The Crying Game, 1992
Director
Cast
- Stephen Rea
- Jaye Davidson
- Forest Whitaker
- Miranda Richardson
- Jim Broadbent
- Ralph Brown
- Adrian Dunbar
visit the film locations
London: Flights: Heathrow Airport; Gatwick Airport
Mother, 333 Old Street, E1 (tel: 020.7684.0723) (tube: Old Street, Northern Line)
Trivia
Hoxton doubles for 60s Whitechapel in Peter Medak's film of The Krays.
From Hell, with Johnny Depp on the trail of Jack the Ripper, is set in Spitalfields (which was recreated on the studio backlot in Prague), and the area is also seen in the Merchant -Ivory adaptation of Henry James's The Golden Bowl, with Uma Thurman and Jeremy Northam
The Crying Game film location: Dil's hairdressing salon: Fournier Street, Spitalfields, E1
Plenty of London locations in Neil Jordan’s film, which sees IRA man Fergus (Stephen Rea) becoming involved with the partner of the British soldier he was supposed to kill.
The opening Irish scenes were filmed on location at Laytown in South Armagh.
You won't be able to get your hair done at Dil’s salon; it was an empty building - now a shop –- at 3 Fournier Street in Spitalfields. For a long time the centre for immigrant communities – first Huguenot, then Jewish, it’s now the heart of Banglatown – and the undeveloped working class streets were ripe for gentrification. It’s the current centre for Britart, being the long-time home to Gilbert & George and, more recently, Tracey Emin.
Only a few hundred yards away, the digs, occupied by Fergus after he flees to London from Ireland, is the old Crispin Street Women's Refuge, Crispin Street. Built in 1868 and in use until the 1970s, the Sisters of Mercy provided accommodation not just for 300 women and children, but 50 men, too.
Once a notorious slum district, this was the haunt of the Victorian serial killer and tabloid villain known to history as Jack the Ripper. You can hardly avoid bumping into – or you may even join – one of the endless stream of walking tours. You know the style – “A horrendous sight greeted his eyes...”.
A couple of doors from the Fournier Street location is the Ten Bells pub, which was the haunt of many of the killer’s victims. The famous pub was replicated (on the outskirts of Prague) as a setting for From Hell, with Johnny Depp). Also included in the Hughes brothers' impressive recreation of 19th century Spitalfields, for their film of the graphic novel, was Nicholas Hawksmoor's Christ Church Spitalfields, across Fournier Street.
The Crying Game film location: The exterior of the fictitious ‘Metro Bar’: Coronet Street, Hoxton, London N1
The ’Metro Bar’, where Dil sings the title song, was for many years the London Apprentice, a large and really quite frisky gay bar. It’s been relaunched as Mother, 333 Old Street (tube: Old Street, Northern Line), a refreshingly informal (for increasingly style-conscious Hoxton) club. Its new incarnation is visited by Minnie Driver and Mary McCormack in caper comedy High Heels and Low Lifes.
The exterior, however, is an empty property behind the pub on the corner of the quaintly cobbled Coronet Street and Boot Street, Hoxton, N1. The ‘Metro’ logo was still visible until recently. The wasteland behind, where Fergus sorts out Dil’s problem, has since been built up.
The Crying Game film location: Dil’s flat: 8-9 Hoxton Square, Hoxton, London N1
The gardens in which he skulks to watch Dil are in nearby Hoxton Square. Dil’s apartment, where the goldfish meet a sad end on the pavement, is 8-9 Hoxton Square – which true to the area’s reputation for relentless gentrification – is now Macondo, a restaurant-bar -art exhibition space, named for the town in a Gabriel García Márquez novel. That’s Hoxton for you.
Irish terrorist Jude (Miranda Richardson) spies on the couple at classic Indian restaurant, Clifton, now Prithi, 124-126 Brick Lane, E1. You can still see the striking murals seen in the film .
Dil follows Fergus to the Lowndes Arms, which stood at 37 Chesham Street, SW1, northeast of Sloane Square. The pub has since closed down and been revamped as a private house. It’s opposite the ‘discreet knocking shop’ where the IRA carries out its bloodily bungled attack on the judge, at 100 Eaton Place.
