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Sunday, October 16, 2005
Leytonstone London Underground Hitchcock Mosaics and quiz
As it's the London Film Festival too, this post seems relevant. One of the world's greatest film directors, Alfred Hitchcock, was born in Leytonstone in the East End of London in 1899 and in 2001 a series of mosaics illustrating his life and scenes from films were installed at Leytonstone Tube Station. It's a crime that more people don't know about them really, and also a crime that the lighting is shite, as most of them are in the subway underpass beneath the road.
But if you fancy going over there one day, and can stand all the people of Leytonstone rushing past hardly noticing them, you're in for a treat.
When you come out of the ticket hall you see this image of Hitchcock directing:
You might then want to nip quickly outside to see how the people of Leystonstone see the mosaics from various entrances:
There's a brilliantly flamboyant mosaic of Hitchcock with Marelene Dietrich, which is my favourite non-film scene one:
The others are all mainly ones from his best films, including Psycho and The Birds, but I thought it might be fun to see, if you can guess which films they are from. There's no prizes, just the satisfaction of seeing how well you know your Hitch! Only guess ONE FILM each please (with apologies to Diamond Geezer & his quizzes).
So here goes:
1. Yellow & Blue - I love the colours in this
2. Surveillance camera - Like the way there's a London Underground surveillance camera sign next to this one of a man clearly up to no good on the rooftops:
3. Plane Chase - I suppose this one is fairly obvious:
4. Merry go round scene - I deliberately left the man dashing by on this shot as it helps to emphasise the movement in the original film
5. James Stewart wheelchair - fab film which Christopher Reeve did a re-make of:
6. Glowing Milk - another fantastic film with some great cinematic techniques:
7. French & Saunders - you can imagine them parodying this:
8. Car Chase - yet another classic car scene
9. Bar Scene - with Hitchcock doing his usual cameo background walk on
10. Car 25 - it's the last one to guess!
And just cos they are so brill here are Psycho and The Birds:
Enjoy "the quiz" and try to get to see them yourself if you can as there are sixteen mosaics altogether and I haven't shown all of them.
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