In search of the locations from Horace Ové’s Pressure, half a century on
As Horace Ové’s landmark drama Pressure arrives on Blu-ray, we went looking for the exact spots where Ové filmed in Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove, to find out what’s changed five decades later.
Horace Ové’s debut feature Pressure (1975) broke a number of boundaries. It was the first British feature film by a Black director, and as such brought Black British experience to the big screen with unprecedented authenticity. But it also represented a return to the kind of on-the-ground location filmmaking associated with the earlier British New Wave movement of the 1960s, establishing a gritty sense of street-level realism for its London-based story.
Pressure follows a young boy called Tony (Herbert Norville), a teenage school-leaver trying to make his way in the world. His parents are Windrush migrants from Trinidad who run a shop in Notting Hill, and who see the world dramatically differently to Tony and his older brother Colin (Oscar James). Whereas Lucas (Frank Singuineau) and Bopsie (Lucita Lijertwood) are happy to accept the status quo, Tony is more drawn to Colin’s view which is influenced by his ongoing work with the Black Power movement in west London. The drama follows Tony’s growing disenfranchisement in 1970s London and the prejudice he increasingly witnesses now that he’s growing up.
Filmed largely around the Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove area, Pressure evidences a deep knowledge of this part of the city and the communities who lived there, using not just its more famous streets and sites, but also smaller, more detailed locations. Because of this, Ové’s film also acts as a form of documentation, showing architecture and industrial remnants of the area long before gentrification took a hold and swept them aside.
Here is a selection of the key locations from Pressure as they stand today.
The shop
Tony’s parents run a shop in Notting Hill. The Karakata Shop is one of the first locations the viewer sees after the title sequence. It’s at 194 Kensington Park Road and is today a biscuit shop.
We see various shots of this street throughout, including looking up it when Tony’s father is organising the produce outside. Despite its Pressure connection, the shop today celebrates its role as a location briefly seen in an episode of the American series Ted Lasso (2020-).
Later, a shot of Tony returning home shows the shop and street from another angle. Here we see the corner of Blenheim Crescent.
The canal
Several sequences in Pressure take place along the canal in west London, where Tony is seen wandering along the towpath. This shot shows the main area used for the filming, taken from the bridge of the Great Western Road.
The modern photos show the dramatic changes that have taken place since the time of filming. For example, Tony struggles to pass a mesh fence on the towpath, now long since pedestrianised and busy with narrowboats.
The main feature of interest in this sequence is the looming presence of Trellick Tower seen in the background. The brutalist structure was only a few years old then, and is now almost entirely hidden today by the thick foliage along the left-hand side of the water.
The bridge
One of the film’s most important sequences occurs further along the canal. When Tony and his group of friends try to steal things from a shop on the Harrow Road, the police are quick to respond and chase them. They flee from there over a bridge across the canal. The bridge in question has been replaced and is now the Half Penny Steps Bridge.
Running to the other side, the group find themselves on Wedlake Street.
The street and bridge area has changed dramatically, with the beautiful older buildings from the area’s industrial past replaced with bland developments.
This shot in particular shows the uniqueness of the previous bridge, characterful in its old industrial design. The footbridge today has entirely changed.
Golborne Road
Ové sticks largely to the one area for much of the film, shooting several streets in detail and building up an effective portrait of the location. These following shots are taken from Golborne Road, again haunted by the presence of Trellick Tower.
The precise spot of this shot on the road is given away a few moments later when Tony is seen walking along.
He turns the corner of the road in conjunction with Portobello Road which is far more lavish today, though unusually he is walking up to its north end rather than south where he lives.
Portobello Road
Many sequences in Ové’s film use the famed Portobello Road and its bustling market, especially the scene in which Tony and his friends wander the street from near the Westway. This shot shows the characters walking under the bridge crossing above the road.
The group walks along the road, enjoying the market. This shot is just past the previous location, looking at the left-hand side of the road with a sliver of the bridge just seen in the background.
Incidentally, this shot is near another film location: the famous blue door from Roger Michell’s Notting Hill (1999). There was a queue of fans waiting to take their photograph there on the day of this visit.
Back on Portobello Road, this shot is taken much further down at the intersection between Talbot Road and Blenheim Crescent. The bustle of the market continues, even 50 years on.
