Vertigo, 1958
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
San Francisco: Flights: San Francisco International Airport
Tourist info: San Francisco tourism
Palace of the Legion of Honor, Legion of Honor Drive in Lincoln Park (admission charge; tel: 415/750.3659)
Mission Dolores, 320 Dolores Street at Sixteenth Street in the Mission District (BART Metro: 16th Street-Mission)
Old Mission of San Juan Bautista, San Juan Bautista, 90 miles south of San Francisco, just east from Route 101.
York Hotel, 940 Sutter Street (tel: 415.885.6800) between Hyde and Leavenworth Streets.
Big Basin Redwoods State Park, 21600 Big Basin Way – Route 236 – at Boulder Creek (tel: 408.338.6132) off Pacific Coast Highway 1, south of San Francisco toward Santa Cruz.
Trivia
Vertigo has been a major influence on many film-makers, particularly Brian De Palma, who makes references to it in Obsession and Raising Cain.
Paul Verhoeven borrows both the film’s style and its San Francisco location for Basic Instinct
Vertigo filming location: The climax at the old mission: the Old Mission San Juan Bautista, California
Over the Golden Gate Bridge, about 15 miles north on Shoreline Drive, Mill Valley, off Route 1, are Muir Woods (open 8am-sunset, tel: 415/388.2595), the Giant Redwood grove, home to some of the largest and oldest living creatures on the earth, Sequoia Sempervirens – “Always green, ever living” – supposedly where Madeleine gets the heebie-jeebies contemplating the past. It’s here, near the visitor centre, that you can find a section of tree trunk on which significant dates in history are recorded.
The actual filming location, though, was Big Basin Redwoods State Park, 21600 Big Basin Way – Route 236 – at Boulder Creek (tel: 408/338.6132) off Pacific Coast Highway 1 south of San Francisco toward Santa Cruz.
The seashore, where Scottie follows the apparently distraught Madeleine, is Cypress Point on Seventeen-Mile Drive, on the wild Monterey Peninsula. I can’t show a photograph. The tree is, believe it or not, copyrighted. Only, as they say, in America...
When Madeleine finally succumbs to her suicidal impulse, Scottie suffers a nervous breakdown, recuperating in a sanatorium, back in San Francisco at 351 Buena Vista Avenue East.
Vertigo filming location: Judy becomes Madeleine at the ‘Empire Hotel’: York Hotel – now the Hotel Vertigo, Sutter Street, San Francisco
Overwhelmed by his own obsession, he refashions lookalike actress Judy Barton into Madeleine’s dead image. For the 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 film’s Hotel Empire has undergone a name change and a major facelift, you’ll still recognise Judy’s lodging.
Not only is it now quite posh, it also houses one of the city’s top cabaret spots, the Plush Room. You can see the York Hotel, 940 Sutter Street (tel: 415.885.6800) between Hyde and Leavenworth Streets just west of the downtown area. After many years as the York, the hotel is being revamped as – yes! – the Hotel Vertigo!
Vertigo filming location: Madeleine’s memories of the old mission: Plaza Stables at the Old Mission San Juan Bautista, California
The movie’s climax returns to the scene of Madeleine’s suicide/murder. About 90 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 the Old Mission of San Juan Bautista, a State Historic Park.
Vertigo filming location: The inquest at the old mission: Plaza Hall at the Old Mission San Juan Bautista, California
On the town’s central plaza you’ll find not only the mission, but the Plaza Stables Madeleine claims to remember from a previous existence, and Plaza Hall, the courtroom where the inquest is held (though, once again, the interior was recreated in the studio).
The 19th century Old Mission of San Juan Bautista is the largest of the Spanish missions and houses a small museum, open daily from 10am to 4pm. Don’t expect to see the bell-tower, from which Judy finally plunges to her death. The church’s tower had collapsed many years before and the movie’s climax makes use of a superimposed painting.
