More East End Opium Dens

Opium dens in popular culture and reality have been a recurring theme in this blog – can’t think why!! (just use the search function to see, if you’re interested). I’m also fascinated to see opium dens popping up in films and recreated with differing degrees of accuracy, usually not very accurate really and rather more sumptuous and appealing than they were in real life in London and Paris (though Parisian ones were apparently always a bit more tasteful and lush than Limehouse ones which is just bloody typical!!).

Unsurprisingly one popped up recently in Stephen Frears and Christopher Hampton’s Cheri – well, you wouldn’t expect an adaptation of Colette not to include a fin de siecle Parisian opium den would you. The den is quite sumptuous as Parisian high class dens were supposed to be and Anita Pallenberg looks suitably doped up as the madam, La Copine, of the joint – stealing a fair bit of the movie despite only a fleeting appearance.

Then  across the Channel to London for the new Dorian Gray – like Colette, you wouldn’t expect an adaptation of Wilde’s Dorian to be opium den free. Wilde himself of course smoked opium tipped Egyptian cigarettes right up to his death in Paris (a habit Colin Firth’s Lord Henry Wotton is given in the film). I rather think the East End opium dens Lord Henry and Dorian visit are somewhat more extravagant than the reality was – Wilde did claim to have visited the dens of Limehouse researching the book (and Conan Doyle, being a bit more stiff upper lip, consulted him on his experiences rather than actually visiting them himself apparently) – but who cares, they look pretty good. As ever one is left wondering why in this so-called hedonistic world people think a few glasses of overpriced booze is a wild night out?

So the dens in Dorian Gray are not that authentic, but so what, it’s entertainment. And anyway any criticism I might have had of the opium den recreations was stopped short by the best line in a film for years – when Firth’s Lord Wotton confronts the as yet uncorrupted and still innocent young Dorian who is having some trouble enjoying himself with the immortal line delivered in full Firthian Englishness:

‘Chin up dear boy, you’ve got a face like a slapped nancy.’