CREDITS BRAZIL, 1985 dir: Terry Gilliam Jonathan Pryce Robert de Niro Michael Palin Ian Holm Kim Greist Bob Hoskins Katherine Helmond Ian Richardson Peter Vaughan Jim Broadbent

The glum, fifties-style setting of Terry Gilliam’s visually stunning fantasy is a mixture of elaborate sets built at Lee Studios, and cunning location work.

The vast clerks pool in the ‘Department of Records’, where Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) works, and the deserted corridors of the ‘Expediting Department’, are the interior of the old deserted CWS Flour Mill at the Royal Victoria Dock in east London. The mill also provided the grim passageways and stairwells, as well as the exterior, of ‘Shangri La Towers’, the unfortunate Buttleís tower block.

The pompous restaurant at which Sam meets his mother (Katherine Helmond), oblivious to a pyrotechnic terrorist attack is the grand Entrance Hall of Mentmore House, with its white marble staircase leading up to the glass-roofed Grand Hall.

Mentmore Towers in Mentmore, Buckinghamshire, seen also in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and as ‘Wayne Manor’ in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins. It was built in the 1850s for the Rothschild family. Designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, the architect of Crystal Palace, itís modelled on the Elizabethan Wollaton Hall near Nottingham. In 1977 the house hit the headlines when the entire contents were sold by Sothebys. A hidden stash of silverware was discovered beneath a trapdoor.

The house became headquarters of the Maharishi University of Natural Law, but was subsequently put up for sale. It is no longer open to the public.

Brazil location: The attack on the restaurant: Mentmore Towers, Mentmore

The flamboyant setting for Mrs Lowry’s facial surgery is the famous Arab Hall of Leighton House, 12 Holland Park Road, London W14, albeit camped up with Michelangeloís David in its alcoves. This Victorian gem, decorated in gilt and blue Islamic tiles – the fantasy creation of Royal Academician Frederick Lord Leighton – is part of the Leighton House Museum, open free of charge every day except Sundays. It contains more restored Victorian interiors, along with paintings by Leighton himself and contemporaries Burne-Jones, Millais and Watts. Find it north of the western reaches of Kensington High Street.

Brazil location: The 'plastic surgery clinic': Leighton House, Holland Park, London

Mrs Lowry’s cluttered home is the Billiard Room of the old National Liberal Club, 1 Whitehall Court at Whitehall Place, seen in many other movies, including David Lynch's The Elephant Man. The dramatic spiral staircase is also here. The club has since been incorporated into the Royal Horseguards Hotel.

The industrial complex is the BP Oil Refinery on the Isle of Grain, Kent.

Brazil location: The chase through Lowry's apartment complex: Palacio d'Abraxas, Noisy-le-Grand

Sam Lowry’s neighbourhood is Noisy-le-Grand, a self-consciously modern satellite town about twenty miles east of Paris on the RER line, en route to Disneyland Paris. This is what you'll really want to see, and it's worth the trip.

His bizarre apartment complex is architect Ricardo Bofill'\s 1984 Palacio d’Abraxas Apartments, Place d'Abraxas, off Boulevard du Mont d'Est, west of the town centre (Terry Gilliam's original title for the film was 1984 1/2). It’s a spectacular, bizarre and, in places, rundown housing estate.

Brazil location: The pathway to the 'Chapel of Our Lady of the Checkout Counter': central courtyard of the Palacio d'Abraxas, Noisy-le-Grand

The extravagantly theatrical central courtyard of the complex provided the delirious pathway to the funeral parlour in Lowry's climactic fantasy. A great showpiece when built, it doesn't seem to have been well maintained.

The pink deco interior of the ‘Chapel of Our Lady of the Checkout Counter’ itself is back in London. It's the Rainbow Room, on the top floor of the old Derry & Toms-Biba store, 99 High Street Kensington, entrance on Derry Street (tube: High Street Kensington).

The brief country idyll filmed in the Lake District in Cumbria.

The torture chamber is the interior of one of the giant cooling towers of Croydon Power Station. The complex has since been demolished, though the names of the new streets on the site – Ampere, Volta, Faraday, Galvani – record its history, and thereís even a Brazil Close. The station also provided the exterior of the Ministry, and though most, including the imposing entrance, has gone, you can still see some of the monumental deco brickwork at the foot of the two huge chimneys now on the site of the IKEA Superstore on Ampere Way.