Customer Reviews

Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco

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This book provides the intricate details of the filming of a number of Hitchcock classics in the SF Bay Area. The book covers the locations and filming of Shadow of a Doubt, Vertigo, The Birds, Suspicion, Psycho, and Family Plot, and explores the ways in which the Bay Area provided an inspiration for the movies as well as a wide variety of settings. It served as a reminder to me of the wonderful diversity of the Bay Area and the keen eye Hitchcock had for what could make a movie.

This book is awesome! I purchased it for my mom who is a huge Hitchcock fan and loves San Francisco. She read it from cover to cover and enjoyed every minute of it...The book is written in a way that conveys the brilliance of Hitchcock and how he used the city to enhance his plots and characters...I recommend this to anyone who is a film buff or just loves a good read on a dark stormy night..

Hitchcock loved northern California. He shot some of his most memorable films there, and this book assembles the trail he walked through the greater San Francisco Bay area in many of his films.

In one film documentary, Hume Cronyn, who co-starred in one of Hitch's own favorite movies - "Shadow of a Doubt" - described how Hitch enthused on filming in and near California wine country. "We'll go to the vineyards and squeeze the grapes over our mouths, until the juice runs down onto our shirts."

Here you can see pictures from both the filming time and now, and go on a detailed journey through each step of filming for movies staged in San Francisco or elsewhere in Northern California (The Birds, for example, was filmed in Bodega Bay). The authors present the sites as they were for each scene and then describe those sites as they are today, if they still stand.

Perhaps the most haunting images are of the historic Mission Dolores Church, where James Stewart followed Kim Novak to a graveside in Vertigo. This still lies at the heart of the city's Mission District. You also get views of the Golden Gate bridge approach where Kim jumped into the bay, and find out that this plot of land only existed in moviedom...

A historical curiosity: as much as the Hitchcock's were charmed by this area, they sold their second home here in the early 1960s and spent the rest of their lives in their modest Bel Air house. Like so many older people, they liked the year-round heat, I guess.

I grew up and still live in San Francisco. In fact, I was in the 5th grade when Hitchcock filmed a Vertigo scene next door to my school. If you look closely during a brief long shot of the mansion where Carlotta suposedly lived you will see a bit of the chain link fence of my schoolyard. (We were kept in and the nuns wouldn't let us out while they were filming.) Both the mansion and the school are long gone, but they are preserved forever on video. This book discusses the various locations Hitchcock used and I was suprised to find out that a Pacific Heights apartment building that I pass by regularly and have often thought about living in, was once a hotel. There is a lot about Hitchcock's private life here. Including his visits to the Grant Market on Market Street. My family shopped there too and in the middle 60s I worked next door at an oldtime stationers where Hitchcock showed up one day to buy a new nib for his fountain pen. He arrived in a black limo and when the clerk asked for his autograph, he drew his profile on a piece of paper. A few years ago, I spent an afternoon trooping up and down the North Beach side of Russian Hill looking for Jimmie Stewart's Vertigo apartment and didn't find it. Thanks to this book I now know where to look. It's really the little details that make this book fascinating, both about the films and the director.

For fans of the master of suspense who happen to be San Francisco-philes, this is a fun one to breeze through on a rainy day. Obvious Hitchcock aficionados as well as bay area residents, co-authors Jeff Kraft and Aaron Leventhal decided to play detective and retrace the filmmaker's steps in identifying all the locations he used in several of his masterworks. Primarily three classics are spotlighted - 1942's "Shadow of a Doubt", 1958's "Vertigo" and 1963's "The Birds", though establishing and background scenes for several others were filmed around here in spite of the story locales, for example, Point Lobos near Monterey was used to recreate the coastline around Cornwall, England in 1940's "Rebecca". The mix of photos - taken at the time both of filming and in the present day - interspersed with the co-authors' anecdotal, sometimes fascinating findings makes for an enjoyable coffee table book.

Fortunately, the three films highlighted are among the master's best, most recognizable work, so scene references do not seem obscure to even the non-trivialist. The various San Francisco locations cited in "Vertigo" provide the book's high points since the other two films are obviously more focused on the less compelling north bay communities of Santa Rosa and Bodega Bay. What comes across most in the co-authors' discourse throughout is their confirmation of Hitchcock's well-known meticulous filmmaking techniques. He was obviously in love with the area, even having a home for a time in Scots Valley near Santa Cruz, but he went to great lengths to study various locations in detail and even recreate real interiors intact - such as the now-defunct Ernie's restaurant or the Venetian Room at the Fairmont Hotel - on Hollywood soundstages with dead-eye accuracy. To their credit, Kraft and Leventhal have done extensive homework on their two subjects - Hitchcock and the bay area - and were aided by people who were around when Hitchcock was filming. The book is an intriguing complement to any number of tomes about Hitchcock's films even beyond the niche the subject represents. It also makes a great tour map for anyone who wants to follow the director's storytelling paths.

Good evening (or good morninig!) Amazon fans of Sir Alfred Hitchcock! (1899-1980) Hitchcock loved Northern California and so will you after reading the well researched words and looking at the pictures in this splendid book!
Levin and Rosenthal are young film historians who also love San Francisco and its environs. In this meticulously researched book they mate words and pictures of the sites seen in Hitchcok classics filmed in the area with how those same sites look today!
They focus their prime attention on "Vertigo" filmed in San Franciso: "Shadow of A Doubt" in the charming northern California city of Santa Rosa: and "The Birds" where the master film director focused on the isolated Sonama coast town of "Bodega Bay."
The authors also tell of us of other shots Hitch filmed in Northern California fog and wind and sea! (such as shots in
"Rebecca"; "Topaz" and "Family Plot".
We join Hitch and his wife Alma as they stay in such great
hotels as the Fairmont and Mark Hopkins; dine at Ernie's and
Jack's" and enjoy the rich wines produced in this great grape
producing region! (the Hitchcoks grew their own grapes and sold
them to a winery in the area!)
If you love Hitchcock, the movies, beautiful scenery or the glories of Northern California then curl up with this excellent book!
This reviewer only wishes someone would take the idea of the
two authors and use it for all the other Hitchcock classics filmed in locales from London to selected sites througout the
world.
TCM featured this book on their network and interviewed the authors and persons involved in filming the movies in Hitch's
films shot in Northern California. I appreciate them bringing this book to my attention.
Have a good evening following Hitch in the foggy swirl of
enigmatic, beatuiful, seductive and at times sinister San Francisco!

... and a must have for any Bay Area resident. So many directors, especially those of Hitchcock's generation, tried to get away with backlot substitutes for locations. Hitchcock, in contrast, lovingly and painstakingly shot his masterpieces on location whenever possible. The book shows, in great detail, which Bay Area locations were used in classics like Vertigo, The Birds, Psycho and Shadow of a Doubt, not only telling readers which locations were used but also how to find those that survive today, illustrated with current photos of those locations. Even though I've lived in the Bay Area most of my life, I plan to take a Hitchcock tour of the Bay Area very soon. Thank you, Mr. Kraft, for giving me a new appreciation of two of my favorite things: Alfred Hitchcock's films and the San Francisco Bay Area.

I have been a fan of Hitchcock since I was little as one of my dad's favorite films is "The Birds" and he and I watched it many times while I was growing up. After I got older I discovered some of Hitch's other films and have loved his work for quite a while.

I was able to visit San Francisco and northern California in 2004 and one of the places I wanted to visit while there was Bodega Bay where they filmed The Birds. We rented a car and drove up the coast to Bodega Bay and it was in the Bodega Bay restaurant/gift shop where I bought this book and spent most of the flight back home reading it and once home I couldn't put it down. It is wonderful and the authors couldn't have done a better job with their research.

I had only seen Vertigo once before I bought the book, but have since bought it on DVD and really love it and love all the details in the book about the filming locations, etc.

A few weeks ago Encore Mystery had a marathon of Hitch movies in honor of his birthday and I got out the book and re-read parts of it while watching Vertigo. It is amazing to me how detailed the authors are with their photos of the filming locations and how they looked then and now. Lots of great little tidbits about the locations too!

Great book and highly recommended!!!!

I am an Native born San Franciscan and have been a Alfred Hitchcock fan for years this book is great the pictures and info on how they did a scene I was in San Francisco and was watching as they filmed Vertigo in front of the flower shop I will read this book many times and will always glad I searched the web sight it is a great find for someone like me I am a nostalgia person and enjoy many books on San Francisco

We are really enjoying Footsteps in the Fog! In fact we are planning a trip to the San Francisco Area and other places mentioned in the book. The details are just fabulous! Its going to be so easy to follow and find all of these wonderful places. Hitchcock was a master movie maker and its going to be quite an adventure to go to where he made some of his best movies!