Sasek's London

One of my favourite books that I've come across recently is a large, illustrated hardback called 'This is London', by the Czech artist Miroslav Sasek.

Published as part of a series that includes Paris, San Francisco, Rome and New York, Sasek's 1950s-style illustrations have gained a cult following and there is an excellent tribute website here.

I'd been meaning to keep 'This is London' for myself, but forgot to remove it from sale. This morning, my heart sank when I saw that it had been snapped up by a gentleman in Spain. My loss is his gain.

But before 'This is London' goes in the post, I thought I'd share some of the images. Sasek's book was published in 1959, so this is a London of City gents in bowler hats, chirpy Cockneys and, of course, this:

By the time I was born, the infamous smogs were a thing of the past (partly thanks to our old friend Sir Gerald Nabarro), but it took several decades for London to lose its association with thick fog.

I wonder if London will ever lose its association with most of the following images:

Half a century on, the bowler hats have disappeared and the Cockneys have mostly moved out to Essex and Kent, whilst commuters are increasingly likely to be reading the Daily Telegraph on their smartphones. London feels very different to the place I knew as a child - better in some ways, worse in others.

I shall be in London on Sunday afternoon, as I'm going to see a friend in a concert called 'Songs My Mother Taught Me' (a bit of misnomer for a collection of complex 20th century choral pieces; unless it was a very aspirational, middle class mother). But before that, I'm going to see this:

It looks slightly more promising than Martin Creed's Turner prize-winning work: the lights going on and off.

Sapphire

I've just watched a film called Sapphire, directed by Basil Dearden in 1959. On the one hand, it's a typical police procedural 'B' movie, with square-jawed, two-dimensional detectives, negotiating their way through a gallery of stereotypes. On the other, this is a remarkable film that explores a side of British society that was generally ignored.

The film opens with the body of a young woman being thrown on the ground. A jazzy soundtrack (played by the Johnny Dankworth Orchestra) establishes that this is going to be a gritty, hard-edged thriller. No poison pen letters or old ladies here.

Unusually for a film of this type, it's shot in colour and gives a vivid portrait of London in the 1950s: a shabby, grey, depressed-looking city that still hasn't recovered from the Blitz. What a contrast with America in the 1950s.

The Second World War effectively bankrupted Britain and it is striking how drab everything looks, from the clothing to the dull interiors. No wonder the Sixties happened.

Sapphire begins conventionally enough, but after only ten minutes the film suddenly - and without any warning - changes gear and what begins as a typical murder mystery turns into a story about racial bigotry, with the shock revelation that Sapphire Robbins was 'coloured'!

Filmed less than a year after the Notting Hill race riots, Sapphire is a brave attempt to depict the endemic racism in Britain towards the burgeoning West Indian community. Unfortunately, it is done in such a heavy-handed way that the film's agenda isn't always clear.

Fifty years on, scenes like this can make uncomfortable viewing:

'No matter how fair the skin, they can't hide that swing.'

The implication that anyone with black ancestry, however distant, has an irresistable compulsion to tap their feet to the rhythm may be one of the many reasons why this film isn't on DVD.

It's a shame, because I think that Dearden's heart is in the right place and he became well known for tackling controversial subjects.

Two years later he filmed Victim, with Dirk Bogarde risking his career as a mantinée idol to play a homosexual lawyer. Unfortunately Janet Green's screenplay for Sapphire is populated by stereotypes, not real people.

Take this hilarious scene involving a female police sergeant:

So there we have it. If you do a man's job, you must be a lesbian.
We can laugh now, but if I was a woman in the 1950s I'd feel like throwing a brick at the screen, particularly when the detective says 'There's a good girl'.

The sum of Sapphire is greater than its parts, thanks to the controversial subject matter and Basil Dearden's direction. Dearden's 1951 film Pool of London, which is the first post-Windrush film to feature an inter-racial romance, is now available on DVD. I hope that Sapphire will also be released in the near future.