On Location: Cities of the World in Film

by Claudia Hellmann, Claudine Weber-hof

Many movies are synonymous with the locations where they were filmed. On Location is a lighthearted, round-the-world tour of famous movies so you, too, can go “on location.” Exact addresses, review-style essays and city maps take you there, whether on a Harry Potter tour of London, a Breakfast at Tiffany’s trip to New York, or a jaunt to the Rome nightclub where Matt Damon and Jude Law partied in The Talented Mr. Ripley. This richly illustrated volume with a foreword by director Wim Wenders presents 18 cities and their world-famous films: from Los Angeles to Paris, Beijing, Sydney, Prague, Berlin and much more. A peek behind the scenes of numerous famous locations.

Genres: Nonfiction

192 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 2006

Reviews

[Ninja Neko · Rating 2 out of 5]

In On Location chapters are set up around one city each, and for each city a few movies are listed that were shot there. Usually these are movies where the city itself plays a memorable part as well. There's a small high level map on where to locate places from certain scenes. And for each movie there's a plot description, almost like an essay, which I thought was tedious. If you've seen the movie you don't need a plot description, if you haven't seen the movie chances are you're either not interested or you want to see it before you find out the plot in a travel book. I get what they are trying to do there, tying together the scenes that feature locations in the city, but I would have been much happier just seeing a listing saying "place X: short scene description + address Y". That way a lot more content could have been thrown in as well, because now the selection is arbitrary. There are a lot more movies, a lot more cities even that could have been included. Ultimately I wouldn't use this as a travel guide, it's more for people who like to read about (popular) movies.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book shows famous places in various cities around the world - mostly located in Europe and the U.S.A. - that are popular as tourist spots because they were used as scene locations in iconic movies.

Unsurprisingly, this book rounded up the usual suspects: New York, Rome, Paris, Venice and London; while the whole continent of Asia are only represented by Tokyo ("Lost in Translation") and Beijing ("The Last Emperor").

[Elias · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this because of three reasons: it was on sale; it's about movies; and it's about places I could only dream of visiting. Most of the cities listed are popular tourist destinations, like New York, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, etc. Could have been better if it were to introduce places that aren't so well-known, but it's nothing a little self-research would discover. I do plan to use this as a form of travel guide if I do go travelling someday, mainly just to visit the places they film movies.