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 was a less-than-proud owner of a white Jaguar - 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).
Jo has had his money returned but is still curious as to the whereabouts of Chan. He decides to ask his friend Mr. Fong (Leong Pui Chee). For this scene director Wang chose to have them speak in Chinese so that his American audience could experience the lilt and cadence of the Cantonese accent.
Then … They meet at Brenham Place bordering the west side of Portsmouth Square between Clay and Washington.
… and Now, in 1985 Brenham Place was renamed Walter U Lum Place in recognition of the Chinese American civil rights advocate born in San Francisco in 1882. The plaza was redesigned in the 1990s but the view from here retains a similar look today.
Then … Mr. Fong doesn’t know where Chan is. He tells Jo he has just given a talk at the Chinese Cultural Center on, appropriately, Chinese culture. He explains there’s more to it than eating. There’s north versus south, there’s ancient versus modern. He gives examples in poetry and in opera, breaking out into stanza and song to illustrate the differences. The building behind him is the Chinese Congregational Church at 21 Brenham Place.
… and Now, the church is still there, captured in this recent photo that also captured a rare sight for Chinatown - a destitute street person.
Mr. Fong also shares a Chinese lantern riddle which Jo recounts afterwards to Steve while they are parked at the edge of the bay. They have a good laugh at its sexual connotation. Lantern riddles date back 1200 years to the Song Dynasty; they were written on the sides of lanterns at Chinese Lantern Festivals where participants were rewarded for correctly solving them.
Then … They are parked at Fort Point in the Presidio below the Golden Gate bridge (map).
… and Now, the only change today is a more mundane, but safer replacement in 2023 of the chain barrier alongside the water’s edge causing some consternation amongst regular visitors, CitySleuth amongst them, who preferred the prior maritime look.
… in 1958 … but there was an even more mundane barrier there when Scottie followed Madeleine to Fort Point 66 years ago in the movie Vertigo.
Rippling waves in the bay mirror Jo’s thoughts; the mystery is appropriately Chinese - what’s not there seems to have just as much meaning as what is there. Nothing is what it seems to be. He questions his Chinese-ness; he can’t accept a mystery without a solution.
Then … Back once again at Chester’s Cafe at 1269 Mason (described earlier) Jo nurses a beer, lost in thought. Across the street on the left is the Junior Co Bakery at 1250 Mason.
… and Now, the most recent tenant in the 1250 Mason space was an art gallery, Orangeland .
‘The Last Edition’ is a critically well-received silent movie that tells two stories in one: First, it presents a turbulent period in the life of an employee of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper - we watch him in quick succession experiencing disappointment, pride, shock, rage and redemption - and second, actual employees reveal how from start to finish a newspaper article is written, typeset, composed, printed and distributed.
Then … The movie opens with a San Francisco establishing shot of a view looking east towards the Ferry Building and the Bay, it was taken from the top of the newly built (in 1925) Park Lane Condominiums at 1100 Sacramento Street atop Nob Hill (map). At far right is the shadowy outline of the Fairmont Hotel and there’s a tall scaffold in the foreground - the beginning of construction of the Brocklebank Apartments which were completed one year later in 1926.
… in 1963 … That matching view today from the Park Lane would be blocked by the Brocklebank but here’s a vintage photo taken from the Brocklebank 38 years later in 1963 of the same view revealing not a lot of change except for the Bay Bridge (completed by 1936) and, at the far right edge in the foreground, the Fairmont Tower (completed behind the extant Fairmont Hotel in 1962).
… and Now, taken from higher up in the Brocklebank, this recent photo captures how the Financial District has dramatically changed since then. The Fairmont Tower is just out of this view on the right.
… and Now, a Google aerial view gives another perspective (the Ferry Building is glimpsed between two of the Embarcadero Center high-rises).
Steve and Jo return to Chan’s hotel room (they had also tried earlier). Once again there’s no answer. But the neighbor whose door is opposite calls out through his closed door and tells them that they should look for the woman who took the photographs from Chan’s room. What the ? … the plot thickens.
Later, they persuade the manager to let them into Chan’s room but it was clear he had moved on. They find newspapers with cut-out articles - perhaps the clippings they had earlier found in Chan’s jacket pocket about the flag-waving murder at the parade? They could also see that a photo had been removed from a wall - they had heard Chan took photos at that parade and wondered if it could be one of those.
When a woman calls at their garage asking for Chan Hung, Steve follows her back to her house. He and Jo go there later and greet her with her daughter Jenny outside the entrance of her house; it turns out she’s Chan’s wife - they hadn’t even known that he was married. This shot was taken from her upstairs living room.
Then … Steve stays behind while the others enter the house. The sidewalk has three utility covers (arrowed) which helped lead CitySleuth to this location.
… and Now, the house is at 416 20th Avenue in the Richmond district (map). The small arrows point to the utility covers, unchanged in over 40 years; the large arrow points to the living room window through which the above shots were filmed. This same house was also used to film Steve and Amy’s kitchen scene earlier in the movie.
Chan’s wife (Ellen Yeung) hasn’t seen her husband since they separated over a year earlier. She tells them Chan never was happy in America … “He’s too Chinese”. The more he learns about Chan the more Jo realizes how little he had known about him. The window is the same one shown above.
The same room was filmed in Wayne Wang’s delightful 1985 follow-on movie Dim Sum: A Little Bit Of Heart. Note the same sofa. Interesting trivia - this was filmed in the home of Laureen Chew who plays Steve’s sister Amy in Chan Is Missing and who has a leading role in Dim Sum.
Then … Later, when Steve suggests they go to the police to report their missing $4,000 he gets ribbed mercilessly by Jo who’s often heard him complain about them. Steve gets defensive … “It’s a fine line between a criminal and a cop … forget you, man!”. This scene was filmed in front of Chester’s Cafe at 1269 Mason Street (a favored hang-out of theirs appearing several times throughout the movie - here it is in an earlier scene).
… and Now, the matching view looks south along Mason towards Nob Hill (the Brocklebank apartments visible on the left at the top of the hill, was the home of Madeleine, Hitchcock’s duplicitous femme fatale, in the 1958 movie Vertigo). The brick building on the right is the Washington/Mason Cable Car Barn and Powerhouse; the cluster of SF Muni vehicles on the sidewalk is in front of its garage both Then and Now.
The barn was built from 1885 - 1887 as part of the city-wide transportation system prompted by the 1873 invention of the cable car by wire-rope manufacturer Andrew Smith Hallidie (photo by Paul Vidler). The barn is still fully operational and since 1974 it has housed a free must-see cable car history museum.
