London has been used frequently both as a filming location and as a film setting. These have ranged from historical recreations of the Victorian London of Charles Dickens and Sherlock Holmes, to the romantic comedies of Bridget Jones's Diary and Notting Hill, by way of crime films, spy thrillers, science fiction and the "swinging London" films of the 1960s.
Because of the dominant role played by the city in the British culture, the number of British mainstream and independent films set in London is enormous. It has also been used many times in American films, and often recreated on a Hollywood studio backlot.
Historical London Historical recreations of London on screen have been relatively frequent. The Tudor, Victorian, Edwardian and Second World War periods in the city's history have all been regularly depicted.
Pre-Victorian London
London in the Elizabethan Era has often been portrayed in films, including Fire Over England (1937), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), and Elizabeth (1998). Much of Shakespeare in Love (1998), a comedy involving Shakespeare in a fictionalised romance, was set around the original Globe Theatre, as was Laurence Olivier's 1944 Henry V.
The Tudor period has also been shown in other films, including the 1966 film of Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons, the 1990s adaptation of Orlando and various versions of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper.
Cromwell (1970) is one of the few films to show the city during the English Civil War, but several have been set during the subsequent restoration of the monarchy under Charles II. These include Nell Gwyn (1937), Forever Amber (1947) and Stage Beauty (2003). The 1995 film Restoration incorporates both the Great Plague and the Great Fire of 1665-66.
Late 18th and early 19th century London has been seen in a number of films, including Lady Hamilton (1941), Lady Caroline Lamb (1972), A Bequest to the Nation (1973), Princess Caraboo (1994), Sense and Sensibility (1995), and the various versions of The Scarlet Pimpernel.
Victorian London One of the most popular images of the city is the Victorian era of Charles Dickens, Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes. There have been almost 200 films based on the novels of Charles Dickens alone, beginning with the silent short film Death of Nancy Sykes in 1897. The most memorable of these are probably the musical Oliver! and the two David Lean films of Oliver Twist (1948) and Great Expectations (1946). Other film adaptations include David Copperfield in 1935 and 1969, Nicholas Nickleby in 1947 and 2002, The Pickwick Papers in 1952 and Little Dorrit in 1987. There have also been many versions of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, of which the 1951 Alastair Sim film Scrooge is often considered definitive.
Many films have also been made of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Basil Rathbone played Holmes in a series of American films from 1939 to 1946, with London recreated in Hollywood at 20th Century Fox and later Universal Studios. Other notable Holmes films which have strongly featured London backgrounds and locations are Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), and the comedies The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975) and Without a Clue (1988), as well as innumerable television films.
Holmes also dealt with the notorious Whitechapel serial killer Jack the Ripper in A Study in Terror in 1965 and Murder by Decree in 1978. The Ripper was also featured in Pandora's Box (1929), Jack the Ripper (1959), Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), Hands of the Ripper (1971), From Hell (2001) and several versions of The Lodger, including Hitchcock's silent film of 1926.
Much of the action in the Bram Stoker novel Dracula takes place in London, although several film adaptations have set it elsewhere. One notable exception is Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Other films set in Victorian London include the 1945 version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Victoria the Great (1937), Sixty Glorious Years (1938), The Mudlark (1950), The Wrong Box (1966), The Assassination Bureau (1968), The First Great Train Robbery (1978), Topsy-Turvy (1999), An Ideal Husband (1999), Shanghai Knights (2003), the 1956 version and 2004 version of Around the World in Eighty Days, the black-and-white film The Elephant Man (1980), based on the life of Joseph Merrick, and The Prestige (2005), set in the late Victorian era.
Other British cities, such as Edinburgh, or locations in other countries, are now often used for period films instead of filming in London itself. From Hell (2001), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) and Roman Polanski's 2005 film of Oliver Twist all recreated Victorian London in Prague in the Czech Republic.
Twentieth century Edwardian London has been depicted in several films, notably 2010 Academy Award Winner for Best Picture The King's Speech, Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets in 1949, the Merchant Ivory E. M. Forster adaptation Howards End (1992) and the biopic Young Winston (1972).
Wartime London has featured in many films, with The Man Who Loved Redheads and Zeppelin (1971) among those set during the First World War. The 1943 film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp covered 40 years in the city, including the Edwardian era, the First World War and the Second World War. Several others made during the Second World War itself, featured London locations, including Millions Like Us (1943) and Waterloo Road (1944). The Blitz featured prominently in the Ealing drama The Bells Go Down (1943), and in Humphrey Jennings' drama-documentary Fires Were Started (1943). The latter featured real firemen recreating scenes from the bombings. At the same time, a number of London-set films were being made in Hollywood, like Waterloo Bridge (1940), Mrs. Miniver (1942) and Forever and a Day (1943). The latter followed several generations of owners of a London house until 1943. Later films set in the city during World War II include The Man Who Never Was (1955), I Was Monty's Double (1958), Battle of Britain (1969), Hanover Street (1979), Hope and Glory (1987), Shining Through (1992) and The End of the Affair (1999), as well as some low-budget Italian-made war films like Eagles Over London (1969) and From Hell to Victory (1979).
The 1950s has been recreated in several films including 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) and Shadowlands (1993). The 1960s has proved particularly popular with film makers in recent years, especially for crime films like Buster (1988), Scandal (1989), The Krays (1990), Honest (2000) and Gangster No. 1 (2000). Withnail and I (1987) economically recreated the Camden Town area in the 1960s.
Postwar London The Ealing comedies of the 1940s and 1950s made repeated use of locations in the city. Hue and Cry (1947) and Passport to Pimlico (1949) were memorably set in the ruins and bombsites of post-war London. In the 1950s The Lavender Hill Mob made extensive use of London locations, as did the dramas The Blue Lamp and Pool of London, while The Ladykillers used King's Cross Station and its surrounding marshalling yards as the backdrop to its story. The 1952 film The Happy Family is set on the South Bank during the lead up to the Festival of Britain.
Many other comedies have used locations in the city, some of the best known being The Ghosts of Berkeley Square (1947), Doctor in the House (1954), The Horse's Mouth (1958), Mars Attacks!, Independence Day: Resurgence, Nuns on the Run, Mr. Bean, Bedazzled (1967), Brassed Off (1996), Billy Elliot (2000) and Bend It Like Beckham (2002).
Swinging London With new developments in music, cinema and fashion, London found itself the centre of youth culture in the 1960s. The image of "swinging London", partly a creation of Time magazine, helped to fuel a production boom in the British film industry throughout the decade. The Beatles made memorable use of locations in the city in A Hard Day's Night (1964) (#1 in U.S.), and a huge number of other London-set films followed. These included The Pumpkin Eater, The Knack ...and How to Get It, Darling, Arabesque, Kaleidoscope, Georgy Girl, Morgan!, Alfie, Blowup, I'll Never Forget What's'isname, Casino Royale, Poor Cow, Up the Junction, Bedazzled, To Sir, with Love, The Jokers, Otley, Wonderwall, Smashing Time, Salt and Pepper and The Italian Job.
Romantic London The city has often been used as the backdrop for romances like Indiscreet (1958) with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman and A Touch of Class (1973), and has become popular for romantic comedies in recent years. This is at least partly due to the television and film writer Richard Curtis, who has written some of the most successful British films of recent years — The Tall Guy (1989), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999) and Love Actually (2003), all set or partly set in the city. The films follow the awkward love lives of largely upper-middle class characters (aside from The Tall Guy, always including one played by Hugh Grant). The majority of the Bridget Jones films are set and shot in London.
Curtis has been criticised for pandering to the American market by playing to the stereotype of the English as posh, socially awkward eccentrics. This hasn't stopped the films generally being a huge success in the American and British cinema box office charts. Other films which have followed in Curtis's footsteps include Sliding Doors (1998), Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence (1998), About a Boy (2002), Wimbledon, and the American film What a Girl Wants (2002). Londinium (2001) used locations in Berkeley Square, Mayfair, Hyde Park, Primrose Hill Park and at Waterloo station. Man Up (2015) is mostly set in the city with focus on the South Bank.
Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Jude Law and Clive Owen conducted their affairs around various parts of London in Closer (2004), which uses locations such as Clerkenwell, the London Aquarium, Bloomsbury, the River Thames and the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane.
Woody Allen's Match Point (2005), uses a very up-market view of the city to reflect the upper class lives of the protagonists, including locations in Notting Hill, Belgravia, Chelsea, St. James's Park and Tate Modern.
Director Raine Allen-Miller's Rye Lane unfolds against the photographed backdrop of South London locales Peckham, Brixton, Brockwell Park, and the South Bank.
Thrillers Alfred Hitchcock probably started the fashion for using London landmarks for spy films, starting with Blackmail in 1929, which was set entirely in the city and finished on the dome of the British Museum. Many of his other thrillers followed a similar pattern, including The Man Who Knew Too Much (both the 1934 and 1956 versions), The 39 Steps (1935), Sabotage (1937), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Stage Fright (1950) and Frenzy (1972). London has since featured in many other thrillers, including Hunted (1952) The Yellow Balloon (1953) Sapphire (1959), Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), The IPCRESS File (1965), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), The Deadly Affair (1966), Arabesque (1966), The Black Windmill (1974), The Whistle Blower (1987), The Fourth Protocol (1987), Blue Ice (1992), The Innocent Sleep (1995) and briefly in Mission: Impossible (1996) and the Bollywood feature film Bade Miyan Chote Miyan (2024). This trend was spoofed in the films Otley (1968) with Tom Courtenay, and more recently in The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997) with Bill Murray and the Austin Powers films (#1 in U.S. box office). Anthony Minghella's film Breaking and Entering (2006) with Jude Law is named also a Romantic drama.