On Loca­tion: The Lon­don pub from With­nail & I

In Bruce Robinson’s 1987 film With­nail & I, loca­tions are piv­otal. The urban and the rur­al are at first treat­ed as poles apart, the antithe­sis of each oth­er. The lat­ter is treat­ed as the cure for the ills caused by the bru­tal­i­ties of for­mer with its end­less peo­ple and array of new con­crete build­ings. But Robinson’s film, fol­low­ing two down-and-out actors in late 1960s Lon­don, is real­ly a satir­i­cal sub­ver­sion of this divide of place.

The tough, albeit comedic, pre­sen­ta­tion of the cap­i­tal is matched by an equal­ly unfor­giv­ing rur­al land­scape and its cast of coun­try peo­ple. The rela­tion­ship is arguably sum­marised best in the film’s por­tray­al of dif­fer­ing pub­lic hous­es, both of which are in their own way intim­i­dat­ing. It’s a false vision of the roman­tic coun­try­side, only dis­cov­er­able by those who go on hol­i­day by mistake.

With­nail & I is a wan­der­ing nar­ra­tive; a pes­simistic, acci­den­tal road movie of sorts with­out a life affirm­ing end­ing. In Cam­den, 1969, two job­bing actors, With­nail (Richard E Grant) and Mar­wood (Paul McGann), are strug­gling with Lon­don life. The city is com­ing down from the decade’s trip and act­ing jobs are as scarce as food.

Hun­gry, bored and ter­ri­fied of the Lon­don around them, the pair decides to use Withnail’s fam­i­ly link with the rich Uncle Mon­ty (Richard Grif­fiths) to spend a week­end in his house in the Lake Dis­trict. But, on arriv­ing there and find­ing their hec­tic, alco­hol and drug fuelled lifestyle at odds with the coun­try­side and the peo­ple who live there, the pair con­sid­er their own place in the decade’s crum­bling array of social casualties.

The Lon­don of With­nail & I is as ram­shackle as its main char­ac­ters. Old hous­es and build­ings are being torn down with­out a sec­ond thought, acci­dent black spots are pop­ping up, and even the refresh­ing green­ery of parks (in this case Regent’s Park) do lit­tle to dis­pel the des­per­ate need for drink and work. In oth­er words, Lon­don has been bat­tered by the decade and is com­ing out on the oth­er side limp­ing. It’s because of this sense of dilap­i­da­tion that the film’s famous scene in the pub, the fic­tion­al Moth­er Black Cap, res­onates through its grimy hos­til­i­ty and its scary clientele.

Con­sid­er­ing the scene in the pub bare­ly lasts sev­er­al min­utes, it’s one of the film’s best remem­bered and cel­e­brat­ed sequences. Our pair of leads final­ly wan­der into the pub for a drink after wait­ing all morn­ing mean­der­ing and hav­ing minor sub­stance induced break­downs. Hav­ing doused his shoes in per­fume after With­nail was sick on them, Mar­wood rais­es the ire of an angry Irish­man (Daragh O’Malley).

With­nail drops them in it fur­ther and the pair flee when the Irish­man squares up to them, even with With­nail plead­ing about nonex­is­tent preg­nant wives and heart con­di­tions. We see them crash out of the pub’s doors and charge down the road under the West­way escap­ing dan­ger. It’s a scene that works bet­ter onscreen rather than on the page.

The real point of this sequence is to show the sup­posed Lon­don that the pair are try­ing to escape from, a micro­cosm of unnamed aggres­sion. Yet Robinson’s film is real­ly about the fal­la­cy of believ­ing the coun­try­side, and in par­tic­u­lar its peo­ple, to be any bet­ter or more wel­com­ing than the pun­ters of The Moth­er Black Cap.

Com­pare this to the oth­er pub in the film, a coun­try pub in the Lakes that equal­ly descends into a sim­i­lar sce­nario, With­nail see­ing him­self as the bet­ter of the rur­al locals. In the end, they leave the rur­al pub under a sim­i­lar cloud of threat and cer­tain­ly a threat that feels far more tan­gi­ble in the form of Jake (Michael Elph­ick), the poach­er with eels in his trousers. Per­haps the pair would have fared bet­ter with the angry Irishman.

The real­i­ty of the loca­tion today is almost sur­re­al in com­par­i­son to the film. Trav­el­ling to West­bourne Park, I wan­dered to the loca­tion where the pub sat on Tavi­s­tock Cres­cent. In per­haps one of the more depress­ing devel­op­ments of well known Lon­don film loca­tions, The Tavi­s­tock Arms – the real name of the pub – was demol­ished only a few years back in 2011. In its place, a block of lux­u­ry flats now resides, glis­ten­ing with its marine-like architecture.

Even the devel­op­er behind the move admit­ted after the demo­li­tion that they were unaware of the pub’s cul­tur­al his­to­ry. It’s only real­ly dis­cernible as the same loca­tion due to the rum­bling mon­u­ment of the West­way behind and the pres­ence of Ernő Goldfinger’s Trel­lick Tow­er break­ing the sky­line; hid­den in my Polaroid on the day by a tree green­ing for spring.

Robin­son once said that he used the loca­tion due to it rep­re­sent­ing a ​“star­tling image of British despair which is why we chose it.” Walk­ing past anoth­er pub around the cor­ner, now closed but which had been open on my last vis­it to the loca­tion, it was clear that despair had tak­en on a new, more clean-cut image in the cap­i­tal since the film­ing of With­nail & I; one of pub­lic spaces falling and dis­ap­pear­ing. ​“They’re throw­ing them­selves into the road glad­ly! Throw­ing them­selves into the road to escape all this hideous­ness!” as With­nail appro­pri­ate­ly once said.

With thanks to Polaroid Orig­i­nals.