Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Closure for Vertigo


So we have now reached closure point for following the Hitchock film ‘Vertigo’, because today we drove through the little town of San Juan Bautista, just 30 miles from Monterey.
It is a charming town which was left behind in 1869 when the railway went to Hollister rather than to San Juan Bautiste.
What it does have is a beautiful Mission, which forms one side of the town square, with the best hotel (Plaza Hotel) on another side and the Non- City hall/Courtroom facing the Mission. The square is now grassed over.
This area and the buildings (except the Mission) are now part of the San Juan Bautista
Historic State Park. It made a very interesting stop, where we stepped back into the Nineteenth Century for a few hours.
In truth the main event for this the square is its place in the film Vertigo.
Firstly the Mission is the building where Kim Novak threw herself from the bell tower, even though the bell tower was not there when the film was shot, as a couple of years before it had collapsed due to termites. So Hitchcock rebuilt the non-existent bell tower in the studio. However he shot them going in and out of the Mission on location.
Secondly Hitchcock filmed on location the courthouse across the square for the inquest scene. Unfortunately it was the only time the building was used as a courthouse.
The City Hall/Courthouse had been built by an ambitious entrepreneur in 1868 in anticipation of San Juan Bautiste becoming the County Town, what he didn’t take into account was that the City Fathers would turn down the offer of the North Pacific Railroad to come to San Juan Bautista for a fee of $50,000, so the railroad went to Hollister instead, it grew, it became the county town, the courthouse was never used, so the guy turned it into a house, until Hitchcock came along and turned it back into a courthouse for that one scene of Vertigo.
That film is so full of interesting stories, but I guess that now we have unraveled most of them. It was a fun day.

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