The London Nobody Knows

James Mason presents The London Nobody Knows, based on the book by Geoffrey Fletcher. To watch in your browser on Veoh’s site you will need to download a plug-in and deal with all sorts of pesky bullshit and ads, but, wait, oh look! It seems to play fine in the embed on this page, and, even better, there is a download link. The file is a bit sketchy in parts, but, hey, it’s free! I would wait in line and pay for my ticket to see James Mason stand in a gloriously decaying theatre talking about Walter Sickert and the golden age of British music halls. And that’s just the first five minutes. The film is also available in a couple different DVD packages: paired with Les Bicyclettes de Belsize (region 2) and as part of The London Collection with five other films (including Les Bicyclettes de Belsize, and also region 2). The film has a good share of Jack the Ripper lore in it. The name Walter Sickert will likely be most familiar to regular visitors to this site as a character in Alan Moore’s dissection of the Ripper story – From Hell. One of my very first jobs in comics was to black out a few grapes on the introduction page to each installment of From Hell when it originally appeared in Stephen Bissette’s Taboo anthology.