THE MOON OVER THE ALLEY: A Working Class Fantasy

The Moon Over The Alley is an epic narrative set in urban contemporary, allowing us to glare into the complexity of one simple London street. It provides a voice for the voiceless, making the music of the every day appear a little more extraordinary.

Notting Hill. 1970’s. The film opens as two misshapen silhouettes toddle through a moonlit alleyway. One, a man playing a handheld music box draped around his neck, the other, a cherry-nosed woman of older age. Our story will start and finish with this pair, in this alley, an urbanised ode to a community of boarding house lodgers and the anticipated demolition of their home. The narrative fringes between the sneer of kitchen sink realism and a romantic poeticism, something that makes it incomparable to any other film of its kind. Technically a musical, the ballads flow from the mouths of the lodgers, yet root themselves in every day.

Mixing the binaries between diegetic and non-diegetic sound, songs are channeled through home radios, street performers, and guitars, creating an epic style poem layered with the tapestries of London’s multicultural inhabitants. Certainly, this is what a working-class musical looks like. Something so ambiguously rooted in the reality that as a watcher, we are not sure whether these moments are just a fantastical approach to what existence can be, amidst the mundane.

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Posted By

Daisy Howarth

A recent BA in film studies, with a specific interest in world cinema and technical aspects of film making. Passionate about exploring films that challenge current discourse and form discussions surrounding theories of race, gender and sexuality.