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Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian
‘This is a beautifully simple idea and it works very well... This ought to be the start of a series’
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All cities have their secrets, but none are so dark as San Francisco's, the city that Ambrose Bierce famously described as “a point upon a map of fog.” With its reputation as a shadowy land of easy vice and hard virtue, San Francisco provided the ideal setting for many of the greatest films noir, from classics like The Maltese Falcon and Dark Passage to obscure treasures like Woman on the Run and D.O.A., and neo-noirs like Point Blank and The Conversation. Readers visit the Mission Dolores cemetery where James Stewart spied Kim Novak visiting Carlotta’s grave in Vertigo; the Steinhart Aquarium, where a steamy love scene unfolded between Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth in The Lady from Shanghai; and the Kezar Stadium, where Clint Eastwood captures the serial killer, Scorpio, in a blaze of ghastly white light in Dirty Harry. In this guide to the great films noir and the locations where they were shot, the mythic noir city meets San Francisco’s own dark past. With period film stills.
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The house of the film's title is not actually across the Bay, but in it: it's Alcatraz Penitentiary, the Big House itself. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The house of the film's title is not actually across the Bay, but in it: it's Alcatraz Penitentiary, the Big House itself. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
No better travel guide
2 Aug 2005
Format:Paperback
This is far more valuable than any travel guide I've read -- and most movie guides, for that matter. We all read novels or see movies set in particular cities and then find our hopes dashed when we go visit them. For instance: ever read The Fortress of Solitude and then book a hotel room in Times Square? Doesn't match up.
Luckily, the author has collected all the bits and pieces of the film noir canon so that when you go to San Francisco you won't be running around confused. More than any other major American city, SF seems to have one dominant mood, one overarching spirit. These films embody that spirit, and by knowing them, you'll know the city. (Trust me, I grew up there.)
On top of this, the book is well-written and entertaining, even if you have no immediate travel plans. Highly recommended.
Luckily, the author has collected all the bits and pieces of the film noir canon so that when you go to San Francisco you won't be running around confused. More than any other major American city, SF seems to have one dominant mood, one overarching spirit. These films embody that spirit, and by knowing them, you'll know the city. (Trust me, I grew up there.)
On top of this, the book is well-written and entertaining, even if you have no immediate travel plans. Highly recommended.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
He could have said more
3 Nov 2005
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is very handy, but the author shows his disdain for movies he does not like, which causes him to miss the boat on a few. I feel obliged to say (beforehand) that his writing on the two movies I list has enlightened me on things I did not know, though I have studied these movies for years. I am not from SF, so I can only remark on what I have seen, and what I know.
The movie "Hammett" may have been shot (mostly) on sound stage, but it does make use of a few real buildings that are still in existence today. He criticizes the stars acting abilities, though the actor was chosen to play Hammett in two different films - a rarity.
In "Impact" there are a lot more bits of San Francisco that he fails to mention. There was Anna May Wong's running down the alley in Chinatown, views of the Ferry Building that were taken before the Embarcadero hid the view. Street corners and views of bridges abound.
All of that said, I look at the book a lot. I consider it more valuable to my collection than "Footsteps in the Fog." which is about Hitchcock's SF and N. Cal.
The movie "Hammett" may have been shot (mostly) on sound stage, but it does make use of a few real buildings that are still in existence today. He criticizes the stars acting abilities, though the actor was chosen to play Hammett in two different films - a rarity.
In "Impact" there are a lot more bits of San Francisco that he fails to mention. There was Anna May Wong's running down the alley in Chinatown, views of the Ferry Building that were taken before the Embarcadero hid the view. Street corners and views of bridges abound.
All of that said, I look at the book a lot. I consider it more valuable to my collection than "Footsteps in the Fog." which is about Hitchcock's SF and N. Cal.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Best Kind of Guidebook
25 Sep 2006
Format:Paperback
Rich works any number of variations on a theme, and at first what seemed like a liability (the designer's rigid graphic scheme followed by what feels like an exact word count for every entry, no matter if the film is a great one or a lousy one) and makes it into a virtue. He is a skillful and persuasive prose writer, and his knowledge of these films is profound. Ok, there may be incidental errors here and there, as the other reviewers have indicated, but when you're reading his book you don't feel it.
What's amazing is the strength of his central argument, that San Francisco is such a haunted place that right away it became one of the chief noir sites--early on, in 1940, during the so-called "gateway period," and even more astonishing, that despite the general death of noir when color took over general release in the late 1950s, noir has never really died in San Francisco, and the movies keep getting made on a regular basis. Noir experts may scoff at the idea of Schlesinger's PACIFIC HEIGHTS as a noir, but Rich shows us how it fits into the old "real estate noir" category of THE HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL. Or David Fincher's THE GAME, or that crazy Richard Gere-Kim Basinger thriller FINAL ANALYSIS. Who knew? Yet somehow Nathanial Rich, with his quiet, insistent exegesis, makes you believe.
I haven't seen all of the films listed here, nor even seen all the locations, though I plan to take this book on my fist and make a tour soon of the ones I've missed. There are buildings we go by here in San Francisco, like that huge Art Deco pink marble slab up by Buena Vista Terrace, and we tell each other they were in this or that movie, VERTIGO or DARK PASSAGE, and yet is this a way of reassuring each other, or unsettling each other? Can't find that building in this book by the way. Maybe it was just an "urban" legend. If ever I meet Nathaniel Rich, I'll tug at his sleeve till he's by my side on top of that hill and I'll point to it.
What's amazing is the strength of his central argument, that San Francisco is such a haunted place that right away it became one of the chief noir sites--early on, in 1940, during the so-called "gateway period," and even more astonishing, that despite the general death of noir when color took over general release in the late 1950s, noir has never really died in San Francisco, and the movies keep getting made on a regular basis. Noir experts may scoff at the idea of Schlesinger's PACIFIC HEIGHTS as a noir, but Rich shows us how it fits into the old "real estate noir" category of THE HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL. Or David Fincher's THE GAME, or that crazy Richard Gere-Kim Basinger thriller FINAL ANALYSIS. Who knew? Yet somehow Nathanial Rich, with his quiet, insistent exegesis, makes you believe.
I haven't seen all of the films listed here, nor even seen all the locations, though I plan to take this book on my fist and make a tour soon of the ones I've missed. There are buildings we go by here in San Francisco, like that huge Art Deco pink marble slab up by Buena Vista Terrace, and we tell each other they were in this or that movie, VERTIGO or DARK PASSAGE, and yet is this a way of reassuring each other, or unsettling each other? Can't find that building in this book by the way. Maybe it was just an "urban" legend. If ever I meet Nathaniel Rich, I'll tug at his sleeve till he's by my side on top of that hill and I'll point to it.
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