skiddoo
Views of damage in London are hard to find in postwar movies. Passport to Pimlico is a rare exception, as is this travelogue. Still to come for plucky peacetime London are additional years of rationing and the killer smog of 1952. The effect of coal smoke is clearly evident in the dark cast to all the buildings. (Yes, I know they also had fires from bombs.) It's no wonder one reviewer remembered this as black and white. Between the condition of the buildings and the fading of the film, it nearly is! :) Looking at this as an opportunity to rebuild on better lines with more appreciation for the landmarks is of course the right way to view the devastation. Sometimes it takes a disaster to put things on a better path.I doubt I would have appreciated these travelogues when they first came out but as history, wow, they are sensational. They went all over Europe right up to the start of war and went back right afterward. Incredible. I hope they are restored some day and kept in an archive for future historians.
charlytully
. . . if credited producer\director (and probable uncredited writer) James A. FitzPatrick would have put London's WWII bruises in some sort of historical context. I'm not planning to re-dub this short, but even dispensing with thousands of dollars worth of fact-checking, it is clear from the 10 minutes of footage shown here that the Nazi V-rocket attack achieved nowhere near the level of destruction of total city infrastructure as the Great Fire of London (1666, give or take 500 years). Further, several waves of bubonic plague and small pox epidemics wiped out a much more substantial percentage of Londoners than Hitler managed with all his marks worth of rocketry and Luftwaffe bombing runs. Though I saw this short in color, the memory of it lingers so grimly I could swear it was a black & white piece. If rival travel commentary pro Paul Harvey had tackled this "it's safe to see Big Ben again" piece, I'm sure he would have been much less of a gloomy Gus than Mr. FitzPatrick acquits himself as here. Since being upbeat seems the whole point of this LOOKING AT London, it is too bad the narrator miscast himself thus.
Neil Doyle
The narrator is quick to point out that although the blitz during WWII did destroy many buildings in London, many did survive intact. And, of course, the British spirit never died. Once the war was over, the renewal began with the building and reconstruction of the city. This is a typical James A. FitzPatrick TravelTalk short subject.We get a glimpse of London sites--the Thames, the bridges, the Bank of England, Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, and monuments to Queen Victoria and Lord Nelson. All of these buildings and Piccadilly Circus survived.Then we're shown some of the damaged buildings, foremost among them being the birthplace of Charles and Mary Lamb and some ruins surrounding St. Paul's Cathedral. The cathedral itself was miraculously undamaged and stands proud and tall above the ruins.A closing section deals with the British spirit to survive the scars of war and the assurance that the rebuilding will soon begin.Aside from the monuments for Queen Victoria and Lord Nelson, we're also shown a statue of Abraham Lincoln near Buckingham Palace, proof of the good relationship Great Britain has with the United States.
Ron Oliver
An MGM TRAVELTALK Short Subject. While LOOKING AT LONDON in this little film we are shown some of the major sights of this mighty capital: Buckingham Palace, the Bank of England, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus.After gazing at bomb damage left from the Blitz, we are left to contemplate majestic St. Paul's Cathedral. This is one of a large series of succinct travelogues turned out by MGM, beginning in the 1930's. They featured Technicolor views of beautiful & unusual sights around the globe, as well as vivid, concise commentary. These films were produced & narrated by James A. FitzPatrick.
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