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Covent Garden in "Frenzy" -- and "My Fair Lady"

posted 5 months ago by roger1 (2394)
6 replies | jump to latest

(aka ecarle.)

One of the strong point's of Hitchcock's Frenzy was not only that he decided to return to his home town base of England to make the movie after decades in Hollywood, but that he chose the historic London marketplace of Covent Garden to set much of the action.

"I forgot," Hitchcock said to reporters, "just how much a location can do for you." And Covent Garden in Frenzy was a classic example of how location works.

Covent Garden is established in the second scene of the movie as a bustling marketplace filled with gleaming, colorful fruits and vegetables and populared by a constant flow of male workers -- "worker bees" -- wearing caps and sometimes aprons as they carry the food of the marketplace over their shoulders in bags or by pushing wheelbarrows. There are also quite a few pubs in Covent Garden to ply the appetites and thrists of the workers there.

And whaddya know -- Covent Garden COMPLETELY pays off in myriad ways as "Frenzy" continues:

Bob Rusk, the psycho rapist-strangler of the story, is a dapper seller of fruit from a marketplace stand.

The worker bees on the street drown out the sounds of murder inside Rusk's flat.

Rusk dons the uniform of a worker bee -- cap and apron -- and uses one of their wheelbarrows and a potato sack to dispose of a victim ..IN a potato truck established earlier in the film.

But its the overall look and feel of Covent Garden -- the buildings, the arches, the "main station area" that also gave Frenzy its "frame." Just as with the Bates Motel and Mansion in Psycho, or the "Window World" across the courtyard in Rear Window, Hitchcock creates a "world" in which the thriller of Frenzy plays.

And yet, I came across "My Fair Lady" on streaming the other day and it hit me: that is a MUCH more famous movie than Frenzy, a MUCH more financially successful movie than Frenzy and a freakin Best Picture Oscar winner to boot.

And I forgot that IT took place in Covent Garden, as well.

However, the Covent Garden of a 1964 G-rated(before the G-rating existed) musical from 1956 didn't really have on its mind any need to "use the location" as Hitchocck did with his workmen(of whom there seem to be more in Frenzy than in My Fair Lady), his food themes, his psycho killer's exploitation of the market and its people.

Moreover, the Covent Garden in My Fair Lady is all a Broadway stage-transported-to a movie soundstage fabrication. Still, I noticed reprsenations of the REAL pillars shown in Frenzy and one REAL large building(looks rather like a train station to me.)

So now Covent Garden has a companion film to Frenzy as a setting and though its big one(My Fair Lady)...

...I still think Hitchcock used Covent Garden -- the REAL Covent Garden -- to better effect.

(Evidently, the REAL Covent Garden depicted in Frenzy in 1972 was torn down somewhat -- but not entirely -- though they moved the working marketplace somewhere else.)

[–] DoctorThirteen (10443) 5 months ago

Yes, the market itself was moved to Nine Elms (southwest London). The original Covent Garden still exists but it's more of a 'culture centre' (museums, restaurants, shops, street performances) now.

[–] roger1 (2394) 5 months ago

Yes, the market itself was moved to Nine Elms (southwest London). The original Covent Garden still exists but it's more of a 'culture centre' (museums, restaurants, shops, street performances) now.

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Thank you for that knowledgeable information. On the basis of My Fair Lady and Frenzy alone, Covent Garden seems memorialized on film. I suppose other films have been set there.

[–] DoctorThirteen (10443) 5 months ago

No problem 👍 I popped up there with my son not too long back to visit the London Transport Museum.

You've got me thinking now about films that are at least partly set in Covent Garden. I can find films that were partially filmed there, but of course all that means is exactly that; it doesn't mean they were set there, it could have been doubling as somewhere else.

[–] roger1 (2394) 5 months ago

No problem 👍 I popped up there with my son not too long back to visit the London Transport Museum.

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There you go. I don't have much world travel on my resume, but I did visit London in the 90s and in honor of Alfred Hitchcock(who made so many films in London) I went to two sites of his movies -- Albert Hall (the concert in both Mans Who Knew Too Much) and, indeed, Covent Garden, which looked SOMEWHAT like it did in the 1972 movie. I have a photo of myself standing outside the door to Bob Rusk's apartment building. There was a Lloyd's Bank branch next to the building when I was there in the 90s; the Lloyd's Bank sign can be seen in the movie when Blaney goes there at the climax. I don't know if it is there now. I also went to Tower Bridge and to the location in Frenzy where the opening speech was filmed -- they are miles apart.

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You've got me thinking now about films that are at least partly set in Covent Garden. I can find films that were partially filmed there, but of course all that means is exactly that; it doesn't mean they were set there, it could have been doubling as somewhere else.

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Well, this was significant part of London so I would expect it is in a few movies. Maybe some of those "Swinging London" movies of the 60s or the "angry young man" movies of the 50s and 60s.

But in Frenzy, Covent Garden is a CHARACTER of sorts. And very much the setting of much of My Fair Lady -- its where Hepburn's Cockney father Stanley Holloway hangs out in pubs and sings and dances!

[–] DoctorThirteen (10443) 5 months ago

[–] roger1 (2394) 5 months ago

'I have a photo of myself standing outside the door to Bob Rusk's apartment building. There was a Lloyd's Bank branch next to the building when I was there in the 90s; the Lloyd's Bank sign can be seen in the movie when Blaney goes there at the climax.'

That is incredibly cool!

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I think so. Like I said, I've had very little international travel outside of America where I live, but when England became possible, it was off to London for some Hitchcock locales(along with everything else I did there.) I could not get into Albert Hall, I looked at it in the daytime from outside(peered through some windows into the lobby where James Stewart and Doris Day confab in the original.)

To stand outside Rusk's building (part of that famous "Farewell to Babs" camera move from inside to outside -- YES, I know it was 'only a movie"(to use Hitchcock's phrase) but if movies are meangingful, standing where they were shot on location can be...haunting.

Speaking of psycho killer lairs, though everyone can see "the Psycho house" on the Universal tour in North Hollywood, I had a friend at Universal who actually drove me to the house and allowed me to climb the steps to the house and open the front door(nothing inside by a ladder leading to a platform outside Mother's window.

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Years ago when my children were small I took them to Tower Bridge, where they did tours of the building showing all the mechanical apparatus used for raising and lowering the bridge. Really interesting.

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I'll bet it was. "Frenzy" pointed me at the Tower Bridge, but obviously the history of THAT bridge and the Tower of London nearby...well, that's CENTURIES of history. Frenzy is from 1972..mere minutes ago in centuries worth of time.