![]() ![]() But if you watch the film," Marutani says, "he's picking her up out of the water from the bridge." Of course, once Novak and Stewart were in the water, the sequence was filmed in controlled tank. "They filmed it right over here," Marutani says. The image of Stewart carrying Novak in his arms beneath the bridge was used as a promotion for the film.įort Point also happens to be one of the most popular spots in the city to go for a walk, and as if to prove that it's impossible to think of the movie without thinking of its relationship to the city, Greg Marutani spontaneously jumps into the conversation. He dives in, fishes her out of the water and climbs a set of stairs, dripping wet. Suddenly, she throws herself into the water, and Scotty is forced to reveal himself in order to save her. Scotty watches in the shadows as Madeline - perhaps possessed by Carlotta Valdes - tosses flowers one by one into the bay. "You know, I think it suggests the fact that there is some kind of fate looming over both of their lives." "It's like this massive looming presence over the two characters that are down here," Pendas says. We see the bright orange landmark from an uncharacteristic vantage point: from below. Then he follows her to Fort Point, at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. ![]() In a haunting scene, one of the movie's most famous, Scotty follows Madeline as she visits a museum where a portrait of Valdes hangs it looks strikingly like Madeline. Over time, Scotty learns that Madeline is obsessed, and perhaps possessed, by a figure from San Francisco's history named Carlotta Valdes, a poor woman of mixed race who became the mistress of one of the city's rich men. So Scotty gets dizzy not just from climbing a tower he gets dizzy because he's social climbing." She and Gavin are members of the ruling class, the upper classes. He says there's a reason Hitchcock put Madeline on top of the hill and Scotty near the bottom: "He's just a retired police detective. "Where we're standing right now, you can't see the street, it's so steep how it goes down," Pendas says, standing at the top of a hill in the neighborhood. Gavin and Madeline live in one of the city's toniest, and highest, neighborhoods, Nob Hill. "Vertigo is the ultimate San Francisco movie because the city really has to do with the story," Pendas says.Īfter he leaves the police force, Scotty takes a job as a private detective, and soon, an old college chum, Gavin, asks him to follow his wife Madeline, played by Kim Novak. it's hard to just stand up," says Migueel Pendas, the creative director of the San Francisco Film Society, standing in front of the apartment on Lombard that Hitchcock used as Scotty's home. "There are places in San Francisco where. ![]() As if to drive home just how unstable Scotty's world is, Hitchcock located his home toward the bottom of a hill on Lombard Street with a daunting incline. Of course, San Francisco, with its bridges, steep hills and twisting roads, may be the worst place for someone with a bad case of acrophobia. In Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock placed the apartment of Jimmy Stewart's character at the base of this hill. Scotty slips and is left hanging from a gutter his partner comes to his aid, but tumbles over the edge and falls to his death.Īn aereal view of Lombard street in San Francisco, known as the world's most crooked street. As the action begins, police detective John "Scotty" Ferguson and his partner chase a criminal across the roof tops of San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood, as the city's wide bay looms below. The city asserts its presence from the first frames that follow the Vertigo's opening credits. So as part of our series "On Location," which looks at movies in which place plays a crucial role, we decide to examine how Hitchcock took a story from a French novel and turned it into the quintessential San Francisco movie. More than almost any other movie, the plot of the 1958 film is woven into its location.īut it didn't begin that way. ![]() If you ask people who know the city what movie comes to mind when they think of San Francisco, the most likely answer is Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. James Stewart carries Kim Novak in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge in a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. ![]()
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