The Woman In Red - "How The Hell Did I Get Up Here?"
The movie opens with an establishing shot of the Golden Gate Bridge - we are in San Francisco. The view looks from the ocean side into the Bay; the misty outline of Angel Island is discernible under the span on the right.
We tag along with a nautical guide as it leads us into the city …
Then … A birds-eye view shows San Francisco’s crowded Financial District/Downtown area clustered around its tallest building, the 52-story Bank of America Center completed in 1969. Over on the right the Bay Bridge reaches out to Yerba Buena Island on its way to Oakland.
… and Now, it’s even more crowded today because of the encroachment of the Financial District into the South of Market neighborhood. In 2018 the 61 story, 1.1 billion dollar, bullet-shaped Salesforce Tower assumed the tallest building bragging rights. In the center Market Street, arrow-straight, points directly to the Ferry Building at the Bay’s edge.
Then … Finally we arrive in Nob Hill. The camera slowly pans from the Park Lane Apartments on the left past distant high-rise apartments atop Russian Hill, ending up at the classy building on the right where we see an apparently suicidal man standing on a ledge.
… and Now, that building is the Brocklebank Apartments at 1000 Mason Street (map). The photo below looks over the rooftop of the Pacific Union Club to the Brocklebank. On the left is the Park Lane Apartments and at far right the Fairmont Hotel from whose roof the above panorama was filmed (photo by Ron Henggeler. Check out his excellent website of San Francisco and Marin County photographs).
… and Now, here’s a closer look at the Brocklebank, again with the Fairmont at far right. The elegant building is approaching its centennial - it was built in 1926.
In 1958 Alfred Hitchcock chose the Brocklebank for the home of Kim Novak’s character Madeleine in ‘Vertigo’. Below, she walks to her green Jaguar parked in the courtyard. (Trivia time - San Francisco’s favorite journalist Herb Caen lived in this building and owned one of these stylish sedans, painted white. Persistent reliability problems prompted him to refer to it as “the white rat”).
Then … The seagull alights right next to the man on the ledge. This view looks out from the Brocklebank to the Pacific Union Club at lower right, the Huntington Hotel in the upper right corner and the Fairmont Hotel’s international flag array at lower left.
… and Now, viewed from behind the Brocklebank, here’s a recent Google aerial of those buildings. This wider view also shows Huntington Park on the right and the Mark Hopkins Hotel at upper left.
The man on the ledge is Theodore ‘Teddy’ Pierce (Gene Wilder). But why is he there? And why is he wearing a bathrobe? And what’s the significance of the seagull next to him? Even he doesn’t seem to know, asking himself in voiceover … “How the hell did I get up here?”. This scene is a flash-forward; all will be explained as the movie unfolds.
( If you are wondering if that really was Gene Wilder nine stories above the Brocklebank’s courtyard, not so - a stunt man was used for the wide shots. Gene filmed his close-ups at ground level on a Hollywood backlot).