Location, location, location

I rewatched "Vertigo" last night and was struck not so much by the story, which I found clever but ponderous, but by the importance given to the location. Rick, you mentioned that you like "Vertigo" because you like San Francisco, and that's a good reason to like it. The city is as much a character in the movie as Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak. The location was one of the things I liked best about "The Lady Vanishes," too. Alpine, scenic. Storybookish and sinister. Cosmopolitan and provincial all at once, like San Francisco. And location was a big draw in "The Man Who Knew Too Much," too. Morocco and London. And the Americana of "Psycho." The French Riviera of "To Catch a Thief." On and on. And the locations are not just scenery. They're integral to the story.

I read this when I was looking up somethng about "Vertigo": According to Herbert Coleman, Vertigo's associate producer, Hitchcock often picked a location and then developed a story to be filmed there. He liked to show a familiar location and introduce a twist of malice. When he first saw San Francisco, he said it would be a good place for a murder mystery, and he chose a French novel, "D'Entre les Morts" (From Among the Dead).

Prewar tensions

Another point from “The Art of Hitchcock”:
“As in ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’ and ‘The 39 Steps,’ the politics are again vague, but here the reason was as much the restrictions of British censorship as much as the writers’ deliberate ambiguity: In 1937 and 1938, English films had to maintain a steadfast neutrality about events in Germany and about German expansion throughout Europe. But this requirement paradoxically freed ‘The Lady Vanishes.’ Instead of serving a specific politic, the film became a tightly woven tale in which all appearances are deceiving and characters are sprung free for new relationships.”