Here’s another example of how hard it is to shut off the location scout part of my brain when watching old movies.
I’m watching Pickup on South Street, the 1950s noir I mentioned yesterday. Set in NYC, it was actually filmed in LA, as seen in this shot staged on Grand…
Like most films of the era, the vast majority of it was shot on the backlot – in this case, Fox, featuring its city streets and subway set.
Then, once in a while, they film on location cheating LA for NYC, like this newsstand scene shot at the PacMutual building. Pinpointing the on-location addresses, they’re all on the same city block, suggesting the movie was given exactly one day off the lot to give the movie some scope.
And then, an absolute oddball hits: two police detectives look out their office window…and we cut to their POV of the street below…
And as I’m staring at the shot, something strange hits me – I know this location… But it’s not in LA… It’s in New York City. So why was this exceptionally random shot of a car pulling up filmed in NYC, when 98% of the movie was filmed in Los Angeles??
Then I realize something else: it’s actually not random at all. This is the north entrance of what was once the official headquarters for the NY Police Department at the corner of Centre and Broome. So maybe they were going for accuracy…
Except, if the detectives are supposed to be in police headquarters, why is their POV looking AT it, rather than out from it? It must have been shot from this building across the street… And then I see something…
Written near the roofline is “The Annex” – which refers to the fact that this used to be the Police Annex building, and housed such departments as the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Meaning: it is the absolute height of real-world accuracy that this view is the detective’s POV!
But why bother?!? Literally no one watching the movie will EVER recognize this absurdly obscure location. And how the hell did they EVER justify the expense of a camera crew to get this shot, when it could’ve been cheated in LA without any effort whatsoever??
I have a theory. There are roughly four other actual NYC shots in the film: the NY Public Library, a street in Williamsburg, and some rear projection footage for the main character’s riverside shanty and a subway scene.
Writer/director Samuel Fuller had once been a crime reporter, and, when writing the script, worked closely with an active NYPD detective named Dan Campion for the purposes of realism.
So here’s my guess: the production approved a single day of second unit photography in NYC to grab pick-up shots. The library, the river, the subway, the Brooklyn street…
And then Campion offers: hey, if you need a POV shot out a Police Department window, why not come by and shoot the real deal?
Wish I knew for sure. But whatever the reason, TOP marks to Fuller for bothering to include this ridiculously obscure few seconds of true NYC realism!
Just another example of what it’s like to watch movies when you’re location scout… 🙂
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