Locations in Movies

The Birds (1963)

After a couple of establishing shots showing Tippi Hedren walking through San Francisco’s Union Square in The Birds, the actress walks behind a large poster advertising the city (and clueing in anybody who still doesn’t know where the scene is set). The poster serves another purpose, however: it hides a cut.

Before Tippi Hedren walks behind the poster (above), we’re there in San Francisco. By the time she emerges (below), we’ve moved to a studio set, including the exterior of the pet shop.

It’s nicely done, but the lighting is a dead giveaway. You can’t really see it in these stills, but when you watch the scene, look at the shadows on the ground: they’re hardly visible in the location shooting in natural light, but on set, the actors cast multiple, well defined shadows.

Psycho (1960)

Who doesn’t wish that Psycho had been filmed in a real motel? That one night, you might pull off a road somewhere remote, following the signs pointing towards a motel, only to see that house looming out of the gloom at you? A lone light might lead you to the reception, where you pay four times the going rate for a room, order up a Janet Leigh burger, and shell out an extra $20 for a souvenir mug decorated with the silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock…

Sadly though, the Psycho house, along with the rest of the motel, was a set, built in the Universal backlot, using pieces taken from existing sets. It’s still there, and considerably refurbished from the two-wall shell used in the movie. It’s been moved around the backlot a couple of times, and the motel now sits between sets for How the Grinch Stole Christmas and War of the Worlds. You can see it on Google Maps or Wikimapia, or you can visit it as part of the Universal Studios tour (complete with a very cheesy encounter with Norman Bates).

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

The Indiana Jones are full of Star Wars references: one of the more noticeable is the name of the nightclub in Temple of Doom.

The Last Man on Earth (1964)

Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel I Am Legend has been filmed several times: most recently, there was the 2007 Will Smith movie. In 1971, it was filmed as The Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston. First, though, in 1964, it was filmed as The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price in the title role.

Although set in the USA, The Last Man on Earth was filmed in Rome (these being the days when Italy still had a thriving international film industry, and the legendary Cinecittà studios were used for something other than television commercials). As a result, the production was able to make use of Rome’s wide variety of architecture, from the crumbling buildings of the countryside to the wide roads and brutal angles of EUR, a district founded in 1935 by Mussolini and intended as a new Rome, a city designed according to fascist ideals.

In EUR stands the Square Colosseum, (Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana), which is partially visible in the scene above. It’s a central feature of EUR, less than thirty years old when the film was made, and yet already a relic of a disappeared ideology and a failed model for civilisation. Which is rather fitting.

There’s a better, more recent view of the Square Colosseum here. As this film is now in the Public Domain, you can watch it online or download it from the Internet Archive: The Last Man on Earth.

The Trouble With Harry (1955)

Hitchcock’s disarming comedy The Trouble With Harry is based on a novel by Jack Trevor Story, which was set in England.

Transposing the story across the Atlantic, Hitchcock wanted to set it in a rural New England community, complete with Vermont’s golden autumn leaves. However, no sooner had they filmed a few establishing shots, than said golden leaves all fell off the trees (I suppose that’s why the Americans call it “fall”).

The production company relocated to a studio in California, but not before they’d collected and boxed up Vermont’s golden leaves. They took them across America, and carefully attached them, one by one, to the model trees on the soundstage.