The Film Ledger @TheFilmLedgermo

CHILDREN OF MEN (2006) used real London streets to ground its dystopian future. Theo’s journey through Whitehall passes along Great Scotland Yard, with Admiralty House at the end of the road. Alfonso Cuarón also filmed a protest near Trafalgar Square from one of its traffic islands, looking down Whitehall.

JURASSIC PARK (1993) turned a story about a dinosaur theme park into a vast merchandising event. More than 100 licensees produced tie-ins including video games, action figures, plush toys, lunch boxes and storybooks. The film itself also places a souvenir shop inside John Hammond’s carefully packaged prehistoric attraction.

Susan Saint James, who starred in McMILLAN & WIFE and KATE & ALLIE, died on October 26 at 80. Her family remembered her generosity, kindness and habit of making everyone she met feel important. The television actor is survived by her husband, Dick Ebersol, four children and seven grandchildren.

THE OTHERS (2001) is set on Jersey in 1945, but Alejandro Amenábar shot the haunted-house film in Spain. Nicole Kidman’s Grace keeps her home dark to protect her light-sensitive children. Cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe, production designer Benjamin Fernandez and sound designer Isabel Díaz Cassou helped build its atmosphere of unease.

Stéphane Audran’s collaborations with Claude Chabrol included LE BOUCHER (1970), pictured here with Jean Yanne. Their run of suspense films is often called the Hélène cycle: beginning with LA FEMME INFIDÈLE (1969), Audran played a succession of bourgeois women who shared the name Hélène.

LES BONNES FEMMES (1960) follows a group of Parisian shop assistants through their daily routines and hopes for a different life. Claude Chabrol made it as a companion piece to the male-centered LES COUSINS, turning his attention to the young women of the same emerging Parisian generation.

In 1958, British distributor Contemporary Films released APARAJITO in February, THE SEVENTH SEAL in March, KANAL in June and WILD STRAWBERRIES in October. All four opened at London’s Academy Cinema. Founded by Charles Cooper in 1951, the company helped build a British audience for Satyajit Ray, Ingmar Bergman and Andrzej Wajda.

Gregory Markopoulos never saw ENIAIOS projected. The nearly 80-hour reworking of his life’s films was completed before his death in 1992. Robert Beavers began restoring its 22 cycles in 2000; the final four premiered at the Temenos in Arcadia in June 2026, completing a project presented outdoors on 16mm beneath the night sky.

An early shot in Peter Watkins’ THE WAR GAME follows a motorcycle messenger along Dock Road in Chatham to the old town hall. Made for the BBC in 1965, the nuclear-attack docudrama had its television broadcast withdrawn and instead screened at the National Film Theatre in 1966. Its Kent locations give the imagined catastrophe an everyday setting.

Jasper Talbot and Hannah Chinn will play James and Lily Potter in HBO’s HARRY POTTER series. Harry Gilby has also joined the cast as Charlie Weasley, Ron’s older brother. The series is written and executive produced by Francesca Gardiner, with Mark Mylod directing multiple episodes. The extent of James and Lily’s roles has not been revealed.

Peter Watkins built THE JOURNEY (1987) through community fundraising after broadcasters declined to support the project. The 14½-hour film visits families around the world to discuss nuclear weapons and the arms race, allowing time for participants to respond to what they see. Canada’s National Film Board later provided post-production facilities.

Sarah Maldoror’s first short, MONANGAMBÉE, pairs black-and-white 16mm images with a free-jazz soundtrack. The 18-minute film adapts a story by Angolan writer José Luandino Vieira and stars Elisa Andrade. Maldoror would return to both Vieira’s writing and Andrade for SAMBIZANGA, extending her interest in the lives of political prisoners and their families.

Sarah Maldoror’s SAMBIZANGA (1972) follows Maria, played by Elisa Andrade, as she searches for her arrested husband in colonial Angola. Permission to film there was impossible, so production took place in Congo with a largely nonprofessional cast. The film uses Portuguese, Kimbundu and Lingala, connecting Maria’s personal journey with the struggle around her.

Mike Leigh’s NUTS IN MAY (1976) takes Roger Sloman and Alison Steadman on a Dorset camping holiday as Keith and Candice Marie. Made for Play for Today, it follows their carefully planned sightseeing trip through places including Corfe Castle and St Aldhelm’s Head, while encounters with fellow campers steadily unravel their hopes of a peaceful escape.

The Karakata Shop in Horace Ové’s PRESSURE (1975) stands at 194 Kensington Park Road in Notting Hill. It is the family business of Tony, a school-leaver played by Herbert Norville. Filmed largely around Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove, the drama preserves a detailed record of west London’s streets and communities before later redevelopment.

SOLAR ECLIPSE (1900) survives from Nevil Maskelyne’s expedition to North Carolina. When his camera equipment failed to arrive, he rebuilt it locally and filmed the eclipse at around five or six frames per second. A previous attempt in India in 1898 had been filmed successfully, but the can containing that footage was stolen on its journey back to London.

ON THE BEACH (1959) cast Fred Astaire as a nuclear scientist, two years after he danced opposite Cyd Charisse in SILK STOCKINGS. Stanley Kramer’s adaptation of Nevil Shute’s novel follows survivors in Australia awaiting radioactive fallout. Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Anthony Perkins join Astaire in a drama that gives the end of the world an intimate human scale.

LA CÉRÉMONIE (1995) pairs Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire in Claude Chabrol’s adaptation of Ruth Rendell. Their alliance drives a rural thriller toward a violent home invasion. The film belongs to Chabrol’s long collaboration with Huppert, which also includes VIOLETTE NOZIÈRE, A STORY OF WOMEN, MADAME BOVARY and MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT.

Claude Chabrol made his feature debut with LE BEAU SERGE (1958). Jean-Claude Brialy plays François, who returns to his childhood village and finds his old friend Serge, played by Gérard Blain, trapped in a life far from his youthful ambitions. The rural drama preceded the Paris-set LES COUSINS, which had initially been planned as Chabrol’s first film but was delayed by the cost of shooting in the capital.

Stanley Kubrick directed Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall in THE SHINING (1980). Nicholson’s Jack Torrance gives the film a human source of menace, while its quieter domestic moments make the horror feel close to ordinary family life.