This has been a relatively slothful weekend, one I didn't deserve.
If I had hosted a big Thanksgiving dinner, with lots of relatives, clean house,
etc., I could have justified taking a couple of days off, but all I did was cart food to
my mother's and cook it--she even cleaned up (which she insists on doing). But I did
take a couple of days off, mostly because there were good movies to see.
I couldn't pass up the chance to see Hitchcock's Vertigo
again. One of my favorite classic movies, and a toss-up between this and North
by Northwest as my favorite Hitchcock.
This particular movie is near and dear to my heart because it's set
in my neighborhood. For one thing, John "Scotty" Ferguson (James Stewart)
lives about 3 blocks from where I grew up. I used to drive by that house with the
iconic red door all the time (the door has since been painted). But all the places
they visit--Fort Point, under the Golden Gate Bridge, where Kim Novak leaps off into the
bay (an impossible situation today, since the area was fenced off after 9/11); the Palace
of Fine arts; Mission Dolores (the oldest building in San Francisco, across the street
from where I used to work for The Lamplighters); and many other famous sites.
Hitchcock loved San Francisco and filmed many movies there, Shadow
of a Doubt and The Birds for example. Authors Jeff Kraft and Aaron
Leventhal wrote a book called "Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San
Francisco." I had never watched Vertigo with the book in my lap before
and it was fun, following the back story of the shooting locations as I watched the
familiar story unfold on my TV screen.
I learned a lot about Ernie's restaurant, for one thing.
Ernie's was "the" place to go for dining in San Francisco. With its dark
wood paneling and red flocked wallpaper it represented for me the ideal in elegant
dining. Hitchcock recreated Ernie's on a stage in Hollywood, but borrowed or copied
art work and other ephemera from the actual restaurant. The owners of the restaurant
appear in the movie as a waiter and the maitre d' and Hitchcock was so concerned with
realism he had actual meals from Ernie's served on the set when filming that scene.
Alas, Ernie's went out of business in 1998, so I never did have the
"Ernie's experience."
But the authors failed to answer a question for me (the reason I
bought the book, actually!) which I must investigate myself some day. Kim Novak as
Madeline enters the Mission Dolores chapel and walks toward the front of the church.
She exits out the door on the right side of the chapel. Scotty
follows her into the attached cemetery. BUT, the cemetery is on the left
side of the chapel. I don't know if there is a path that leads around the back of
the church and into the cemetery and it bothers me every time I see the movie. It
seems such a glaring error to anybody who is familiar with San Francisco, and especially a
director who is so persnickity as Hitchcock was.
(This photo is also wrong. Scotty's windows face the street
and it would be impossible to see Coit Tower from those windows)
Glaring errors are common in movies about San Francisco, though, most
commonly those exciting chase sequences where a car goes sailing over the top of a famous
San Francisco hill...and lands on a hill that is on the opposite side of the city (Foul
Play is the movie that comes immediately to mind!)
On Saturday evening, Walt and I watched a strange movie called Dark
Passage. This was the third of four movies that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall
made together and it got mixed reviews, with Bogart getting poor reviews and Bacall
glowing ones. It's a strange movie where Bogart, wrongly imprisoned at San Quentin
for the murder of his wife, somehow manages to escape from death row and tries to solve
the mystery of his wife's murder. The first third of the movie is seen entirely from
Bogart's point of view since he get plastic surgery so we don't see the familiar Bogart
face until after the surgery (which is performed in office in about an hour, with no
follow up, a one-week recovery time and no scars...Talk about suspension of
disbelief!)
The movie has plot holes that you can drive a truck through though
somehow it was strangely entertaining. Most of the reviews, however, talk about the
real star of the film as San Francisco.
[t]he city of San Francisco, which is liberally and vividly employed as the realistic setting for the Warners' Dark Passage...For Writer-Director Delmar Daves has very smartly and effectively used the picturesque streets of that city and its stunning panoramas from the hills to give a dramatic backdrop to his rather incredible yarn. So, even though bored by the story—which, because of its sag, you may be—you can usually enjoy the scenery, which is as good as a travelogue -- Bosley Crowder
Unlike Vertigo, this film noir movie deals more with the
seedier sides of the city, but also sweeping vistas, for which San Francisco is best
known. I love seeing movies made in this era and comparing the skyline to the
skyline of today.
There are so many movies made in San Francisco and I love watching
every single one of them. It always reminds me of Judy Garland at the end of Meet
Me in St. Louis when she looks out at the big world's fair and comments that she
didn't have to come from a great distance (or in my case go to a theater), but that she
could see sights like this every day, because it was right where she lived.
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