Remembrance and the Ambivalent Gaze

Harry B. Parkinson’s Wonderful London is a series of short travelogue films showing ‘pictorial sidelights on the worlds greatest city’, and intended to form part of the full supporting programme in cinemas during the mid-1920s (Figure 3.1). The episode dealing with Flowers of London (Parkinson, 1924) introduces viewers to various oases of floral beauty which can be found nestling among the ‘drab little streets’ of the capital. Starting in the garden of a Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) ‘Fellow’ in London Bridge, the film moves to Gladys Spalding’s flower shop in Lancaster Place, and thence to the gaudy bustle of Covent Garden and the flower girls of Piccadilly Circus. Each of these sections of the film is punctuated with tinted and toned close-ups identifying the varieties of flowers on display, and showing them in detail, filmed in the studio or growing in the gardens from whence they have been imported into the city. The floral journey west is given logic by the final location, which also brings a change of tone. ‘But there’s one monument in London under which we shall always find flowers — always, always, always!’ declares the intertitle, introducing a shot of the Cenotaph in Whitehall. A group of passers by are gathered at its foot, inspecting the floral tributes on the steps of the monument. A close-up shows the wealth of wreaths, pot plants and bouquets, all shown in situ, and a closing intertitle drives home the point, while introducing the implication that the ‘flowers of London’ may also operate as a metaphor for the city’s war dead: ‘Yes … here there will always be flowers … the most potent, the most tender, the most appealing … of all the flowers of London.’1