Physical environment

By focusing on physical environment, such as architecture and décor, in each film, you can consider how they have been used to represent conflicts and convey messages, as well as convey a sense of time and place. It may also be useful to compare them to other films set in London, such as Notting Hill.

• What impression do you get of London as a British urban setting, through each of the films?
• If you know west London, when you view the films, what do you notice most about how the urban setting has changed?
• When you watch each film, make notes on how the physical settings contribute to the young protagonists' sense of themselves? To what extent do they feel 'at home' or alienated?
• In both films, youth or community centres are used as focal points for the main characters. In what way do the two films differ in their use of such institutions?

In the following notes Joel examines how the architecture and urban development in different parts of London give us insights into how communities have changed over the past 30 years.

Films, like many cultural artefacts, comment upon the cultures that produce them in a variety of ways. However, how spectators view and read them is not fixed and will undergo a continued transformation over time. Additionally, cultural variances among audiences will always alter the intended meaning of a film and its director. Furthermore, films may also be read as historical documents recording issues peripheral at the time of filming, which may take on a great significance when viewed subsequently.

Both Pressure and Burning an Illusion, through the personal development of their central protagonists, offer an enlightening commentary on the development of London, culturally and physically, over the past 30 years. They are both set in parts of west London frequently featured in films, areas which have undergone a dramatic cultural and architectural transformation during the post-war era.

A film shot more than a decade earlier, Roy Barker's Flame in the Streets (1961, UK), takes a very liberal stance for the time, telling the tale of an interracial couple trying to fight off the bigotry they face on all sides, in order to maintain their relationship. Like Pressure and Burning an Illusion, it has a number of scenes shot in Notting Hill and surrounding areas (Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne Park). The film was released only three years after the infamous Notting Hill race riots, a theme which is drawn upon in the narrative. Settled by many first generation Caribbean immigrants during the post-war period, the area around Notting Hill can be used as a yardstick to measure the 'integration' and development of a black British community.

In films such as Flame in the Streets and Pressure, we are presented with a very different view of the area than later featured in Notting Hill (Roger Michell, 1999, UK). This is largely filmed on Portobello Road, the location of the very same market that Tony and his friends patrolled and stole food from in Pressure. However in Michell's film, starring Hugh Grant as a local bookshop owner and Julia Roberts as a Hollywood star, we are introduced to a Notting Hill which is now one of the trendiest and sought after residential areas in the capital.

It is a far cry from the rundown and derelict housing available to most of the early immigrants who were forced to pay exorbitant rents for overcrowded, substandard properties (often just a single room for an entire family), owned by unscrupulous landlords, such as the infamous property racketeer Peter Rachman. Because of racism in other, more affordable parts of the city, where boarding house windows often featured 'No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish', most immigrants had little choice over where they lived.

The conditions that many Caribbean immigrants found themselves in the late 1950s is touched upon in other films, such as Basil Dearden's thriller Sapphire (1959, UK) but is best exemplified in a scene from Flame in the Streets when the character Kathie Palmer (Sylvia Syms), a white school teacher, goes looking for her Jamaican boyfriend, Peter Lincoln (Johnny Sekka), at his lodgings. Every room in the ramshackle house is occupied by at least one person, in loud overbearing conditions, which spill out on to the stairwells and landings, fostering tensions that eventually erupted into racial conflict in the surrounding streets.

More than two decades after the production of Flame in the Streets and the Notting Hill race riots, Pressure and later Burning an Illusion show that much, but not all, of the urban squalor of the immediate post-Windrush era had been bulldozed. In its place an epidemic of high rise blocks of flats swept across the area along with the imposing and defining structure of the (A40) Westway flyover.

Indeed the architecture and topography of the surrounding areas feature strongly in both films and can be read as integral components of their narratives. For instance, in Pressure, Tony's parents, despite his father's lamentations about the quality of life he once had as an accountant in Trinidad, and Colin's protestations about selling out, are proprietors of their own shop and have a comfortable middle-class life style, in contrast to some of Tony's friends' who seem to live an almost feral existence in abject squalor. Nevertheless, we see a marked shift between the world of Flame in the Streets and Pressure, indicating the social changes that had taken place in London between the 1950s and 1970s.

Now view the recommended scenes from Pressure and Burning an Illusion to explore these themes in more detail.

Pressure

• Watch the scene in Pressure, after the supermarket raid when Tony and his friends take refuge in a house. What does it tell you about the kind of environment that Tony and his friends live in? How does it compare to Tony's own home and what does this indicate about Tony's experience of the two worlds that Joel discusses?
• In the scene where Tony meets with his friends, under the Westway, and travels to Portobello Road. How does the representation of the local environment compare to a more recent film, shot in the same area, such as Notting Hill?
• After the attempted supermarket heist, Tony and his friends take refuge in a derelict house, which Tony does not recognise as 'The Grove'. What, if any, symbolic significance do you think the director is trying to portray?

In Pressure, despite the evident racism, the ownership of the shop by Tony's parents represents that assimilation and progress are possible, if at a 'cost'. However, more importantly, it also represents the difference in attitude between the Windrush and post-Windrush generations, as the hope and endeavour of the Caribbean immigrants is contrasted with the increasing sense of alienation and disenfranchisement of black British youth. Tony is shown to be caught between theses two worlds, initially clinging to the aspirational dreams of his parents, particularly his mother, but slowly becoming aware that the cosseted world of his immediate domestic environment does not hold true for the majority of his peers and, ultimately, him.

The distance between his parent's and his friends' worlds is poignantly highlighted when, after escaping from the failed supermarket raid and taking refuge in a house, Tony has to be reassured by his friends that he is 'still in the Grove' (Ladbroke Grove), their local area and only a stone's throw away from the safety of his own home. However, he is a million miles away from any understanding of his situation.

The house in which the boys take harbour is in itself interesting. It represents the kind of property that later, through institutions like the Notting Hill Housing Trust, marked the transition between the near slums rented by Rachman and the luxury housing that now dominates the area. Indeed the social housing policy implemented by the Trust, which bought and renovated property, allowed many working-class and immigrant residents to stay in the area, despite the rapid gentrification in recent years. It set and tried to maintain affordable rents, which in turn helped to nurture the community spirit, and set the scene for expressions of cultural vitality, such as the Notting Hill Carnival.

The impact of architecture, as emblematic of status and belonging, is further explored in Pressure when Tony arrives for an interview and in the foyer of the office block, the previously dormant security guard, springs to life at the sight of a young black man 'being where he should not be'.

Likewise, the police raid of the activist meeting (filmed on location at a community centre on Acklam Road) foreshadows many of the conflicts between the police and young blacks that were to follow, culminating in the uprising during the Notting Hill carnival in 1976, and the long running conflict between the police and Frank Critchlow, owner of the now (in)famous Mangrove Club on All Saints Road.

The penultimate scene in Pressure again draws upon an architectural theme to emphasise its point. In this dream sequence, Tony, now radicalised through his own experiences at the hands of the police, approaches a large mansion house somewhere in the British countryside. Before entering the house, he strips naked and then goes up to one of the bedrooms, where a figure is covered by a silken sheet. Taking a knife Tony proceeds to frantically stab the figure before pulling back the sheet, revealing the carcase of a pig. This creates a surreal polar opposition, between the silk sheet and the pig, finally symbolising Tony's disenfranchisement from the mainstream culture he once sought to be a part of. The scene is the only non-urban setting in the film and stylistically it draws upon Ové's interest in avant-garde European film movements , particularly Italian Neo-Realism and French Surrealism, providing a surreal interlude in an otherwise social realist film.

• In this sequence Tony finds himself in a large country house. Why is this scene geographically removed from the inner city and how do you interpret the events that take place there?
• Why do you think the director introduces this surreal sequence here? What does it represent for Tony? Do you agree with Joel that it represents his disenfranchisement from the mainstream culture? What else might it represent?

The final scene is in careful juxtaposition with the dream sequence, in that it presents Tony, in the real world, legally protesting outside the law courts. However, psychologically he is simmering with anger, ready to resort to violence as a response to violence.

Burning an Illusion

• Watch the scene in the restaurant. How does this setting convey their sense of identity?
• In a scene from Burning an Illusion we are given a view of Pat's tower block. What is the significance of the way the tower (now a Grade 2 listed building) is filmed? How does the interior and exterior of Pat's flat compare to that of her friend Cynthia, and what importance does this hold for the film?

Architecture plays a less significant symbolic role in Burning an Illusion. Instead, décor points to a number of key factors useful in a textual analysis of the movie, in terms of what it says about black Britain and London in general.

One of the first scenes in the film revolves around Pat and Del's first date at a black restaurant. At a time when such establishments were still quite a rarity in Britain, the need to visually distinguish it from any other restaurant was crucial. The restaurant's décor, in spite of the deep reds and tropically shirted waiter, is not explicitly 'Caribbean' and seems, at a glance, to be an early 1980s eatery. Yet the wall immediately behind the seating area where Pat and Del are situated is covered with photographs of musicians and other black celebrities. The importance of this seemingly minor detail serves as a starting point for a theme that runs throughout the movie, situating its characters in a 'world within a world'. Though they may have been born, work and live in London, Shabazz does not emphasise their social interactions with the mainstream culture, but instead chooses to highlight a hitherto unexplored world where the nuances of black Britishness are brought to the fore.

When they have finished eating, Del asks Pat how long she has lived on her own. He has already formulated an answer in his own mind, with a second, rhetorical question 'the ole man kick you out?' Here Del is, rather conservatively, suggesting that domestic strife is the only reason a young woman would vacate the family home, other than perhaps marriage. This is an opinion that was still widely held among first generation black British people and other immigrant communities at the time but beginning to lose hold among their increasingly affluent white middle- and working-class peers (as exemplified in Pressure through Tony's school friend Sheila who has moved (upwardly) out of 'The Grove' which she sees as 'crummy').

Pat's answer to Del's question, however, also hints that the social changes taking place are more generational than cultural as she quite clearly wants to be free of family constraints. Previously, when Del finally tracked Pat down to ask her out, she was in the comfort of her family home yet, in the restaurant, she tells Del that she has been living by herself for three years, as she just wanted to be alone, something that Del doesn't seem to have considered. Later in the film, when they are living together, Pat's aspirational views are a further source of contention, as her desire to save for a holiday, colour TV and new carpet are seen, by Del as purely 'material'.

Throughout the film, the décor allows the audience to read various character traits and developments. The sign on the wall, 'Bless this house', behind Pat in the restaurant, is a clear reference to the strong influence of Christianity on Caribbean culture. Religious symbolism was a common theme in the houses of many first generation Caribbean immigrant families in Britain but less so with following generations.

Pat's family home and particularly her flat differ only marginally from what one would expect to find in any London apartment at the time. The few posters in her flat that embrace black aesthetics are more 'culturally specific' than Tony's Gary Glitter poster, yet they also fall short of the expressively Afro-centric and political themes we see adorning the home of Cynthia, a friend whom Pat visits. The open Afro-centrism of Cynthia's home offers a visual alternative to Pat's, but also represents an ideological one, questioning the idea that total cultural assimilation to the mainstream is the only way forward for young British blacks.

Cynthia and her partner Tony are, like Colin and his comrades in Pressure, used as a means of locating alternative identities for young blacks, though in Burning an Illusion the direction taken is decidedly more pan-African in tone than Pressure.

The most striking use of structural architecture in Burning an Illusion is the location of Pat's flat, on the 27 th floor of Trellick Towers. Designed by Erno Goldfinger and now a Grade II listed building, the 'Giant Monkey Wrench', as it was affectionately know by locals, was voted amongst the most hated buildings in London in the 1970s. Situated in Golborne Road, along the Grand Union Canal, the tower block was built at the back end of the post-war boom in social housing, at a time when belief in, and financing for, them were on the wane. By the early 1980s, such council estates became synonymous with urban blight and, although these themes are not directly brought into play, the building serves to place the film's characters, both culturally and geographically. This is further emphasised when Pat visits Cynthia, whose flat overlooks the revellers at the Notting Hill Carnival. This places it within a very specific cultural context, identifying the area as a community that black people identify with, for the most part positively, despite the racist attack on Pat on the way home one night.