50 Greatest London Movies

Truly Madly Deeply (1990)

The Movie: Nina (Juliet Stevenson) is left distraught when her lover Jamie (Alan Rickman) dies in Anthony Minghella’s whimsical and affecting fantasy drama.

Only In London: Though made on a tiny budget of just $650,000, London affords Minghella’s film a suitably grand scope.

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

The Movie: Gangster George Thomason (Tom Georgeson) plans a jewel heist with his stuttering sidekick, hiring con woman Wanda Gershwitz (Jamie Lee Curtis) and weapons man Otto West (Kevin Kline) to help.

Only In London: Director Charles Crichton took full advantage of filming on location in London, setting his camera up at Bermondsey, Clerkenwell Green and Maida Vale.

The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

The Movie: Tired of his job, London bank clerk Henry Holland (Alec Guinness) hatches a plan to steal gold bullion and retire for good.

Only In London: The Bank of England helped screenwriter T.E.B. Clarke to plan the movie bank heist – can’t imagine they’d be quite so helpful today…

The Ladykillers (1955)

The Movie: Black comedy from Ealing Studios in which a group of crooks plan a robbery at King’s Cross station, and need an old woman’s house to complete the job.

Only In London: Mrs. Louisa Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) is a great old-school Londoner – a fanciful gossiper who’s always making work for the police. Location-wise, the robbery scene was shot on Cheney Street, near King’s Cross.

The Italian Job (1969)

The Movie: Michael Caine stars as mobster Charlie, who plans to steal a gold shipment from Turin.

Only In London: Though the original script was entirely set in London, budgetary restrains meant the heist was switched to Turin. Still, the film remains redolent of ‘60s London, with a memorable Mini training session shot at the race track in Sydenham, South London.

Frenzy (1972)

The Movie: The police set out to catch a serial killer who’s murdering women using a necktie.

Only In London: Unlike Dial M For Murder , Hitchcock was given full reign in London for Frenzy , where he made extensive, impressive use of Covent Garden Market, the film’s main location.

Children Of Men (2006)

The Movie: In the year 2027, human society is on the brink of collapse thanks to two decades of infertility. Then a civil servant (Clive Owen) discovers a West African refugee who’s pregnant.

Only In London: Taking A Clockwork Orange as inspiration, director Alfonso Cuarón couldn’t imagine filming anywhere else. “It would have been impossible to shoot anywhere but London, because of the very obvious way the locations were incorporated into the film,” he says.

Nineteen-Eighty-Four (1984)

The Movie: Michael Radford’s adaptation of George Orwell’s novel, with Winston Smith (John Hurt) living in the totalitarian state of Oceania.

Only In London: London provides the perfect setting for the dystopian tale of censorship and surveillance, which was light-years ahead of its time.

The Long Good Friday (1980)

The Movie: Violent, abrasive, unforgiving, John Mackenzie’s peerless crime drama stars Bob Hoskins as gangster Harold. He's a cockney.

Only In London: With its fantastic location shoots, The Long Good Friday is the perfect ‘80s London film – not least because, as movie myth has it, real gangsters attended the shoot.

The Omen (1976)

The Movie: Cult horror classic from director Richard Donner. A wealthy London family discover their son is the spawn of the antichrist.

Only In London: This is Silver Jubilee-era London, stripped of its Hollywoodised veneer and presented as it truly was. Richard Donner location hops from Fulham to Windsor Safari Park to the US embassy, sparing London no blushes.