Only the most eagle-eyed will have spotted the location in the final cut, after 100 cast and crew converged on a tiny south London backstreet and transformed it into atmospheric Sixties East Berlin for a major Guy Ritchie film involving no fewer than 250 period vehicles.
By day, Padfield Road at Loughborough Junction — squeezed into a triangle locked in by two arterial roads and a network of clattering overhead railway lines — is home to motor repair businesses and a café, huddled under a row of Victorian arches.
After the set designers went to work, however, it had “moved” approximately 600 miles to the east to present a glossy, “noir” backdrop to the opening scenes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
It’s where German motor mechanic and missing nuclear scientist’s daughter Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander) meets American art thief-turned-CIA operative Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill), triggering a dramatic car chase through Cold War East Berlin in a fast-paced spy thriller that races into the colourful and more glamorous world of Sixties Italy.
It’s a highly stylised, humorous re-boot of the Sixties television series of the same name and involves plenty of sophistication, beautiful settings and wardrobes full of immaculately pressed Sixties garments.
But, for many, it’s the cars that make the movie, with a star cast of vintage Ferraris, Jaguars, Mercedes and Aston Martins among the more prosaic Wartburgs, Vespas, Trabants and the occasional Peugeot and Citroën H van. But all was not as it seemed, as I discovered when I caught up with the film’s vehicle co-ordinator, Alex King, to mark the release of the film on DVD and Blu-ray on December 7.
“It was fantastic to work on,” says King, 45, who lives in Surrey. “But with such a large number of cars to source, we had to start early with an advance script.”
King’s workshop is a series of large containers housing everything needed to strip, modify and rebuild a fleet of cars, trucks or motorcycles, and that can be transported around the world at the drop of a hat.
Total vehicle budget for the film, also starring Armie Hammer as a KGB operative, was about £1.5 million. It might sound a lot, but it’s not excessive when you consider the highly exacting requirements from the director, including the need to dismantle, rebuild and reconfigure a handful of Trabants, Wartburgs and motorcycles.
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Most vehicles were rented, but about 30 — mostly those that had to be heavily modified — were bought. Perhaps the most challenging work of all involved building entirely new chassis for the fleet of Wartburgs for demanding car-chase scenes, while converting them from front-wheel-drive to rear-wheel-drive, jettisoning their original engines and fitting modern Volvo units into new engine subframes instead.
“Even tracking down the door and window seals for the rebuild was a challenge,” says King, who has worked on films including V for Vendetta, A Good Day to Die Hard and Casino Royale.
Another challenge was sourcing motorcycles with the “right” look, and they settled on hand-built Triumph-engined Matisse machines. However, they weren’t suitable for the airborne leaps during a chase scene, so King and his team bought four Honda motorcycles before stripping and rebuilding them to resemble the more delicate Matisses. Other challenges included creating, from scratch, two dramatic-looking — if anachronistic — rock-crawlers. And ensuring that all the vehicles ran like clockwork.
“Old cars are temperamental,” says King. “Sometimes, when they break down on-set, there’s some understanding. More often — when the actors are standing by and the camera’s rolling — there’s no sympathy whatsoever.
“I try to manage expectations. If we’re using a fleet of old cars in a key scene, I’ll suggest levelling the playing field by filming on vintage technology, too. It reminds everybody of just what we’re trying to achieve.”
Did King succeed? Decide for yourself by watching the new release: Making of Part 1; Making of Part 2
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is available on Digital HD, Blu-ray and DVD from December 7
