, Poliakoff had been crafting stage plays for some of the most legendary London theatres. But by the late 1980s he still had not ventured into feature films except for a one-off of writing Runners (a limited theatrical release in 1983 before being broadcast on Channel 4). Hidden City, filmed in ’87 and released a year later with the same fate as Runners (a limited theatrical release before being broadcast on Channel 4), was Poliakoff’s directorial debut. A mystery/conspiracy story about a lost film that might hold the key to a missing woman, and a librarian who ropes in a writer to help track down the missing movie.
It’s a murky movie that lays bare the seedy underbelly of London in the 1980s as two people traverse the London underground, disused tram-tunnels and long-forgotten subterranean chambers seeking the final piece to a puzzle that may or may not be about a missing woman from decades prior.
The film opens with writer James Richards and his upper-class friends pontificating on writing and writers of the modern day. It’s all very scornful and punching down, especially on the lower classes. However, it sets up an intriguing switch-a-roo with James going from hated to likeable because of his change of heart to help working class librarian Sharon in her search. The more James experiences the drudgery of the working class the more he starts to find empathy for, and with, them. He begins to realise that he is only one poorly received book away from becoming working class and having to fend day-to-day. His association with Sharon helps him greater understand what it is like to be working class in London. It’s an eye-opener for him and it’s something that changes his whole stance on certain things. The more they delve into this mystery the more James discovers more about himself thanks to Sharon’s instance of being along for the journey. Sharon pulls him out of his comfort zone and into something he has never had an experience of – the dark heart of London.
Cinematographer Witold Stok’s outstanding photography really captures London on the brink of change. The old guard, so to speak, of brutalist buildings covered in grime and black mould are on their last legs and in a few years after this film was made would be replaced with shiny, glass structures that open up the city. But in Hidden City it’s all about walking/running through dirty, empty streets where Londoners seem to have abandoned in favour of the glitzy West End. There is no glamour on display in this movie. It’s bleak and cold and dark, and wet. As much as it is a cliché to say the city is a character in the film, Stok’s work really showcases how a turn of the corner can take you from the bright lights of central London to a filthy backstreet overrun with rainwater and rats. Not to mention the scenes underground as James and Sharon walk the dis-used tunnels of London on the hunt for a lost film cannister. Urban explorers/abandoned building will really get a kick out of this film.
Unfortunately, the story does get a bit lost in itself by the end of the middle third as James is running around London with Sharon’s young child while also trying to solve the mystery. It’s all a bit much in terms of ideas and becomes a bit jumbled as to what is meant the central plot. Thankfully, push through the convoluted part of the film and towards the it the film does find its axis again and spins out the mystery story into a slightly underwhelming yet satisfying ending.
A look at the cast list shows that Poliakoff was drawn to character actors. Sure, Charles Dance and Richard E Grant are big stars now. But at the time of making Hidden City, they were actors known by face only. Dance brings the stoicism to his role as James and Grant brings some 80s Yuppie flamboyance to his new media darling character of Anthony. However, it’s Cassie Stuart’s performance as Sharon that has bite to it. A working-class woman who isn’t going to give up on the one thing she holds dear – solving the video tape mystery. She won’t let some upper-class toff, James, speak down to her. In fact, she’s the one who speaks down to him. It’s a ferocious performance from Cassie Stuart, who sadly has been retired from acting for nearly three decades now.
Hidden City might not be Poliakoff’s best work, yet there is something fascinating about this film. It veers towards Lynchian at times and then other times talks about class & society in London. There is the advent of new, for the period, technology rippling through the film. And discussion about pre/post-war British occupation and all the secrets that brought with it. Rarely seen for decades, Hidden City is a sinister thriller that will have many unsure what the real London used to be.
Hidden City is available on BFI Blu-Ray now.