A couple of days after watching 1987’s Hidden City, I’m wondering how it could have gone so wrong. There’s actors I like in the cast, such as Charles Dance, Bill Paterson and Richard E. Grant. The plot centers around a forbidden film, a literary and cinematic trope I’m a sucker for. There’s even a government conspiracy to prevent the film from being found, which is an element reminiscent of the 70’s conspiracy thrillers I enjoy.
Dance plays a statistician, an occupation in which very few movie heroes are employed. One of his chief interests is evaluating the potential for children to learn better through video in comparison to other means. We first see him in a weird auditorium full of children watching built-in monitors, as if this is a professional version of that makeshift television viewing center in Videodrome.
He is furious when the educational film he intends to show the students has been replaced with a different one. A call from him to the facility that provides the materials results in Cassie Stuart getting sacked from her job. She will later insist repeatedly Dance owes her for the loss of her job, when it was her own incompetence that did that. Hell, when we first see her, she’s smoking around the film canisters. I wondered if they had any silver nitrate stock, because that could have been interesting.
I assume Dance has never heard one of the most important lessons I learned from the show 30 Rock, and that is, “Never go with a hippy to a second location”. The first place Stuart drags him to a coffee shop that, despite being in London, appears to be a wormhole to a Soviet Bloc country. Then she drags him to the office of her former employers who are, needless to say, not very pleased to see her.
Once Stuart finally gets to the point, she cues up an old educational short on a Moviola and points out to Dance the curious happenings around the frame in some moments. There’s a woman dragged into a car, clearly against her will. There is another person abruptly picked up by shadowy agents in a park.
Dance doesn’t see much intrigue in this and, really, I’m inclined to agree with him. For all we know, that footage could have been staged. Also, if it is anything important, then it is a mystery why it is buried in a bland educational film that would be rarely seen, and those who did would likely pay little attention to it.
At the end of the short is a card saying “Sell also: The Hedgerows of England”. It seems daft to me the person who worked in the surveillance footage directs the viewer to find another film for more of the same. Why not just put it all in one? Somehow, that second film is protected by the secrecy act and unavailable to the public until 2050. Gee, even The Day the Clown Cried is likely to be seen by then. Oh, and there will eventually be a third film in that series for our protagonists to track down.
If there’s one element I enjoyed, it was the hunt to locate those other two films. They first go to an archive for various materials, which is essentially a dumping ground for items never to be sought again. This is in a disused tunnel of the underground train system. The official who gives them a tour takes them to where the film cannisters used to be. If he knew those had been relocated, why didn’t he just tell them that before making them walk that far?
Other locations they will search in vain include yet another underground archive, a dump and a giant trash incinerator. At that second underground facility, they encounter two very unhelpful government employees who only impede their progress. Nor do they find the films at the dump, though Dance just happens to find a first edition of an Arthur Conan Doyle book. He also seems to grab on a whim some medical documents, for whatever reason. I’m glad he doesn’t spy any food items, or he probably would have helped himself to those, too. And, no, he didn’t find any Atari 2600 E.T. cartridges there, but thanks for asking.
We will eventually see all the secretly obtained footage and I had a big problem with it. It isn’t found footage, but one should ask the same questions or it which one asks of that genre. Chiefly, one should ask who obtained the footage and how did they accomplish the filming. What we see has many shots that could not be made on the sly. This is why undercover footage rarely has tracking shots.
Even worse, what the government is suppressing isn’t that shocking, and that is even if the conclusion Dance and Stuart arrive at is correct. Our protagonists make an astonishing leap in logic. Even then, they may be wrong about the films even being the cause of the trouble in which they find themselves. It is just as likely they’re in jeopardy because of the medical records Dance inexplicably took from the dump. Muddying the waters are such scenes as those thugs staking out Dance’s apartment. In a moment seemingly out of a parody, there’s a hot tea vendor on the sidewalk the bad guys. So, are we not meant to take the villains seriously? Do they even take themselves seriously?
I often wasn’t sure what Hidden City was trying to do. One baffling scene becomes a dream sequence without making the viewer aware this has happened. This was pointlessly confusing. Compounding my annoyance is this scene wastes the use of Richard E. Grant, who is barely in the film as it is. But that scene is a fair representation of the picture overall: a confused and confusing muddle that wastes the talent on the screen.
Dir: Stephen Poliakoff
Starring Charles Dance, Cassie Stuart, Bill Patterson, Richard E. Grant
Watched on BFI blu-ray (region B)