In place of thrills and brutality stands Charles Aznavour's preoccupied charisma, a hero frowning his way through a film of quirks and passing gags.
With its liveried workers, smoke-filled carriages and wooden escalators with instructions to "step off right foot first", Underground seems charmingly antiquated today, but the film serves as a reminder that, even back in 1928, the tube was a place of thrilling modernity.
It was a place of sex, thrills and danger, a place where all the usual rules were suspended.
One of the famous tourist sites of Rome is the Circo Massimo or the Circus Maximus which was where gladiatorial combats took place and the thrill of today's circus is still predicated on the same kind of blood thirsty desires that motivated the crowds in Roman times.
My first view of the place was thrilling: dust, hills, barbed wire, soldiers with rifles.
Cecil, who is battling stomach cancer and was too ill to attend the ceremony, added: "All of us at Warren Place are thrilled that Frankel's achievements this year have been recognised with him winning this most prestigious award for the second time running".
The season-by-season change, the form of the hills and mood of the wild places still thrilled out in the voice of this unquenchable octogenarian.
But his career of thrilling heresy had begun in, of all places, the House of Lords.
Rather, it was a product of the city's reputation as the centre of the world and a place where the thrills outweighed the danger.
