Anthony Asquith, a rather dull stalwart of British cinema, kicks off his career with a dazzling tale of "work-a-day" folk in and around London's Underground. Asquith seems to have absorbed everything going in the cinema of the late 1920s and throws it all at this film. Here is a film maker determined to make his mark and every scene is crammed with visual ideas. These ideas may have been borrowed from Lang, Ganz, Murnau, Eisenstein and the rest, but Asquith brilliantly puts them to work telling his story of working class Londoners.
Underground uses real London locations and authentic looking sets as a back drop for the melodramatic goings on (love, jealousy, murder) of the story, and the supporting cast are given ample screen time and bits of business to portray "real" Londoners. This makes for surprising and refreshing viewing. Perhaps this is more Ealing Comedy than social realism, but the action does seem to have broken free from the studio and taken to the streets. The film opens on the Underground of course, with trains, tunnels and escalators, and engaging scenes of the social behaviour of people crammed into too small a space. Our hero and heroine (Bill and Nell) meet cute on an escalator. Later on we get a London pub complete with a grumpy barmaid observing a punch-up with the detachment of bored familiarity; imagine Clara Bow's It Girl if she'd ended up serving bar for thirty years. Bill and Nell's first date starts on the top of a real omnibus with streets swooping past in the background. They picnic in a park. Their relationship is touchingly wholesome and their scenes take place in the outdoors and the fresh air in a real live London.
Bert and Kate, the other couple in this story, are far more dysfunctional. They live in the same boarding house, which has an expressionist, claustrophobic horror about it. Kate, a seamstress, live and works in her shadowy room, and expresses her unrequited love for Bert in contorted, bird-like gestures. All her actions are laced with desperation and fragility, culminating in a frantic dash draped in a huge black coat in the shadow of a monolithic power station. Norah Baring is particularly unnerving in this role. Bert, Cyril McLaglen in a vigorous performance worthy of Lon Chaney, works at the power station in a futurist room of dials and levers, and the final confrontation takes place in this surreal space before we chase across the gantries and up the ladders of apparently real locations. At the height of this pursuit a door is pushed open, and the streets of London are arrayed heart-stoppingly below us. The film thrillingly takes to the roofs and cranes of Lots Road Power Station.
Underground is a hugely entertaining film with excellent performances, but Asquith is the star here. He gives us the avant garde cinematic styles of the day and mashes them up with a consummate grasp of silent film language into one of the very best British films of the silent period.
Underground uses real London locations and authentic looking sets as a back drop for the melodramatic goings on (love, jealousy, murder) of the story, and the supporting cast are given ample screen time and bits of business to portray "real" Londoners. This makes for surprising and refreshing viewing. Perhaps this is more Ealing Comedy than social realism, but the action does seem to have broken free from the studio and taken to the streets. The film opens on the Underground of course, with trains, tunnels and escalators, and engaging scenes of the social behaviour of people crammed into too small a space. Our hero and heroine (Bill and Nell) meet cute on an escalator. Later on we get a London pub complete with a grumpy barmaid observing a punch-up with the detachment of bored familiarity; imagine Clara Bow's It Girl if she'd ended up serving bar for thirty years. Bill and Nell's first date starts on the top of a real omnibus with streets swooping past in the background. They picnic in a park. Their relationship is touchingly wholesome and their scenes take place in the outdoors and the fresh air in a real live London.
Bert and Kate, the other couple in this story, are far more dysfunctional. They live in the same boarding house, which has an expressionist, claustrophobic horror about it. Kate, a seamstress, live and works in her shadowy room, and expresses her unrequited love for Bert in contorted, bird-like gestures. All her actions are laced with desperation and fragility, culminating in a frantic dash draped in a huge black coat in the shadow of a monolithic power station. Norah Baring is particularly unnerving in this role. Bert, Cyril McLaglen in a vigorous performance worthy of Lon Chaney, works at the power station in a futurist room of dials and levers, and the final confrontation takes place in this surreal space before we chase across the gantries and up the ladders of apparently real locations. At the height of this pursuit a door is pushed open, and the streets of London are arrayed heart-stoppingly below us. The film thrillingly takes to the roofs and cranes of Lots Road Power Station.
Underground is a hugely entertaining film with excellent performances, but Asquith is the star here. He gives us the avant garde cinematic styles of the day and mashes them up with a consummate grasp of silent film language into one of the very best British films of the silent period.