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The Cine-Tourist


​Muswell Hill in films


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Muswell Hill is the North London suburb where I was born and now live. The first of Muswell Hill's few associations with the cinema dates from the establishment of a factory and studio in Sydney Road by Robert W. Paul in 1898. For more on Paul's involvement with the area see my local filmmaker.
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The Unfortunate Policeman (1905) on Colney Hatch Lane, N.10
An oblique association with early cinema was made by the 1951 film The Magic Box, a biography of William Friese-Greene. The film shows the Friese-Greene family living at 25 Church Crescent, N.10:
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Though this is supposed to be 'a house in Brighton'. By coincidence, according to my father who knew him,  Friese-Greene's grandson (Peter?) lived in Muswell Hill in the 1950s, on Colney Hatch Lane.

A 2010 house-bound thriller called Cherry Tree Lane showed the exterior of 54 Dukes Avenue, N.10:
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Forty-six years earlier and nine houses along, The Americanization of Emily showed James Garner visiting Julie Andrews at 72 Dukes Avenue, N.10:
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The Americanization of Emily (Arthur Hiller 1964)
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The shot showing Garner's approach to the house also offers a view of Muswell Hill's chief cinematic attraction, Alexandra Palace:
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The earliest film-sighting of Alexandra Palace I have so far found is this, from 1905:
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Wetherill Road, N.10, in The Unfortunate Policeman (R.W. Paul 1905)
​Its silhouette can just be made out in the background. It can also be seen, just about, in this 1906 film:
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Wetherill Road, N.10, in The Medium Exposed (R.W. Paul 1906)
Robert Paul documented some attractions in Alexandra Park, such as the switchback railway:
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A Switchback Railway (R.W. Paul 1898)
And his catalogue lists two films documenting the ascent of airships, that constructed by William Beedle in 1903 and, in 1905, the Barton-Rawson airship. The first of these is illustrated and described thus:
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The second is described thus:
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Two years after Paul stopped making films in Muswell Hill, a studio was set up  at Alexandra Palace:
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Patricia Warren, British Film Studios (London: Batsford, 1995), p.11
I don't know whether any films made in the three years of this studio's existence used the Palace itself as a location, or its grounds. Likewise for when the BBC broadcast from there between 1936 and 1981 - other, that is, than Fred Streeter's gardening programme, as we can see here: 
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Alexandra Palace came into its own as a film location in the late '60s and early '70s. In 1967 Tinto Brass shot the climax of his Blowup pastiche  thriller Col cuore un gola​ on a balcony with a panorama over London as backdrop:
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Col cuore in gola (Tinto Brass 1967)
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The preceding sequence  was filmed inside Alexandra Palace, on April 27, as the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream played out, a performance and music event with Pink Floyd as headliners:
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This same event featured in Peter Whitehead's 'Pop Concerto for Film', Tonite Let's All Make Love In London​:
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Tonite Let's All Make Love In London (Peter Whitehead 1967)
The following year the hall hosted bra-centred celebrations in The Bliss of Mrs Blossom:
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The Bliss of Mrs Blossom (Joseph McGrath 1968)
Of all films that have used Alexandra Palace, Lucio Fulci's London-set giallo Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971) best displays the place, outside and in:
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Una lucertola con la pelle di donna (Lucio Fulci 1971)
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​Two mid-'80s films staged apocalyptic visions at Alexandra Palace:
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Nineteen Eighty-Four (Michael Radford 1984)
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Lifeforce (Tobe Hooper 1985)
​Since the 1990s Muswell Hill has been a passing location in twee dramas such as these:
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Crocodile Antiques, 120 Muswell Hill Broadway, N.10, in Secrets and Lies (Mike Leigh 1996)
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Fortismere School, near Twyford Avenue, N.10, in Fever Pitch (David Evans 1997)
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Alexandra Palace in Shooting Fish (Stefan Schwartz 1997)
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Alexandra Palace in Breaking and Entering (Anthony Minghella 2006)
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Alexandra Palace in Hereafter (Clint Eastwood 2010)
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Muswell Hill Bookshop, 72 Fortis Green Road, N.10, in Tamara Drewe (Stephen Frears 2010)

​My favourtite Muswell Hill cine-moment is from Robert Asher's 1960 comedy Make Mine Mink. A first shot shows police cars leaving Muswell Hill Police Station and speeding down Fortis Green:
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And the next shows the first of those police cars on Muswell Hill Broadway - going in the wrong direction, logically, if it has just come from Fortis Green:
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I like this sequence mainly for personal reasons, firstly because my brother Christophe was based for a while at that police station, and secondly because the 134 bus we see on Muswell Hill Broadway is the bus I take to get to work (though this one is only going as far as Archway).

I also like this sequence because it is followed by a shot of a police control room with a nice map of London:
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​(I don't mind that the map only shows South London.)
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Beauty in the Borough (c.1960)