Focus Features

Journalist James Stewart on deadline in
Call Northside 777

Call Northside 777
Year: 1948
Director: Henry Hathaway
Chicago was the base for Selig Polyscope, one of the early movie companies, before it relocated to the Los Angeles area, but the first major movie that was shot in the country’s second city was this James Stewart vehicle. A docu-style noir directed by Henry Hathaway, it was based on a true story of a man wrongfully convicted of the murder of a policeman during the Depression and prominently featured shots of landmarks like the Holy Trinity Polish Mission and the Merchandise Mart.

North By Northwest
Year: 1959
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Though Hitchcock’s perennially popular comedy thriller is a cross country romp, Chicago is the first stop for Cary Grant’s hapless hero as he travels west from New York. On the famed 20th Century Limited train from NYC to Chicago, he is hidden from the police by Eva Marie Saint, and then arrives in LaSalle Station, where he disguises himself as a porter to escape capture. It is just outside Chicago that Grant is then famously chased by a cropduster.

Medium Cool
Year: 1969
Director: Haskell Wexler
Shot during the tumultuous year of 1968, cinematographer Haskell Wexler’s debut as director fused fiction and documentary as it told the story of a morally ambivalent TV cameraman who faces up to the responsibilities of his job. The film’s final scene was shot during actual student riots that were taking place in Chicago at the time of the Democratic National Convention, an event that Wexler had anticipated and planned to include in this counterculture classic.

Robert Forster's cameraman in Medium Cool.

The Sting
Year: 1973
Director: George Roy Hill
After the massive success of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, stars Robert Redford and Paul Newman reunited with director George Roy Hill for this lighthearted romp about two con artists getting revenge on a Chicago mobster (Robert Shaw). The landmarks captured in the Best Picture Oscar-winning movie include the Union Station and La Salle Street Station, plus the Penn Central freight yards on the city’s west side.

Ordinary People
Year: 1980
Director: Robert Redford
Robert Redford’s return to the Chicago area – this time as the director – once again led to Best Picture success at the Oscars. Based on the novel by Judith Guest about a family that begins to fall apart after the death of its eldest son, the film starred Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore and debutant Timothy Hutton and was set in the Lake Michigan suburbs north of Chicago, in a stretch between Lake Forest and Wilmette.

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Journalist James Stewart on deadline in
Call Northside 777

Call Northside 777
Year: 1948
Director: Henry Hathaway
Chicago was the base for Selig Polyscope, one of the early movie companies, before it relocated to the Los Angeles area, but the first major movie that was shot in the country’s second city was this James Stewart vehicle. A docu-style noir directed by Henry Hathaway, it was based on a true story of a man wrongfully convicted of the murder of a policeman during the Depression and prominently featured shots of landmarks like the Holy Trinity Polish Mission and the Merchandise Mart.

North By Northwest
Year: 1959
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Though Hitchcock’s perennially popular comedy thriller is a cross country romp, Chicago is the first stop for Cary Grant’s hapless hero as he travels west from New York. On the famed 20th Century Limited train from NYC to Chicago, he is hidden from the police by Eva Marie Saint, and then arrives in LaSalle Station, where he disguises himself as a porter to escape capture. It is just outside Chicago that Grant is then famously chased by a cropduster.

Medium Cool
Year: 1969
Director: Haskell Wexler
Shot during the tumultuous year of 1968, cinematographer Haskell Wexler’s debut as director fused fiction and documentary as it told the story of a morally ambivalent TV cameraman who faces up to the responsibilities of his job. The film’s final scene was shot during actual student riots that were taking place in Chicago at the time of the Democratic National Convention, an event that Wexler had anticipated and planned to include in this counterculture classic.

Robert Forster's cameraman in Medium Cool.

The Sting
Year: 1973
Director: George Roy Hill
After the massive success of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, stars Robert Redford and Paul Newman reunited with director George Roy Hill for this lighthearted romp about two con artists getting revenge on a Chicago mobster (Robert Shaw). The landmarks captured in the Best Picture Oscar-winning movie include the Union Station and La Salle Street Station, plus the Penn Central freight yards on the city’s west side.

Ordinary People
Year: 1980
Director: Robert Redford
Robert Redford’s return to the Chicago area – this time as the director – once again led to Best Picture success at the Oscars. Based on the novel by Judith Guest about a family that begins to fall apart after the death of its eldest son, the film starred Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore and debutant Timothy Hutton and was set in the Lake Michigan suburbs north of Chicago, in a stretch between Lake Forest and Wilmette.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer features a
startling turn from Michael Rooker.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
Year: 1986
Director: John McNaughton
Chicago native John McNaughton, later the director of movies such as Wild Things, made a splash with this ultra controversial low-budget serial killer flick, based on the heinous deeds of Henry Lee Lucas. The film, set in the Downtown area of Chicago, was produced only because a documentary project McNaughton was due to direct fell through so the producers asked him to make a “horror” film with lots of blood with the money already raised.

The Fugitive
Year: 1993
Director: Andrew Davis
In director Andrew Davis’ remake of the classic long-running TV series, he transposed the action from the fictional town of Stafford, Indiana to Chicago and made Harrison Ford’s wrongly convicted Dr. Richard Kimble a resident at Cook County Hospital. Davis, who was born in Chicago, set many great set pieces in the city, including the chase on the subway and the St Patrick’s Day parade (where the real mayor and D.A. can be seen marching through the streets).

Hoop Dreams
Year: 1994
Director: Steve James
In the 90s, Chicago was the city of Michael Jordan and the Bulls, so it was the perfect location for a documentary about basketball. Director Steve James initially planned to make just a 30-minute film about William Gates and Arthur Agee, two prospects recruited by a high-flying school in the upscale suburb of Westchester, but ended up filming his subject for five years. Hoop Dreams was Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary, was the best-reviewed film of the year and to date is one of the most financially successful docs of al time.

Taxman Will Ferrell howls on the Chicago
streets in Stranger Than Fiction.

High Fidelity
Year: 2000
Director: Stephen Frears
The London setting of Nick Hornby’s cult novel about an unlucky-in-love music obsessive was changed to Chicago when John Cusack was chosen as the film’s star. (According to Cusack, the two cities both have great alternative music scenes and have a similar energy.) Director Stephen Frears, who previously worked with Cusack on The Grifters, placed much of the action in the Lincoln Park neighborhood and featured scenes set in the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge jazz club and Double Door indie venue.

Stranger Than Fiction
Year: 2006
Director: Marc Forster
The surreal and unsettling happenings of Marc Forster’s movie about a socially awkward tax auditor Will Ferrell who discovers he’s a character in novelist Emma Thompson’s latest work was set in the reassuringly real milieu of contemporary Chi-town. Many scenes were shot in the city’s downtown area while Dustin Hoffman’s shrink has his office on the University of Illinois campus and love interest Maggie Gyllenhaal’s apartment is in the hip Ukrainian Village neighborhood.