The Wrong House

In the films of Alfred Hitchcock (11899-1980), architecture plays an important role in various ways. Having worked as a set designer in the early 1920s, Hitchcock remained intensely concerned with the art direction of the fifty odd films he directed between 1926 and 1976. In close collaboration with prominent production designers such as Wilfred Arnold, Robert Boyle, Henry Bumstead, Thomas Morahan, Van Nest Polglase, and Lyle Wheeler among many others, Hitchcock created a series of memorable cinematic buildings that included Victorian manors, suburban dwellings, modernist villas, urban mansions, apartments, and penthouses. Furthermore, it became a Hitchcock hallmark to use famous buildings of monuments, such as the National Gallery, the Statue of Liberty, or the Golden Gate Bridge, as the location for a climatic scene.