Vertigo (1958,
dir: Alfred Hitchcock)
James Stewart, Kim Novak,
Barbara Bel Geddes
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Falling - from a roof or in love - it's the same dizzyingly exciting fear
at the heart of Hitchcock's dreamily morbid romance, which perfectly
blends theme and location. The locale and the visual style were
shamelessly - and inappropriately - lifted by Paul Verhoeven for Basic Instinct, but it's Hitch who makes use of the
hazy coolness of the Northern California coast to render characters
ethereal, and the precipitous San Francisco hills as a premonition of the
ultimate drop.
Vertigo starts out as as a conventional enough thriller, with ex-cop
Scottie (James Stewart) hired by worried
husband Gavin Elster to keep an eye on the bizarre behaviour of his wife, Madeleine
(Kim Novak). But just as acrophobia segues imperceptibly into the fear of sex
and of death, so Scottie becomes Hitchcock-by-proxy, recreating and controlling
his unattainable object of desire.
|
Hitchcock signals the sudden flare-up of irrational passion by disrupting the
pastel colour scheme and setting Scottie's first glimpse of 'Madeleine' against
the rich red silk interior of Ernie's Restaurant. One of Hitch's own favourite
San Francisco hangouts, Ernie's had been serving up haute cuisine to the well-heeled
since 1934. When the scarlet Victorian decor was replaced in the 1980s by tastefully
anodyne pink, Ernie's no longer looked like an elegant Parisian bordello, and
in 1997 finally closed its doors, only to reopen as an exclusive dinner-dance
club. The Essex Supper Club can be found at 537 Montgomery Street near Telegraph
Hill. |
The Essex Supper Club,
537 Montgomery Street,
San Francisco |
|
|
A few blocks southwest, on the summit of the appropriately named Nob Hill is
Elster's imposing apartment block, from which the smitten Scottie tails 'Madeleine
Elster'. Its unmistakable entrance court guarded by elaborate lamps, is the
277-room Brocklebank Apartments, 1000
Mason Street at Sacramento Street. |
Brocklebank Apartments,
1000 Mason Street,
San Francisco |
|
 |
Palace of the Legion of Honor,
Lincoln Park,
San Francisco |
|
| There's nothing left to see on the northwest corner of Gough
and Eddy Streets, where Scottie trails Mrs Elster to 'McKittrick's Hotel',
the old house of long-dead Carlotta Valdes (the area, north of the Civic Center
district, has been redeveloped - even the elaborate Gothic St Paulus Lutheran
Church dating from 1872, which you can see behind James Stewart, was recently
destroyed in a fire), but you can visit the gleaming white-pillared palace in
which 'Madeleine' sits spellbound by Carlotta's portrait. Situated between China
and Ocean Beaches on San Francisco's northwesterly tip, it's the Palace
of the Legion of Honor, Legion of Honor Drive in Lincoln Park (tel: 001.415.750.3659.
Admission charge). A twin of the Legion d'Honneur in Paris, the gallery
houses a rather more impressive collection of paintings than Carlotta Valdes'
kitschy portrait, including works by Rembrandt, Titian, Monet, Renoir and Degas
along with one of the world's finest collections of Rodin sculptures. |
|
 |
Mission Dolores,
320 Dolores Street,
San Francisco |
|
| 'Madeleine' continues to signpost her obsession by visiting the grave of Valdes
behind the Mission Dolores, 320 Dolores
Street at Sixteenth Street in the Mission District (BART Metro: 16th Street-Mission).
Once you've seen the ornate exterior, you can forget the pompous basilica which
was grafted on next door in 1913, the real interest here is the Misión
San Francisco De Asis, completed in 1791. One of the twenty-one California missions
established by the Spanish in the 18th century and the oldest intact survivor,
its four-foot thick adobe walls having withstood the worst assaults of San Andreas,
the mission of St Francis of Assisi is not only the oldest building in San Francisco
but gives the city its name. Visit the cool, dark chapel interior with its unique
Spanish-Mexican decoration and ceiling painting based on the designs of the
Ramaytush people - dubbed Costanoans ("coast dwellers") by the 'kindly' Spanish
Franciscans who occupied their land, resettled them and oversaw their complete
extinction. By 1850 there was only one Ramaytush left alive. A small museum
records sanitised highlights of the mission's history - for a while in the 1840s
and 50s under Mexican rule it became a hotel and a gambling den, and bullfights
were held on the plaza where Dolores Street now stands. |
|
 |
Mission Dolores cemetery,
320 Dolores Street,
San Francisco |
|
| The museum exits into
the cemetery where the suicidal Carlotta
was supposedly interned. The cemetery - every bit as atmospheric as it appears
in the movie - has its own share of buried secrets. Don't be fooled by the size.
Over 5,500 native people are buried here in a common grave, commemorated by
a single stone shrine. The grander monuments record the founding Father Palou,
the city's bigwigs and the, mainly Irish, immigrants who poured into the area
after the Gold Rush. |
|
 |
Fort Point,
Marine Drive,
San Francisco |
|
|
Back northwest of the city is the granite sea wall beneath the southern anchoring
of the Golden Gate Bridge at Fort Point,
Marine Drive off Long Avenue, the spot where 'Madeleine' takes a reckless plunge
into the notoriously treacherous waters of the Bay. The site is named for the
brick fort, built in the 1850s to defend the city from sea attack long before
the bridge was conceived. It now houses a museum of militaria (tel: 001.415.556.1693.
Admission free) |
|
 |
900 Lombard Street,
San Francisco |
|
|
Falling for the possessed woman act, Scottie rescues 'Madeleine' and takes
her back to his apartment. Scottie's home stands, virtually unchanged, at 900
Lombard Street on the corner of Jones Street, just at the foot of the series
of famous hairpin bends on the 'Crookedest Street in the World'. Looking east
along Lombard Street you can't miss Telegraph Hill, and crowning it, the Coit
Memorial Tower, Telegraph Hill Boulevard, the landmark Madeleine later uses
to find her way back to Scottie's apartment. |
|
 |
Muir Woods,
Shoreline Drive,
Mill Valley |
|
|
Over the Golden Gate Bridge, about fifteen miles north on Shoreline Drive,
Mill Valley, off Route 1, are Muir Woods
(information on: 001.415.388.2595. 8am-sunset. Admission free), the Giant
Redwood grove, home to some of the largest and oldest living creatures on the
earth, Sequoia Sempervirens - "Always green, ever living" - where Madeleine
gets the heebie-jeebies contemplating the past by a section
of one of the ancient trees. |
|
 |
Palace of Fine Arts,
3601 Lyon Street,
San Francisco |
|
|
When she finally succumbs to her suicidal impulse, Scottie is overwhelmed by
his own obsession - to refashion lookalike acrtess Judy Barton (also, of course,
Kim Novak), into Madeleine's dead image. The strange, dreamlike garden Scottie
walks through with Judy is a bizarre folly left over from the 1915 Panama Pacific
Exposition. It's the Palace of Fine Arts,
3601 Lyon Street in the Marina district.
|
|
 |
York Hotel,
940 Sutter Street,
San Francisco |
|
| For the final transformation of Judy
back into Madeleine, Hitchcock pulls off one of his dazzling visual coups, filling
the seedy hotel room with an unearthly green neon glow. Although the 'Hotel
Empire' has undergone a name change and a major facelift, you'll still recognise
Novak's lodging, now quite posh. You can see the York
Hotel at 940 Sutter Street between Hyde and Leavenworth Streets just west
of the downtown area. |
|
 |
Mission San Juan Bautista,
San Juan Bautista,
Northern California |
|
The movie's climax returns to the scene of Madeleine's suicide/murder. About
ninety miles south of San Francisco, just east from Route 101, is the quiet
little town of San Juan Bautista, home to a clutch of beautifully restored period
buildings preserved as a State Historic Park. On the north side of the town's
central plaza you'll find the mission Madeleine claims to have seen in her previous
life as 'Carlotta'. The 19th century Mission
San Juan Bautista is the largest of the Spanish missions and houses a small
museum, open daily from 10am to 4pm. Opposite the mission itself you'll find
the stables 'Madeleine' claims to remember
from a previous existence, and alongside, the building
where the inquest is held (though the interior was recreated in the studio).
It's in the bell-tower of the mission's church that Scottie suffers a vertigo
attack while trying to prevent 'Madeleine's' suicide, and from which Judy finally
plunges to her death. In fact, the mission no longer has a bell tower. It was
optically added to the film.
|
|
Any queries, mistakes or further information: locator555@aol.com
|