The Lineup
Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA
Directed by Don Siegel, 1958. The first of three features Don Siegel filmed in San Francisco, The Lineup uses its plot of drug smugglers racing against an almost absurdly tight deadline to trace a precise map of the city punctuated by vivid locations, including the Embarcadero YMCA and the soon-to-be destroyed Sutro Baths–each transformed into sites of baroque killings. The Lineup captures San Francisco as a port city, lingering over the harbor and a map of the bay, while also pointing to its transformation during the post-WWII years through its vivid use of ominous highway construction as a metaphor for an uncertain new order quickly leaving the old behind. Part of the series Visions of a City, Or A Weekend in San Francisco. Screening on film.