On Location: Iconic Modernist Movie Houses

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

The setting for one of the best meltdowns in film history sold last month for $1.06m after five years on the market. In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Cameron Frye totals his father’s red Ferrari by accidentally pushing it through the window of this glass and steel box. The house was designed by a student of Mies van der Rohe, and is revered by architecture enthusiasts as much as by movie buffs. Built in 1953, the building near Chicago was on the market for five years but its new owners plan to restore it to its original condition. (Realtor.com)

[amazon asin=B000RPCK0Q&template=*lrc ad (left)]Contempt

Italian architect Adalberto Libera was known for his grand civic structures – until Jean-Luc Godard filmed his 1963 classic Contempt at a small house designed by Libera on the island of Capri. The structure reflected the tendencies of its owner, magical realist writer Curzio Malaparte, with an odd shape and one side made up of a series of ledges that are both a set of stairs and the roof. Casa Malaparte was already 20 years old when it was cast as the home of a brash American film producer played by Jack Palance; according to Casting Architecture: “The peeling paint and rusted bars provided just the right menacing quality while the dramatic site with its white rocks and cobalt sea suited Godard’s intense colour palette.” (Paul Mayall Italy / Alamy)

The Big Lebowski[amazon asin=B000Q8QH0I&template=*lrc ad (right)]

American architect John Lautner’s designs should have billing in their own right: they’ve had enough screen time over the years to qualify as A-listers. They have been pulled down by Mel Gibson’s truck in Lethal Weapon 2, housed Colin Firth in A Single Man, and offeried a family home for Clay Easton in Less than Zero. This house in Beverly Hills, known as the Sheats Goldstein residence, provided a party crib for pornographer Jackie Treehorn in The Big Lebowski. Built between 1961 and 1963 into the sandstone of the hillside, it has a roof that shears down from the living room to the pool in one line, pierced with 750 skylights, and a skeleton made from poured-in-place concrete. (Arch.James/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Sleeper

Architect Charles Deaton built this clam-shaped house on a Colorado mountain in 1963 but ran out of money before he could finish its interior. Ten years later, it provided the setting for Woody Allen’s sci-fi comedy Sleeper, in which a man awakens after being cryogenically frozen. The Sculptured House was finally completed in 2003, and sold for $1.53m in 2010. The home’s cylindrical lift had a starring role as the Orgasmatron, a device used to stimulate people in the movie’s sex-free future. (Wikimedia Commons)

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