Top 5: London Movies

Iconic as the capital may be, there are only a handful of truly great films set in London. So Gentry have plucked the very best of them (some from the depths of obscurity) to hand you a select guide to the very best London movies ever made. Enjoy!

5. PERFORMANCE (Nicholas Roeg and Donald Cammell, 1970)

"Performance" is a whacky story of two completely different worlds – crime and bohemian. Chas (James Fox) is an East London gangster who escapes the criminal scene and lodges at the queer palace of retired rock star Turner (Mick Jagger) and his two lithe female companions (one of which is the giorgeous Anita Pallenberg). They guide the hard man-in-exile through a disturbing journey of self–discovery that leads to merger of Chas’ and Turner’s personalities. Jagger and Fox are perfect in this utterly insane mood piece.

4. THE FALLEN IDOL (Carol Reed, 1948)

There are lies and lies,” mumbles Baines, butler to the French Ambassador, to his severe, sadistic wife, “and some lies are just kindness.” The shifting importance of truth is the subject of Carol Reed’s incredible domestic thriller, a theme with which the characters seem to have a desperate, frightful relationship. A year before he directed "The Third Man", Reed took his fluid, uniquely perceptive camera into the home, with fantastic success. A cruel and astute script from Graham Greene, brought to life by Ralph Richardson's greatest ever performance.

3. IRINA PALM (Sam Garbarski, 2007)

If "naughty granny" was a genre, then this would be its "Citizen Kane". Marianne Faithfull plays Maggie, a middle-class suburban widow preparing to settle into a meek and marginal old age. Maggie has a few friends, but her great love is for her grandson, Olly, whose life is threatened by an illness that can be cured only by an experimental treatment available in Australia that his family can’t afford. So, Faithful innocently answers an ad and finds herself ensconced in the cozy, comical underworld of prostitution. She becomes a sensation, the best "glory-hole" girl Soho's ever known! This is an absolutely barmy piece of filmmaking that MUST be seen to be believed.

2. NIL BY MOUTH (Gary Oldman, 1997)

Gary Oldman's brutal depiction of South London scumbags is a true masterpiece of underclass cinema. Ray Winstone puts in a performance to rival de Niro in "Raging Bull" and Cathy Burke will never do anything better – a career high for all involved. But there's no sermonising or romanticising here, just a sad, clear-eyed acknowledgement that domestic abuse and crime create a vicious circle from which many barely even try to escape. Shot and scripted in a deceptively casual, bleakly 'realist' style, it's the closest Britain has produced to a Cassavetes film, and as such, profoundly humane.

1. REPULSION (Roman Polanski, 1965)

Still perhaps Polanski's most perfectly realised film, a stunning portrait of the disintegration, mental and emotional, of a shy young Belgian girl (Deneuve) living in London. When she's left alone by her sister in their Kensington flat, she becomes reclusive and retreats into a terrifying world of fantasies and nightmares which find murderous physical expression when she is visited by a would-be boyfriend and her leering landlord. Polanski employs a host of wonderfully integrated visual and aural effects to suggest the inner torment Deneuve suffers: cracks in pavements, hands groping from walls, shadows under doors, rotting skinned rabbits, and – as in Rosemary's Baby – the eerie, ever-present sound of someone practising scales on a piano. All in all, one of the most intelligent horror movies ever made, and certainly one of the most frighteningly effective.

Can you think of any we've missed out? Let us know below.

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