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Robin
Williams housekeeping a Pacific Heights mansion in grandmotherly
drag; Clint Eastwood chipping away at the Rock; Steve McQueen ripping
his Mustang around Russian Hill like he owned the joint. Classic
moments from San Francisco’s canon of cinematic lore.
Spring makes a great time to celebrate the city’s status as
a top film backdrop.
With its iconic imagery, Victorian architecture, sweeping water
vistas, and gnarly hills, San Francisco offers an instantaneously
recognizable setting, one witnessed in many impressive films.
Stop-action
series photography was invented in the Bay Area in 1872, when Eadweard
Muybridge used a spring-loaded shutter to film governor Leland Stanford
riding his horse. Each March, film buffs gussy up Mar. 23 to strut
the red carpet at the Academy
of Friends Oscar Night Gala, the largest such gathering outside
Hollywood.
San
Francisco has been featured in titles spanning the genres. Here's
a sampler:
Vertigo
(1958) : Hitchcock’s elegant love letter to the city, this
classic of acrophobia and mistaken identity unfolds to reveal some
of the city’s finest sights: Mission Dolores, the Palace of
the Legion of Honor, Fort Point. Hilariously parodied in Mel Brooks’
High Anxiety (1977).
Dirty
Harry (1971) : Snarling at punks down the barrel of his .44,
Clint Eastwood's Detective Harry Callahan changed Hollywood, marrying
the western ethos with the urban cop film and defining an era of
angry white males. (You’d be angry, too, tracking a serial
killer from Mount Davidson to Fisherman’s Wharf.)
The
Lady from Shanghai (1948) : Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth tangle,
with murder and blackmail resulting. Buffs like the love scene in
Golden Gate Park’s Steinhart Aquarium, and labyrinthine Hall
of Mirrors sequence at dearly departed Playland by the Beach.
Bullitt
(1968) : Steve McQueen, his Mustang, and the Dodge Charger. The
chase scene in Bullitt rewrote the book, with McQueen himself piloting
down Army, around the Marina, and up and down Russian Hill, catching
air and cresting 100 mph. Sorry, French Connection fans - but this
here’s the top all-time movie chase.
Basic
Instinct (1992) : Sharon Stone raised some, err, eyebrows, and
launched herself into Hollywood’s stratosphere with this star-turning
role as a bisexual murder suspect playing erotic cat-and-mouse games
with cop Michael Douglas. Controversial then, campy now.
Towering
Inferno (1974) : Contractors cut corners, then fire breaks out
on the 85th floor of the elaborate Glass Tower - actually the Bank
of America building - the night of its inaugural party. With Paul
Newman, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, and SF native OJ Simpson as
a heroic security guard.
Mrs.
Doubtfire (1993) : When divorced dad Robin Williams goes undercover
- as a grandmother - to check on his kids, is there any real question
how things will result? No, but you’ll laugh at the results.
The
Maltese Falcon (1941) : Dashiell Hammett's tale of gumshoe Sam
Spade’s search for his partner’s killers through the fog,
hotel lobbies, and seedy back alleys of 1920s downtown San Francisco
gets the 40’s noir treatment, with Humphrey Bogart pitch-perfect
as the jaded PI who’s seen it all.
The
Grateful Dead Movie (1977) : Heads will love the music, including
a full-length Morning Dew, and rockumentarians of all stripes will
appreciate this first-hand account of a run of shows at Winterland.
Rock culture at its mid- to late-seventies apex.
Invasion
of the Body Snatchers (1978) : Are your neighbors who you think
they are? Funky remake of 50's sci-fi hit captures the city’s
Carter-era strangeness and features Donald Sutherland as a public
health officer wondering why all his friends are becoming so monotonous.
Don’t miss Kevin McCarthy’s (of the original movie) cameo
as a Market Street prophet of doom.
Birdman
of Alcatraz (1962) / Escape from Alcatraz (1979) / The
Rock (1996) : The city’s premiere prison has gotten its
share of screen time. Truth is stranger than fiction in the story
of killer-turned-ornithologist Robert Stroud, or obscured in the
case of possible escapee Frank Morris. (As for Nic Cage and Sean
Connery taking the island back from renegade Navy Seals, purely
schlock.)
The
Conversation (1974): Seventies paranoia layered thickly when
a surveillance expert with a troublesome past (Gene Hackman) begins
to suspect his recordings will lead to murder. Features director
Francis Ford Coppola’s long opening shot of a Union Square
dialogue recorded from the adjacent St. Francis Hotel.
It
Came From Beneath the Sea (1955): Giant octopus battles the
Golden Gate Bridge. Hellacious traffic jams ensue.
–
Jay Cooke is a San Francisco-based travel, food, and culture writer.
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