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Monument Valley is found on the Utah/Arizona border. Set amongst the sandy desert its rugged peaks create one of the most recognisable horizons known in cinema history. Visit for yourself in the winter months when there are less tourists. Enjoy the vast amounts of space and early morning sunrises to appreciate the true beauty and colour of this fine Oscar winning landmark.
The Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park
One of the most unforgettable scenes in film history is the opening of The French Lieutenant’s Woman where Charles Smithson first glimpses a mysterious cloaked woman. It’s 1867 and Sarah Woodruff is looking out to sea from the 13th century serpentine seawall known as the Cobb in Lyme Regis. Merryl Streep plays Sarah although a body double - a bearded man - was used in part of this scene.
The Cobb also figures in the BBC TV-film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Here the spirited Louisa Musgrove falls hard onto the cobblestones and is rendered unconscious.
Lyme Regis, www.lymeregis.org
Nearest station - Axminster, Devon
If you have seen “Life Is Beautiful” and enjoyed watching the central character, Guido, attempting to woo his “principessa” then you have been transported to the Tuscan town of Arezzo.
Much of the backdrop for the first half of the film is the Piazza Grande, a large sloping square dominated by the Romanesque facade of the church of Santa Maria, the Palazzo della Fraternita and an arcade designed by Vasari, now occupied by antique shops and restaurants where you can watch fresh pasta being made.
However, if you look a little more closely you will notice a number of display boards dotted around the square, showing stills and dialogue from the film. Roberto Benigni, who scripted, directed and starred in the film, obviously picked his locations with care, and he won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1999.
If you do decide to visit this classic film location you will also have the opportunity to visit one of Italy’s great fresco cycles, Piero della Francesca’s Legend of the True Cross, which adorns the walls of the church of San Francesco.
Eastern Tuscany; Tourist Information in Piazza della Repubblica (www.apt.arezzo.it)
On a quiet side street halfway between the Moulin Rouge and Sacre-Coeur, the Hotel des Arts provides a comfortable base from which to explore 'Amelie's' Montmartre and beyond.
Fans of the film will recognise many of the locations: Monsieur Collignon's greengrocer's shop on rue des Trois-Freres; the metro stations of Abbesses and Lamarck-Caulaincourt; rue Saint Vincent and, of course, the majestic Sacre-Coeur with its stunning views across Paris.
Skip breakfast at the hotel and instead head down rue Lepic to Cafe des 2 Moulins, where Amelie worked. Sit and watch the world go by over a coffee and croissant. We did just that and witnessed a commotion in the street outside as a fire engine arrived, sirens blaring, to put out a fire at the butcher's shop opposite. When asked if he realised that the rotisserie oven had set fire to his shop awning, the butcher rose briefly from his seat in the cafe, peered through the window, shrugged his shoulders in true Gallic style, and returned to his newspaper and glass of house red (and it was only just after 9am). At that point, we half expected Mlle Poulain herself to come breezing through the door...
Hotel des Arts, 5, rue Tholozé, Paris (www.arts-hotel-paris.com)
Cafe des 2 Moulins, 15 rue Lepic, Paris
The huge paint hall at the Harland & Wolff shipyard that built the Titanic is proving a versatile remnant of Belfast's industrial fame. It has attracted various Hollywood productions in its four massive 85-foot-high cells.
Five minutes from the city centre and the near-by George Best Belfast City Airport. Sightseeing open top buses depart frequently from Castle Place at the heart of Belfast City Centre.
Atmospheric setting for a great scene from Billy Liar and nearby highly enjoyable setting for The Railway Children, Yanks and Pink Floyd's Another Brick In The Wall, with regular steam trains to the picturesque village of Haworth, home of the Bronte sisters and Wuthering Heights.
Also Bradford is home of the National Film and Photographic Museum.
Bradford is on the M62 and has two train stations connecting to Leeds and the very scenic Settle-Carlisle line.
What could be more romantic than whisking your loved one off to romp in the same lavish four poster bed used by Hugh Grant and Andie McDowell in Four Weddings and a Funeral? With timber beams and open log fires, the Crown Hotel in Amersham is a perfect retreat for a romantic weekend.
The hotel's Queen Elizabeth Suite, complete with four poster bed, was used for the filming of the duo's love scenes at the fictious "The Boatman Inn", while exterior shots were filmed at the Kings Arms just down the road.
The room is actually an individual suite separate from the main hotel block, crammed with gorgeous antiques and lovely touches which would amuse any film buff (was the copy of "Horse and Hounds" put there deliberately?).
The restaurant was charming, serving delicious food, and you could see where all the action was filmed in the bar. When you tire of Hugh Grant, the Chiltern Hills are just a short distance away for a romantic, bracing walk.
The Crown Inn, 16 High Street, Amersham, Bucks HP7 0DH
t +44 (0) 1494 721 541
f +44 (0) 1494 431 283
You can still stand, or stand still, at the foot of a thousand years of history housed in the Hozoviotissa monastery, and watch from above the dolphins who come to breed off the North East coast of Amorgos.
The nearest Aegean islet floats, the head of a half submerged hippo, guarding their privacy. The monastery is an enormous seagull stain on the dramatic cliffs, and preserves the tradition of a penitential climb towards the miracles and the icon. Except in August, of course, when Mainland Greeks, American Greeks, Italians, French and even some Spanish cinephiles, turn the peaceful pilgrimage into one of the more crowded circles of Hell.
Amorgos, because of the ten hours on the ferry from Pireaus, preserves other traditional Cycladic experiences; the crystal sea, the pristine beach, the picturesque eateries. The main village, Hora Amorgou, is renovating its windmills in homage to, and hopes of, the tourist trade on Mykonos, and high summer brings a tribe of jewellery making ‘trustafairians’, vaguely Goan English public school ‘hippies’ on extended gap years, ‘just travelling round the Med’. So, there are slow changes, and the island is not quite the hermit paradise it used to be. Its starring role in The Big Blue was not a killing blow, however. The virtues of Amorgos performed slow judo on the crowds pulled in by the movie, almost as if the fervent hopes of the cinema tourist had actually managed to reproduce the scenery, the characters and the atmosphere they were expecting from the island. What really happened was that the movie caught some of what was already there, and amplified it, and then the unique conditions of Amorgos, the geography, the history and the sociology, trapped the wave of tourism and coped with it, just like it coped with the tsunami at Ayiali after the 1956 earthquake. Your photographs should feature a small, dark, native and attractive bottle of ‘Psimeni Raki’ , to celebrate this success.
Airport: Athens, then Pireaus and a ferry. Tourist Office: ORMOS EGIALIS
84008 AMORGOS
Greece
phone : (2285)73094
fax : (2285)29099
Email : info@amorgos.net
www.amorgos.net/
A magical railway line through the Worth Valley and Bronte County. Follow the line on an all-day rover, dropping off at any one of the six stations.
Try the restored 1905 "Railway Childen" station, see where the 1970 film was made. You'll remember it all, from the level crossing to Perks house, to the spot where Jenny Agutter ran to her daddy.
Take this trip back in time and i promise an unforgetable day. It has so much to offer. You can even go off to other RC Locations. A must for any railway or film buff, or just for the child in you.
www.kwvr.co.uk
Haworth Staion
Keighley and Worth Railway
West Yorkshire
BD22 8NJ
With Windsor Castle, Eton College and Ascot Racecourse within its boundaries it is not surprising that the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead has featured in a number of film and TV shows, as well as the camcorder screens of many a visitor.
From the early 1950’s to mid 1960’s Bray Studios, by the river Thames between Windsor and Bray, echoed to the screams of Hammer Films - its principal building, Down Place, and backlot standing in for, amongst others, Dracula’s Castle and Baskerville Hall. Nearby the Victorian Gothic turrets of Oakley Court, now a hotel and conference venue, also featured in several Hammer movies, including “The Reptile”, but gained cult horror status of its own by being Dr. Frank N Furter’s Castle in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”.
However, the rather less gothic façade of Maidenhead Town Hall provides my favourite piece of Royal Borough trivia and a link with another great British film institution. Just a mere whisper of “Ooh Matron” and you are no longer standing outside the Town Hall but Borough County Hospital, the setting for “Carry on Doctor”
Built in the early 1960’s and rather utilitarian in style the outside of the Town Hall, red brick and sturdy with manicured lawns and municipal flower arrangements, does look suitably institutional. Inside are the customer service centre, council chamber, civic offices, a coffee shop and one of the local theatres, the Desborough Suite. Externally the building featured in three Carry on films - “Doctor”, “Carry on Again, Doctor” and “Carry on Behind” - and little seems to have changed on the outside since Barbara Windsor’s bestockinged legs sashayed through the front entrance.
As to whether the local councillors are aware of the building’s “Carry On” connections I couldn’t say. Perhaps next time I am canvassed for a vote I should adopt the Bernard Bresslaw approach
“Oh I dreamt about you last night”
“Did you”
“No you wouldn’t let me”!
www.principal-hayley.com/venues-and-hotels/the-oakley-court
www.rbwm.gov.uk/
www.windsor.gov.uk/xsdbimgs/Column%20Images/column_maidenhead_townhall.jpg
At Holkham in Norfolk you get two film locations for the price of one: Gwyneth Paltrow walked along the exhilarating expanse of the beach here at the end of ‘Shakespeare in Love,’ while Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes were among the cast of ‘The Duchess,’ which used Holkham Hall for interiors.
Ancestral seat of the Earls of Leicester, the Coke family has lived in Holkham since the 1750’s. It is still very much a family home: when I was there the present day Viscount’s wife and children were packing a silver caravan for their summer holiday. Visitors are encouraged to “walk on the carpets and get close to the ancient statues and treasures.”
The Hall is open for visitors from June to September. There is a café, shop and museum. A special exhibition shows costumes worn in “The Duchess.” The deer park is free and open every day except Christmas Day – visitors can walk around the 3000 acre grounds and are certain to see some of the 800 fallow deer. By the time we tore ourselves away it was early evening, just time to walk down Lady Anne’s Drive to the nature reserve and watch kite flyers on the beach until sunset. To spend more time in this designated area of outstanding beauty, stay in a lodge hideaway set in a folly on Holkham estate.
Basildon Park is a gorgeous stately home in Berkshire, which is owned by the National Trust. It was used a filming location for the 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley. Basildon Park was transformed into Netherfield House and one if its room was used in the film's ballroom scene. It was also recently used as a filming location for Dorian Gray, which is out at the moment.
Lower Basildon, Reading, Berkshire RG8 9NR
Telephone: 0118 984 3040
Website: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-basildonpark.htm
Nearest station: Pangbourne
San Francisco is one big movie location – so many films have been made there – from The Hulk to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner to the car chase in Bullit. The Pacific Heights neighbourhood hosted Mrs Doubtfire and, er, Pacific Heights. The early Broadway stage-door scene in All About Eve was shot at the Curran Theatre in Geary Street in San Francisco 's less than salubrious Tenderloin area. And there are way too many scenes in Vertigo to mention – from Mission Dolores church to the Golden Gate bridge.
But my most thrilling holiday movie moment took place 60 miles north of the city at the tiny hamlet of Bodega Bay, the setting of Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 masterpiece The Birds. I called into a gift shop near the Tides Inn (which also features in the film, though now totally transformed into deli, gift shop and restaurant) to ask directions to 'the centre of town' as seen in the movie. I was told by the woman in the shop: 'This is where she gets in the boat, the school is four miles inland!' I'd clearly not been the first fan of The Birds to call in to ask directions!
Inland was the classically spooky schoolhouse (very Edward Hopper) perched high on a hill, but no neighbouring jungle gym next door where the crows once perched. It was like being transported into the film and I half expected Tippi Hedren to appear at any moment. I never found the centre of town – there is no town – just cinema, the magic of.
North of San Francisco, take the coast road for the views.
Google map: tinyurl.com/ycyg6n5
A striking double decker road and rail bridge over the Seine with a fascinating real and fictional life. Originally the Passy Viaduct, renamed the Pont de Bir-Hakeim to commemorate battles in Libya against Rommel.
It appears in films by Malle and Kieslowski, but most strikingly in Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. This is where tortured American widower Paul (Brando) first meets Maria Schneider's Jeanne for the first time. A sinister, beautiful and overwhelming piece of European architecture that sets the tone for the film.
15th / 16th arrondissement Paris
Location for some shots from the original Star Wars. As you go through Artists Drive, look for the sign for Artists Palette, park up and walk up the small hill and you will then have the view back down the arroyo which is where the camera was positioned for the long shot. If you climb down into the arroyo you can get a few other angles of various shots.
It’s no longer possible to pose, as my daughter and I did, on the sweeping staircase that Julia Roberts walked down during the 2001 film Oceans 11. The staircase, in luxury hotel Bellagio on the Las Vegas strip, was removed during a revamp in 2006. But you can still marvel at two thousand hand blown glass flowers on the ceiling, real flower displays in the Conservatory, and the dancing fountains which also feature in the film. We were slumming it at the Venetian, but this hotel, which quite literally dazzles, would be my first choice if money were no object. Imagine, a Bellagio Tower Suite with enough floor space for even my daughter’s strewn junk.
Poldark and I were married in a remote 13th century Towednack church, between St Ives and Zennor. Not to each other, sadly. It was Ross Poldark’s cousin Francis who was married there in 1975, during filming of the long running and hugely popular BBC TV series. My mother was an extra in the congregation, dressed in full 18th century finery. More exciting for her was being sat on top of a coach galloping through Gurnards Head, with Robin Ellis, who played Ross Poldark. It was freezing and they all swigged whisky between takes.
The scenery hasn’t changed much in the intervening years. It’s still possible to follow in Ross and Demelza’s footsteps, run as they did along Porthcurno beach (take care not to stray round the corner to Pedn-y-Vounder, unless you like nudist beaches), and spot other cliff and moor locations at Pendeen, Prussia Cove and Lelant.
One would be hard pressed to find a more moving film location than the crypt of Prague’s Orthodox Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius that featured in the 1975 film 'Operation Daybreak' which was based on the true story assassination of SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich.
In retaliation for Heydrich's death the Nazis killed the entire male population of Lidice while the women and children were all sent to concentration camps.
Seven parachutists, including two of the assassins, hid in the crypt of the Prague church but were betrayed. 800 Gestapo and SS soldiers tried to storm the church and flood them out and were held off for 14 hours. Three died and the remaining four shot themselves. Holes from the bullets can still be seen in the crypt wall. The crypt now serves as the National Memorial Of The Heroes of the Heydrich Terror.
Resslova 9, Prague 2 Metro Line B (Karlovo namesti )
Open every day except Mondays Apr-Oct 10am-5pm Nov-Mar 10am-4pm
In Barcelona there is the Casa Milà which is better known as La Pedrera; a building designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí. The roof of this building was used in the 1975 Jack Nicholson film ‘The Passenger’. La Pedrera means ‘The Quarry’ and refers to the cliff like walls of the building.
Most people might only see the building from street level and admire its structure from there; however, the roof offers something very unique with its strange chimney designs and views over Barcelona, including a view of the Sagrada Familia. It costs around 10 euros to get in and that includes seeing the whole museum.
Carretera del Carmel 23
08024 Barcelona
Telephone: +34(93)2193811
Fax: +34(93)2846446
Straw Dogs, released in 1971, caused a stir in my local West Penwith community when a film crew descended on this remote Cornish location, along with stars Dustin Hoffman and Susan George. They portrayed newcomers in the hamlet of St Buryan, near Land’s End. The stone cross in the churchyard features in the opening scenes. Many locals were hired as extras. A school friend married an assistant director and I got to meet actress Sally Thomsett, whose character was strangled to death - the catalyst for much controversial violence.
Being a film location is definitely the only bit of excitement St Buryan saw last millennium, but it’s a beautiful spot for moors and stone circles. Watch out for man traps.
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