The place is the thing

When I was younger, I am pretty sure that merged The Spiral Staircase and The Uninvited into a single movie. Though, in my defense, both movies do take place in an old rambling Victorian mansion that is isolated.  There are plenty of old movies that I adore in which the physical location becomes a character, but in many cases central to the plot.  I don't think that Rebecca would be quite as suspenseful in Manderlay wasn't quite so oppressive and filled with little touches of the first Mrs. DeWinter.  I was thinking a little about this while watching The More the Merrier at the AFI Silver this weekend.  Some of the plot and slightly repressed feelings between Connie and Joe are influenced by the close proximity of the the shared apartment.  And of course, there is Rear Window which feels so claustrophobic and closed up, you feel like you are going to start sweating from the summer heat in the movie.  During the height of the film noir area, it seems that whole location as character opens up to be more about the city rather than the individual house/apartment.  A movie like The Naked City really only works because it is set in New York City and so it is believable how the plot unites some many disparate people.  Or a movie like Experiment in Terror which ends in a great climax at Candlestick Park. There are, of course, some examples that buck that trend, specifically, My Name is Julia Ross (so good) and Beware, My Lovely which both takes place almost exclusively in a house.  But this opening up of film location definitely continues on into films of the 60s, 70s, and onward.  Bullit would have a much different feel if those car chases didn't take place in the winding streets of San Francisco.