ThiefHott Too much of everything

2freensel I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

Helllins It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Tad Pole . . . in your own backyard, favorite picnic area, or on your local ball field during the past million years or so. LOOKING AT LONDON is narrated with the attitude that normal people WANT to know that this small pile of ashes was "Bill Shakespeare's" original draft of TWELFTH NIGHT, or that those smoking embers were once the final resting place chopping block for the noggins of "Annie Boleyn, Walt Raleigh, and King Chuck I." There's way too much historical stuff and famous art work still around for any one person to view it all in even a dozen lifetimes (largely because a few parochial nations insist upon making the "Kodak Moment" process highly expensive, time-consuming, and inefficient by REFUSING to move their most important relics to Arizona for safe-keeping: London Bridge has been kept from falling down ever since it was relocated to near the Grand Canyon decades ago--what are The Great Pyramids, Notre Dame Cathedral, and that Tower of Pizza waiting for, an engraved invitation?) LOOKING AT LONDON strives for a melancholy tone likely to cause viewers to vow NEVER to set foot in England. But the fact of the matter is that if you're the first one in a couple centuries to dig down 10 feet virtually ANYWHERE on this globe, you're simply bound to unearth a few human skeletons before working up a sweat.

skiddoo Views of damage in London are hard to find in postwar movies. Passport to Pimlico is a rare exception, as is this travelogue. Still to come for plucky peacetime London are additional years of rationing and the killer smog of 1952. The effect of coal smoke is clearly evident in the dark cast to all the buildings. (Yes, I know they also had fires from bombs.) It's no wonder one reviewer remembered this as black and white. Between the condition of the buildings and the fading of the film, it nearly is! :) Looking at this as an opportunity to rebuild on better lines with more appreciation for the landmarks is of course the right way to view the devastation. Sometimes it takes a disaster to put things on a better path.I doubt I would have appreciated these travelogues when they first came out but as history, wow, they are sensational. They went all over Europe right up to the start of war and went back right afterward. Incredible. I hope they are restored some day and kept in an archive for future historians.

Michael_Elliott Looking at London (1946) *** (out of 4) Another entry in MGM's TravelTalk series this time taking a look at London with such sites as Buckingham Palace, the Bank of England, Hyde Park, the various bridges and much more. This series paid quite a few visits to England so the sites here aren't anything new but what is new is that this was filmed just years after WW2 so we get to see some of the destruction caused by the war. We get to see various buildings that were involved in bombings and this includes the birthplace of Charles and Mary Lamb. While the documentary does look at many bombed sites, it also wants to make clear that the British people are very strong and moving out in repairing their cities.

Neil Doyle The narrator is quick to point out that although the blitz during WWII did destroy many buildings in London, many did survive intact. And, of course, the British spirit never died. Once the war was over, the renewal began with the building and reconstruction of the city. This is a typical James A. FitzPatrick TravelTalk short subject.We get a glimpse of London sites--the Thames, the bridges, the Bank of England, Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, and monuments to Queen Victoria and Lord Nelson. All of these buildings and Piccadilly Circus survived.Then we're shown some of the damaged buildings, foremost among them being the birthplace of Charles and Mary Lamb and some ruins surrounding St. Paul's Cathedral. The cathedral itself was miraculously undamaged and stands proud and tall above the ruins.A closing section deals with the British spirit to survive the scars of war and the assurance that the rebuilding will soon begin.Aside from the monuments for Queen Victoria and Lord Nelson, we're also shown a statue of Abraham Lincoln near Buckingham Palace, proof of the good relationship Great Britain has with the United States.