Screenshot for the Week of 08 June 2020: "VERTIGO" (1958)

Madeleine (Kim Novak) under San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge in Vertigo (1958).

A cop who's afraid of heights. A gorgeous woman who looks a lot like Kim Novak. A semi-handsome Gal Friday. A semi-stranger from the past. And reality is as slippery as seaweed in San Francisco Bay.

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"Golden Gate" isn't just shorthand for the Golden Gate Bridge. The Golden Gate is a strait between the San Francisco headlands and the Marin headlands. It's the waterway that connects San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The bridge spans the Golden Gate from one side to the other. Explorer John C. Frémont gave the strait its name in 1846, referring to a golden gate for more trade with China. This was two years before the discovery of gold in California and nine decades before the bridge was built.

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We no longer have the view of the Golden Gate that we see in this screenshot. We lost it immediately after the September 11 attacks. [Spoiler Alert!] The large area that envelopes the south end of the bridge, including the spot where Madeleine stands, has been off limits ever since. In short, today Madeleine would have to jump into the Bay about two hundred feet behind where the cameraman stood.[End of Spoiler!]

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Vertigo offers a lot to look at. Every scene is a visual feast. I had to see the movie several times before I could take my eyes off of the key characters and focus all of my attention on the background. I'm familiar with San Francisco, and I wanted to see it in the movie.


Vertigo shows off the City and County of San Francisco better than any other movie. The scene in the screenshot was filmed at Fort Point, an armory that predates the Civil War and is now a National Historic Site.

Ernie's restaurant in North Beach, where Scottie first sees Madeleine, was a fixture on Columbus Avenue, and continued in business until the 1990s. (Its interior was recreated in painstaking detail in a sound studio for actual filming.)

Lombard Street, the "crookedest street in the world" that Scottie drives to get home, is still there, as is Scottie's apartment building on Lombard Street.

Until about 10-15 years ago, the exterior of Scottie's apartment hadn't changed noticeably since the film was shot. When I last drove past it the door was still painted blood orange. But I saw it on Google Maps streetview a few years ago. The façade had had an extreme makeover. Scottie's apartment was unrecognizable. For me, it was gone.


The McKittrick Hotel, like its elusive guest Carlotta Valdes, is long gone. So are Podesta Baldacci (florist shop) and Ransohoff's (dress shop).


But Union Square is still there. So is Coit Tower, in the distant background on Telegraph Hill, seen from inside and outside Scottie's apartment. So are Argosy Books (Pop's book shop), Mission Dolores and its cemetery, Mission San Juan Bautista and its stables, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, Big Basin Redwoods State Park, and Cypress Point.

C: Robert Burks.  D: Alfred Hitchcock.