Alfred Hitchcock loved San Francisco, and he gave "The City" a starring role in his 1958 movie Vertigo and a cameo role in The Birds (1963). Brimming over with Hitchcockian suspense, the films are quite different. Vertigo is mystery where an ex cop (Jimmy Stewart) falls in love with a reincarnated dead woman (Kim Novak), while Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor star in the terrifying ecological tale The Birds, where our feathered friends are far from friendly.
The City
Displaying Style with a capital S, the San Francisco of that time was a low-keyed, cosmopolitan destination where men wearing hats safely escorted women wearing coats and gloves to almost every corner of the city. The skyline was low and friendly—thoughtfully built so as not to block a neighbor’s view. Citizens were as justifiably proud of their baseball stadium as their art museum or opera house and dining choices were the envy of the world.
The film opens with police detective Jimmy Stewart chasing a suspect across rooftops. After leaping across an alleyway, Stewart slips and slides down a tile roof. He manages to save himself from a multi-story fall by hanging from the metal rain gutter, but the policeman who comes to help, falls to his death. From then on, Stewart is so afraid of heights that he gets dizzy and faints when climbing a step stool. He leaves the force and reluctantly takes a job trailing the wife (Kim Novak) of a rich businessman.
The route Kim Novak takes around the city must have been planned by the Chamber of Commerce. She lives at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, shops for flowers in Maiden Lane, takes them to a grave at Mission Dolores, views a painting at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, strolls through twisted cypress trees above Seal Rocks and makes a visit to an ornate Victorian boarding house. Stewart watches her for several days as she returns to these places again and again, sometimes visiting new sites like the Steinhart Aquarium or the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. Lulled by the repetitiveness of these trips, the ex-policeman is caught off guard when the woman drives to Fort Point, parks under the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge and jumps into the bay. Stewart rescues her and takes her to his own apartment. They talk. Eyes meet. He’s smitten and he vows to protect her from the suicidal demons that inhabit her soul.
Reincarnation?
It seems that the Kim Novak’s great grandmother was a deeply disturbed individual named Carlotta who took her own life. This same Carlotta is the former owner of the Victorian house, the resident of the Mission grave and also the woman in the painting. Kim Novak's character is haunted by visions and dreams. One in particular keeps appearing over and over again—a livery stable with coaches, an old-west hotel and saloon, a wide expanse of lawn, a Mission with tile roofs and twin bell towers, a fall...
Stewart recognizes her description: “I know the place. It’s a little town a couple of hours away called San Juan Bautista. The Mission and Plaza are set up like a museum. I’ll take you there and show you it isn’t a dream. It’s real”.
Novak immediately recognizes the setting and then dashes up the bell tower. Stewart chases after her but his vertigo hits halfway up the stairs and he collapses in fear. There is a scream and he watches in terror as the woman he is supposed to protect plummets to her death.
End of story? Not at all. Remember, this is an Alfred Hitchock film and the master of suspense could plot a tale like no one else.
Heading Up the Coast
Hitchcock returned to San Francisco for his 1963 film The Birds. This is a quite different tale—not a mystery, but a cautionary fable about the antagonistic relationship man has with other residents of our planet (in this case, the ones with feathers). This film starts in San Francisco and the opening shot is a master of Hollywood artifice. Tippi Hedren is the cool-blonde daughter of a San Francisco newspaper publisher. The camera pans as she crosses the street from Union Square, walks behind a sign with a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, and heads into a brick-fronted pet store that was never there in real life. (Hitch's famous walk-on for this film has him exiting the same store with two dogs on a leash).
Inside the store, a lawyer (Rod Taylor) attracts her attention when he tries to buy a pair of love birds. The store is out of stock, but offers to get some soon. For some reason (a lark perhaps?) Tippi Hedron's character decides to drive her Aston Martin convertible (in her mink coat), and deliver the caged birds to the lawyer's coastal home in Bodega Bay. Soon after she arrives, wild birds begin attacking and killing people for no known reason. As the local Audubon Society matron says: “There are over 150 billion birds in North America alone. If they decided to war against people we wouldn’t have a chance.”
The Same Locations Today
With skyscrapers, one-way streets and casually dressed pedestrians, the San Francisco landmarks are still there, but harder to see. However tourists who follow Tippi Hedren's same coastal drive up Highway 1 or Jimmy Stewarts trip to San Juan Bautista will find that little has changed. In Bodega Bay (and the near-by "stand in" towns of Bodega, Olema and Point Reyes), the schoolhouse and church are still there, the Tides Restaurant is remodeled but is at the same location, and the Bay itself looks identical. Here at least, just like it does in the San Juan Bautista State Park and mission, time seems to run a little slower.
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