To a certain extent, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off plays as an outdated travelogue of Chicago.
For San Francisco: Bullitt, and several of the *Dirty Harry *series.
Coincidentally, I watched The Seven-Ups last night. (Philip D’Antoni produced Bullitt and The Seven-Ups.) It was filmed in New York City and it was interesting to see how much D’Antoni used the city as a background. There would be long shots showing streets and buildings and bridges. Nowadays we’ve gotten so used to seeing places like Toronto or Vancouver being used as a pseudo-New York and the directors have to keep the camera in close so we don’t see anything that would break the illusion.
I have no idea how geographically accurate they are because I haven’t been to the locations, but two movies come to mind:
The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain – a movie about a Welsh village and its beloved mountain.
Local Hero – Burt Lancaster as a rich guy who wants to buy a Scottish village and put in an oil refinery
Alaska, with Thora Birch and Vincent Kartheiser, shows that the state of Alaska is full of breath-taking mountain scenes, exciting outdoor adventures, and cute polar bear cubs. There’s the minor danger of a downed plane but nobody dies from it.
Letters to Juliet shows an American experiencing a romantic mystery in Italy.
Sleepless in Seattle offers up Seattle and New York City (particularly the Empire State Building as a romantic rendezvous point)
Under the Tuscan Sun and Eat, Pray, Love are based on actual travel books.
Absolutely! The film is so amazing looking that you’d swear that it was all done with CG, but it’s all astounding real locations.
One of my all-time favorite films. “You can’t eat scenery.”
It seems that all the James Bond movies have multiple settings that make me want to visit these places.
The Man on the Eiffel Tower (full movie) was shot on location in Paris, and the director included plenty of Paris scenery in the film (from 1949). It works as a historical travelogue of the city.
Bonus! During the time it was filmed, Julia Child was settling down in Paris. She writes about meeting with the actors in her book My Life in France.
Lawrence of Arabia?
The Third Man is just about the best physical depiction of post-war Europe (specifically Vienna) ever put on film.
A few of my choices:
For the American West: Dances with Wolves and Days of Heaven.
For Venice: The Wings of the Dove.
And Vertigo, of course, for San Francisco.
Paul Hogan starred in, basically, a travel program for the east coast of Australia called Charlie and Boots.
Except for the fact that it was filmed mostly in British Columbia, and in the city of Vancouver.
I would submit all of the Bourne movies.