I thought about 'North By Northwest' but left it off of my list because it came so late in the 1950's that the look and styles do feel more like the early '60's (especially the Mt. Rushmore scenes). I chose the the earlier three Hitchcock movies because they have a pretty good fifties feel -- I especially like the on-location stuff in 'Man Who Knew Too Much' (Morocco and England) and 'To Catch a Thief' (especially, the resort, the market and the stuff shot outside of town). While a set movie, I included 'Rear Window' mostly for the clothes and music.
I have never seen Sunset Blvd. or Band Wagon -- do either have good on-location scenes? . . .or are these all studio films?
I'm interested in these old movies because other recent releases (like 'Seabiscuit', 'Road to Perdition' and 'Catch Me if You Can') have done such a good job at capturing period detail that I'm going to be greedy and assume that we can expect similar period detail for Indy IV. So I want to soak in as much of the early '50's films as possible to be ready. In the first three Indy movies, the creatives always did a good job of keeping Indy out of the hustle and bustle of the modern world -- with the exception of airport scene in Germany in LC, I can't think of a challenging on-location period scene in the films. [I'd argue that LC's Venice and ToD's opening scenes don't count because it's pretty easy to set those locales in period. There's nothing, for example, like the Chicago street scenes in 'Road to Perdition' in the Indy films.]
I know that most of the films I listed have U.S. locations but I think it's still neat to check out the locales and looks.
I like 'Giant' for the Airport and Parade scene (if we see Indy in the states, an airport scene wouldn't be a surprise). "Kiss Me Deadly' has tons of period details and on-location stuff around L.A. (this movies makes me wish that Indy does log some time in L.A. for Indy IV). 'On the Waterfront' has a lot of outdoor footage in New York City (sigh, I miss the Indy Noir thread and I'd love to see a scene set on or around Manhattan's docks).
Even though it was shot in '57, my favorite is Sayonara because it was set during the Korean War and is shot on-location in Japan. There is a lot of good location work and a couple of scenes with U.S. military planes (including transport).
[Edited by Joe Brody on 01-21-2004 at 06:17 am]