Metro-Land (1973 film)
| Metro-land | |
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Title card of Metro-Land.
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| Produced by | Edward Mirzoeff |
| Written by | John Betjeman |
| Narrated by | John Betjeman |
| Cinematography | John McGlashan |
| Distributed by | BBC One |
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Release date
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26 February 1973 |
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Running time
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50 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Metro-Land is a BBC documentary film written and narrated by the then UK Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman. It was directed by Edward Mirzoeff and first broadcast on 26 February 1973. The film celebrates suburban life in the area to the Northwest of London that grew up in the early 20th century around the Metropolitan Railway (later the Metropolitan line of the Underground).
"Metro-land" was the slogan coined by the railway for promotional purposes in about 1915 and used for about twenty years, until shortly after the incorporation of the Metropolitan into the railways division of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933. As Betjeman himself put it at the beginning of Metro-land, it was a "Child of the First War, forgotten by the Second". Betjeman carries the pamphlet guide to Metro-land from the 1920s with him as he travels.
The film was critically acclaimed and is fondly remembered today. A DVD was released in 2006 to coincide with the centenary of Betjeman's birth.
According to Mirzoeff, the programme was conceived in 1971 over lunch with Betjeman at Wheeler's Restaurant in Soho. The two had recently collaborated on a BBC series called Bird's-Eye View, which offered an aerial vision of Britain. Metro-Land was commissioned by Robin Scott, Controller of BBC Two, with the initial working title of "The Joys of Urban Living". As completed, it was a series of vignettes of life in the suburbs of Metro-land, drawn together by Betjeman’s commentary, partly in verse, whose text was published in 1978, and interwoven with black-and-white film shot from a Metropolitan train in 1910. It was 49 minutes long.
Betjeman's first appearance in Metro-land is over a pint of beer in a station buffet, reminiscent of a scene in the film Brief Encounter (1945). This sequence was filmed at Horsted Keynes, on the Bluebell Railway in Sussex. Other locations include:
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