Author Description

All cities have their secrets, but none are so dark as San Francisco's, the city that Ambrose Bierce famously described as "a point upon a map of fog." With its reputation as a shadowy land of easy vice and hard virtue, San Francisco provided the ideal setting for many of the greatest films noir, from classics like <i>The Maltese Falcon</i> and <i>Dark Passage</i> to obscure treasures like <i>Woman on the Run</i> and <i>D.O.A.</i>, and neo-noirs like <i>Point Blank</i> and<i> The Conversation</i>. Readers visit the Mission Dolores cemetery where James Stewart spied Kim Novak visiting Carlotta's grave in <i>Vertigo</i>; the Steinhart Aquarium, where a steamy love scene unfolded between Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth in <i>The Lady from Shanghai</i>; and the Kezar Stadium, where Clint Eastwood captures the serial killer, Scorpio, in a blaze of ghastly white light in <i>Dirty Harry</i>. In this guide to the great films noir and the locations where they were shot, the mythic noir city meets San Francisco's own dark past. With period film stills.