Film director Alfred Hitchcock leveraged our collective memory and the language of building and monumental design as constructed expressions of human emotions, including love, envy, and the killer instinct.

Through creative production design, cinematography, and storytelling, he highlighted the personalities of buildings as effectively as any architect. For Hitchcock, the parts of a building represent humanity and all its complications: windows are the eyes into the soul, a stairway is a spine between the heart and mind, the basement is a place to hide secrets, and a door permits entry into infinite subliminal perceptions. Architectural settings and the backstory for Hitchcock's mid-century movies, including Vertigo, Psycho, Rear Window, North by Northwest, and The Birds are featured, along with an insider’s peek at real-life notorious Modernist "villain's lairs" in Los Angeles and Palm Springs designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, and John Lautner as seen in LA Confidential, Diamonds are Forever, The Big Lebowski, and other films.