Not part of a collection.
London Belongs to Me
Classic British drama about the residents of a large terrace house in London between Christmas 1938 and September 1939. Percy Boon lives with his mother in a shared rented house with an assortment of characters in central London. Although well intentioned, he becomes mixed up with gangsters and murder. The story focuses on the effects this has on Percy and the other residents.
- Original title
- London Belongs to Me
- Language
- EN
- Country
- GB
- Budget
- —
- Revenue
- —
CinemaSerf
Jul 9, 2022 · via TMDB
Richard Attenborough leads a somewhat disjointed cast in this rather lengthy drama. He is "Percy", a rather impressionable young man who lives with his beloved mother (Gladys Henson) in a boarding house amidst a host of interesting lodgers. Sadly for him, he is soon mixed up with the wrong sort - some small time hoodlums - and becomes a murder suspect. I suppose the house to be a metaphor for the broader United Kingdom following the end of WWII - a collection of the aspirational, the optimistic, and the resigned - but there are too many characters for us to keep tabs on, and though the efforts from Alastair Sim as the Dickensianly titled "Mr. Squales"; Stephen Murray, the lovely Fay Compton ("Mrs. Josser") and a superb series of scenes, rather late in the day, from Hugh Griffith all stand up fine on their own, the film as a combination piece is pretty much all over the place. Attenborough tries hard, and at times he does fire on all cylinders, but he isn't quite good enough to pull all the strands together, nor is the Sidney Gilliat direction/screenplay, so it can come across as just a little too much of an episodic compendium of loosely connected stories rather than a cohesive feature. Still, it does provide us with quite an interesting observation of post war London and of a way of communal life now (mercifully) long gone for most of us.
User reviews courtesy of TMDB.
Richard Attenborough
Percy Boon
Alastair Sim
Mr. Squales
Fay Compton
Mrs. Josser
Stephen Murray
Uncle Henry
Wylie Watson
Mr. Josser
Susan Shaw
Doris Josser
Hugh Griffith
Headlam Fynne
Joyce Carey
Mrs Vizzard
Andrew Crawford
Bill
Eleanor Summerfield
The Blonde
Jack McNaughton
Jimmy
Maurice Denham
Jack Rufus
Aubrey Dexter
Mr Battlebury
Henry Hewitt
Verriter
Arthur Howard
Mr Chinkwell
Fabia Drake
Mrs Jan Byl
Sydney Tafler
Night Club Receptionist
Henry Edwards
Police Superintendant
Cyril Chamberlain
Det Sgt Wilson
John Salew
Mr Banks
Russell Waters
Clerk of the Court
Ivor Barnard
Mr Justice Plymme
Wensley Pithey
1st Warden
Arthur Lowe
Commuter on Train (uncredited)
Ewen Solon
Clerk (uncredited)
Myrette Morven
Female Employee (uncredited)
Ewan Roberts
1st Policeman (uncredited)
Leo Genn
Narrator (uncredited)
Sidney Gilliat
Director
Frank Launder
Producer
Sidney Gilliat
Producer
Sidney Gilliat
Screenplay
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Nov 7, 1948
