Maps feature only once, in an office at a fictional airbase ('Farnwell'). The film is, effectively, 'Charlie Chan in England', with an accumulation of stereotypical signs (hunting, bobbies, class-inflected accents...) to ensure authenticity. A substantial assembly of authentic British actors (at least 16 of them, including Alan Mowbray, Mona Barrie and Ray Milland) also contributed to this impression.
Very little other than the film's title situates Chan in London. (It is of course a Hollywood-made film.) Most of the action takes place in a country house in a fictional county ('Retfordshire'), and the few London scenes are all interiors, save for the view of the Houses of Parliament that serves as backdrop to the opening and closing credits, and an exterior view of a prison. A title tells us this is 'Pentonville Prison - London', and we also see fictional newspapers that bear the city's name ('The London Planet', 'London Daily Post', 'London Gazette'). Maps feature only once, in an office at a fictional airbase ('Farnwell'). The film is, effectively, 'Charlie Chan in England', with an accumulation of stereotypical signs (hunting, bobbies, class-inflected accents...) to ensure authenticity. A substantial assembly of authentic British actors (at least 16 of them, including Alan Mowbray, Mona Barrie and Ray Milland) also contributed to this impression. (The casting of Elsa Buchanan as the maid is discussed in a much later English country house film, Altman's Gosford Park.)
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