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Visiting film locations

There’s something marvelous about visiting the location where a favorite movie was filmed. When we watch a movie, we know it’s all make-believe, but visiting a location… Well, we feel like it might be just a bit real.

Over the seven years of writing Movie Churches, I've had opportunities to visit some favorite film locations. This list includes some from the Movie Churches blog and some not, but they're all places I recommend visiting.

5) Psycho - Universal Studios, Los Angeles, CA - Bates Motel and house

Frankly, this one seems like a bit of a cheat. After all, it's at a movie studio rather than a “real” place, but this is genuinely where Alfred Hitchcock filmed his classic -- and it is a little spooky being there.

4) The Graduate - La Verne United Methodist Church, La Verne, CA - Elaine’s wedding church

This was a location that we did visit for Movie Churches (and our church blog - Dean and Mindy Go to Church.) But I liked this film long before I wrote about it. The scene where Ben (Dustin Hoffman) interrupts the wedding of the girl he loves is iconic. Bizarrely, this has made the church where this scene was filmed popular as a wedding site.

3) Rocky III - Philadelphia, PA - The Rocky Statue

It is rather a meta-event that Philadelphia (in the movie) gave a statue to honor the boxer, and the film company gave the statue to the city to honor the actor Sylvester Stallone and the movie. In the film, the statue is at the top of the outside stair that leads to the Philadelphia Museum of Art but now the statue is at the bottom of the steps. (I have also run up the steps, as Rocky does in the films, but probably not as fast.)

2) High Noon - Saint Joseph’s, Tuolumne City, CA - church for town meeting

This is another location we visited for our blogs. The location of the church is very different from that in the film. It’s in the mountains, it was snowy the day we visited, whereas in the film the church seems located in a town in a flat, arid location in the Western frontier. It was cool to be where one of the greatest Westerns was filmed.

I)  Die Hard - Fox Plaza, Los Angeles, CA - Nakatomi Plaza

Though we never wrote about this film for our blog, it was fun to be in the location where one of the Christmas movies our family views every year was filmed. We took off our shoes because… Well, not because it is a sacred place exactly, but because… If you’ve seen the film, you know why.

Small town movie churches I: The Confession

The Confession (1920)

Sometimes it seems as if every movie takes place somewhere between the moon and New York City --either in a land of fantasy or rarified Manhattan (but I repeat myself). But some movies are set in a different place. This month we’ll be spending all of our time in small town America, in rural churches.

We’re starting with a film nearly a century old, 1920’s The Confession. When released back in the day, it would have seemed like a contemporary tale, but from today’s perspective the setting of Deer Lodge, Montana seems like the Old West.

The film opens with an illustrated Bible verse: a priest standing on a rock by a lake in the woods, with the words of Matthew 16:18 (“On this rock I will build my church”) superimposed on the screen.

Immediately the audience is given something else to read -- a title card. “The Walled Sanctuary -- Within the sacred silence of the Roman Catholic Church are recounted the sins, transgressions and sorrow of countless thousands and whatever be our religion we are bound to respect that exalted devotion which prompts a priest to hold forever inviolate the secrets of the Holy Confessional.”

It's interesting that in this film, the Confessional is treated as an exotic practice while still emphasizing the importance of respecting another faith’s practices. The concept of the confidentiality of the confessional was used in many films and television shows over the years (for example, in Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess), but this may be the first time the practice was used as a plot device.

Let’s start with a plot summary.

Father Bartlett (Henry Walthall) lives with his mother and brother, Tom (Francis McDonald), in a small, Western town. The brother is a heavy drinker, much to his mother’s distress. A stranger, Joseph Dumont, comes to town seeking revenge against the man he believes dishonored his sister. He kills the man and confesses the murder to Father Bartlett. But the priest’s brother, Tom, is accused of the murder.

Tom is arrested. A crowd of citizens forms a mob to rescue Tom (wearing KKK type hoods, with very poor cutting skills for the eye holes). Father Bartlett stands against the crowd, trusting God for salvation rather than human strength or cleverness.

The trial is held. Father Bartlett is called to testify and refuses to share what Dumont confessed to him.

Tom doesn’t appreciate his brother’s stand. When Father Bartlett visits him in the cell, Tom knocks his brother out and escapes in the priest’s clothing.

Tom hops a train to Canada, and in a train car meets the real killer, Joseph Dumont. Since Tom is still in his brother’s clerical collar, Joseph mistakes him for a priest and confesses again. The two fight and then separate. Both wind up in Canada.

Father Bartlett follows his brother north of the border, but the Mounties find Tom before his brother does and ship him back to face the gallows. Bartlett finds Dumont and convinces him to go back to Montana to confess. But will they make it in time?

If you want out what happens next, you can find the film on YouTube. The question for this blog is, what kind of priest was Father Bartlett?

On a title card, he's described as “A man who sees the beauty of all things,” even in an alcoholic like his brother and a murderer like Dumont.

He treats even a man like Dumont with respect. After the confession, Father Bartlett tells him, “You must pray morning, noon, and night, for the soul of the man you have murdered. Until the end, he may intercede for your salvation. I am about to absolve you, but before doing so you must promise, should the weight of your crime fall upon another, you will make reparation.” Some questionable theology in that statement, but it is compassionate.

Father Bartlett's treatment of his brother is even more problematic. Since he urged the killer not to let another be punished for his crime, it seems like he could have been more proactive in the situation without breaking his promise to Dumont.

But all turns out well in the end. As the priest says, “By faith in God and His infinite mercy the sunshine of love has come to stay.” So Father Bartlett earns our highest rating of Four Steeples.

South Dakota films on the small screen

In our tour of all the states this year, South Dakota is the 42nd state. The film we’re watching in South Dakota, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest, ranks 40th on the American Film Institute’s list of all time best films. Cary Grant, in the film, is also taking a cross country trip.

He starts in New York City, but when he’s mistaken for another man (a man who doesn’t exist) and accused of murder, he begins a cross country trek. HIs journey ends at Mount Rushmore. Some Mount Rushmore scenes were filmed at Mount Rushmore, and the film’s original title was The Man in Lincoln’s Nose. (The scenes of characters climbing on the President's faces were filmed in a studio. Hitch didn't discourage people from thinking those scenes were filmed on location.)

There’s nothing about churches in the film; the only spiritual element I noticed was when James Mason’s housekeeper says “God bless you!” Both characters are evil, and both try to murder Cary Grant, so I don’t think the blessing comes from a place of theological sincerity.

Another film uses Mount Rushmore as the conclusion of a cross country chase, 2007’s National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Sorry, Nic Cage, you’re no Cary Grant.

Another contemporary thriller set more fully in South Dakota is 1998’s Mercury Rising, in which Bruce Willis must protect an autistic boy who has secrets the bad guys desire. It was filmed partly in Sturgis, South Dakota.

The majority of films set in South Dakota are Westerns. Last year’s Academy Award winning film, The Revenant (about a wilderness guide left for dead in the Dakotas) was not filmed in South Dakota but in Canada. Leonardo DiCaprio won an Oscar for playing a historical figure, Hugh Glass, in the film. The story had been told on the screen before, in 1971’s Man in the Wilderness -- in which Richard Harris played Glass. But that film was made in Spain.

Many other westerns have been set in South Dakota but not filmed in the state. Little Big Man, in which Dustin Hoffman played the world’s oldest Indian (could that casting happen today?), has scenes in Deadwood, but was filmed in Montana and Canada.  Would it really be easier to film in Montana than on location in Deadwood?

The 1953 western musical Calamity Jane with Doris Day and Howard Keel was (not surprisingly) all filmed in Hollywood studios.

There was one acclaimed western that was set and filmed in South Dakota: 1990’s Dances with Wolves. It won the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director (for Kevin Costner, who also starred in the film). While making the film on location, Kevin Costner lodged at times in the Franklin Hotel in Deadwood. We stayed in the Franklin when we were in Deadwood, and slept across the hall from the room dedicated to the star.

There are a couple of other films with contemporary stories that had the feel of a Western. 1973’s critically acclaimed Badlands introduced the world to director Terrence Mallick. Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen played young outlaws from South Dakota, but the film was made in Colorado.

But 1992’s Thunderheart, directed by Michael Apted, was filmed in South Dakota. The story of an FBI agent sent to an Indian reservation to investigate a political murder dealt with the struggles of contemporary Native American life.  Filming took place at the Pine Ridge Reservation (called “Bear Creek Reservation” in the film). Both Badlands National Park and Wounded Knee were also used as filming locations.

New York Movies on the Small Screen

There are states where I search high and low to find a few films set and/or shot in a state. Face the facts, Delaware, you are not the new Hollywood. But then we come to New York. Aside from California, more films have been made in and about New York than any other state. So the problem I face here is not trying to scrape enough films together to write about, but to narrow films down. Instead of a dozen films, there are thousands of films to choose from. So I needed a system.  I decided to go with a dozen New York films from a dozen of the best of American directors.

You might be surprised that when I say that I’m talking about the best of directors, I first bring up Rob Reiner. It’s been a couple of decades since he made a decent film. But for one decade, he made some of my favorite films. One of the most quoted comedies of all time is his mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap, and a number of people would call The Princess Bride their all time favorite films. And one of the best of romantic comedies -- and New York films -- is Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally. Made in 1989, the film brings to life the Rodgers and Hart song, “I Could Write a Book,” by showing “how to make two lovers of friends.” There is a lot of talk of sex in the film, but it is also a celebration of marriage, with an interesting device of interspersing the story of Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) with old couples telling their love stories.

And the film is full of New York icons: the Yankees and the Giants, ice skating in Central Park, marvelous views of the skyline, and, of course, delis. Nora Ephron’s screenplay makes this the best Woody Allen film Woody never made.

My favorite film director is Alfred Hitchcock. He made a number of films partially set in New York (such as North by Northwest which we will come back to in a later state), but The Wrong Man was filmed primarily in NYC and is also set entirely in the city. It is also unique in that it is based on a true story, and it’s not a thriller. Henry Fonda is a man falsely accused of robbery, and the film follows his struggles with the criminal justice system. There are also some faith moments in the film, as Fonda turns to God for help. Aside from I Confess, it’s Hitch’s film most filled with Catholic imagery.

My second favorite director is Akira Kurosawa. You may not be shocked to discover the Japanese director never directed a film about New York. But another favorite, Billy Wilder, did make a great New York film. 1960’s The Apartment won that year’s Oscar for Best Picture. The moral satire shows that Fred MacMurray could play sleazy as well as he played avuncular.

My favorite director(s) currently working are Joel and Ethan Coen. They’ve made films in all parts of the country, and they have worked in New York. 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis is the tale of a folk singer in the early 1960’s going to Greenwich Village to seek his fortune. It has a wonderful soundtrack rivaled only by the soundtrack for the Coens’ Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? For a key to what the film is all about, pay attention to the name of the cat.

The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, won the 1972 Oscar for Best Picture, and since then has often topped polls of the best films ever made. The film has scenes in a great variety of locations, including Italy, but a majority of the film is set (and was filmed) in New York City. There is a climatic scene in a church, the baptism of a child, within a montage of great acts of violence.

John Huston, a two time Oscar winner, directed a lesser known but very good New York gangster film, Prizzi’s Honor. Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner star as two professional killers who fall in love and (inevitably) are given the assignment to knock off the other.

The drug trade is the theme of William Friedkin’s Best Picture Winner, The French Connection.

Mob control of the unions was the subject of Elia Kazan’s Best Picture Winner, On the Waterfront (which featured Marlon Brando’s famous “I could have been a contender” speech and the film will be featured soon when Movie Churches looks at the Mob).

Crime was set to music in Robert Wise’s West Side Story, a retelling of Romeo and Juliet featuring juvenile delinquency, dance, and the Big Apple.

West Side Story also won the Academy Award for Best Picture, but it was not the first musical that featured location filming in NYC. Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s musical, On the Town, was the first MGM musical to film on location and it has fewer deaths than WSS.

I asked my daughter Jil, who lives in Brooklyn, what I should feature as a New York film and she suggested 2012’s Frances Ha. Directed by Noah Baumbach, creator of a number of independently produced comedies, the film features a millennial woman belatedly coming of age. Jil suggested the film because she likes it and because it features upstate New York and not just the city.

If one was to pick the quintessential New York director, it seems the two most likely options would be Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. And because life isn’t fair, I’m not including a Scorsese film (sorry, Marty). I will include Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors.  Chuck Colson once listed this comedy/drama as essential Christian viewing. In the film, a man gets away with a crime and finds that the worst possible punishment is not being caught. It is my favorite film by Allen and like most of Allen’s work, it is set and filmed in New York.

(Coming Wednesday, another New York film by a great American director, as seen on  the big screen)

Funny Churches Month: Foul Play (1978)

After Chevy Chase left Saturday Night Live, his first big project was the film Foul Play, written and directed by Colin Higgins as an homage to the comic suspense films of Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock often discussed a feature of his films, the MacGuffin, a device of no importance in itself that moves the plot along. In a lecture at Columbia University, he cited this joke as the origin of the idea of the MacGuffin:

It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says “What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?” and the other answers “Oh that’s the MacGuffin.” The first one asks “What’s a MacGuffin?” “Well,” the other man says, “It’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.” The first man says, “But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,” and the other one answers, “Well, then that’s no MacGuffin!” So you see, a MacGuffin is nothing at all.

In Foul Play the MacGuffin is a pack of cigarettes with hidden microfilm containing IMPORTANT INFORMATION. Goldie Hawn plays an ingénue named Gloria who is given the pack by an undercover policeman shortly before he is murdered. This sets the bad guys on her trail, making attempts on her life, bringing Officer Tony Carlson (Chase) of the San Francisco Police to her aid. The proof of the “MacGuffin” nature of the pack of cigarettes is shown when ultimately it's casually tossed in a fireplace and burned without the information inside ever being examined or used.

But there is another MacGuffin in the film. That other MacGuffin is the reason I’m writing about the film. It's the Roman Catholic Church.

The film opens with the murder of an Archbishop. We see the clergyman leaving his chauffeured limousine and entering a mansion, apparently his home. A servant asks how his evening went, and he responds, “The opera gala will be a triumph!” He thinks he is alone in his study as he puts a record (The Mikado) on his stereo, but he isn’t. An unseen assailant draws a knife and kills him.

Then we see Gloria and listen as she describes her dating woes to a friend at a party. Her friend urges her to take chances. She takes a chance and picks up a hitchhiker on her way home from the party, who happens to be the undercover policeman mentioned above, and the plot is in motion.

Throughout the film we hear TV and radio news stories about Pope Pius XIII visiting the United States. We hear about his address to the UN where he is warmly welcomed for his message on world peace. We hear of his meeting the President and congressional leaders and sharing a message of brotherly love. We also learn from newscasts that he will be visiting San Francisco, the film’s location.

Eventually, sleuthing leads to the name of the organization that murdered the Archbishop and has made numerous attempts on Gloria's life: The Tax Churches League. This is a rather unique twist for a Hollywood film. Usually the twist is that some mucky-muck or other in the church is the guilty party, but we learn that the bad guys are attacking the church, plotting to assassinate the Pope. (Years earlier, we learn, they had unsuccessfully tried to kidnap Billy Graham.)

Eventually, when the villains have Goldie and Chevy tied up, they explain their plans, doing the monologuing that movie scoundrels so love. “The Pope is a symbol of the vast wealth and corporate power of the world’s churches. The sham of organized religion is robbing true spirituality of its life. We tried years ago to organize a peaceful campaign to tax these corporations, but we were attacked and laughed at and finally imprisoned. We decided to pursue the historically proven path of violence.”

I don’t think you’ll mind too much if I let you know Ms. Hawn and Mr. Chase escape and foil the plan to shoot the Pope at the opera. But when one sees the Pope luxuriating in the prime seats of the theater, and his rather dim response to the violence that eventually erupts to save his life, one can’t help but wonder if the filmmakers share the sympathies of the Tax the Churches League.

But ultimately the silliness of the whole enterprise keeps one from thinking the film has anything serious to say about the state of the church. Still, the Pope in the film is in favor of world peace (quite the bold stand), so we’re giving the Movie Church of the film Two Steeples.

(There is another religious figure in the film. Billy Barty plays a Bible salesman hawking the New American Bible, which happens to be the Catholic translation. But Goldie isn’t in the market.)

Confession Movie Churches: "I Confess," 1953

Comparing this film with last year's "Calvary," another film coming up in Movie Churches' Confession Month, one sees a startling contrast between contemporary views of the church over the sixty year gap.

In "I Confess," everyone in the film seems shocked by the very notion that a priest might have committed a murder. Two young women spotted a man in a cassock at the scene of the murder (actually, the killer borrowed a priest's robe). The reaction of one of the police officers to this testimony? "It's absurd that a priest would be involved [in the murder.]" And the conversation in the district attorney's office?  "'The unpleasant part is a priest is suspected.' 'What nonsense!'" The very idea that a priest would be guilty of such a crime strikes the average character in the film (and, one assumes, the people in the audience) as outlandish.

Sixty years later, in the film "Calvary," after scandals with pedophile priests, the characters in the film and many people in the audience assume the very worst about priests and the Catholic Church. Killer priests have become a cliché in movies. Priests are even more likely to be the villain a film than CEOs and right wing politicians.

The priest of "I Confess" (actually, there are several priests in the film, but I'm talking about the featured priest, played by Montgomery Clift) is far from a villain.  Father Michael is widely respected in his community and quite trusted. He is so trusted, in fact, that when the monastery's caretaker, Keller (killer) commits a murder, he confesses the murder to Father Michael in full confidence that the priest will honor his vows and the sanctity of the confession and not reveal the truth.

His confidence proves to be well founded. Even when Father Michael is accused of the murder of a corrupt local lawyer; the priest will not reveal what he heard in confession.

The killer plants the bloody robe in the priest's car. When Father Michael testifies in court, he is asked, "Who might have put the robe in your car?" The Father takes a moment before answering. The film is set in Quebec, and a crucifix hangs above the Father's head. He answers the question truthfully but in keeping with his vows, "I can't say."

The prosecution in the trial must, of course, ascribe a motive for the priest to kill the lawyer. It is discovered that the lawyer was blackmailing the priest's former girlfriend, and the priest is alleged to continue to have a romantic relationship with the woman. This isn't true, but suspicion is planted in the mind of the public.

The priest is acquitted in the trial, but is still suspected of murder and adultery by many. Father Michael comes to know the experience of Christ: being despised and rejected by men. In time, (Hollywood being Hollywood) the true killer is revealed, but one suspects that Father Michael's experience will result in his being an even better priest.

Of course, we're here to review the Movie Church and not the movie. Which is just as well, because if you like movies, the fact that this film was directed by Alfred Hitchcock is reason enough to watch the film. Hitchcock was educated by Jesuits and many film study papers have been written about the themes and symbols of Catholicism and Christianity found in his films. In this film, those themes provide the text, rather than the subtext.

As for the Movie Church in this film...a Movie Church that has a priest with the integrity of Father Michael, willing to give his life to prison or the gallows rather than break his vows, gets this film four steeples.

-- Dean