Portugal is becoming an increasingly attractive destination for film productions with a wide variety of locations of all kinds. But so far there haven’t been many major movies featuring locations in Portugal, so we’ve dug through the archives to find a few you might remember.

If 007 visits you, you can be sure that he will be remembered. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) is a film that puts Portugal on the map, although with George Lazenby as 007 it was perhaps one of the least popular of the old Bond films. The film opens on Guincho beach, near Cascais, west of Lisbon, with Bond rescuing Tracy di Vicenzo, a mobster’s daughter, from the sea. We see many more scenes from Portugal, including the spectacular 25 de Abril suspension bridge in Lisbon and the glamorous Palacio Estoril hotel where Bond is staying. Much of the rest of the drama moves to Switzerland, but these picturesque landscapes of Portugal remain memorable today.

Bond’s most enduring face, that of Sean Connery, visits Lisbon in another role and another time. The Russia House (1990) is a spy thriller based on a novel by Le Carre and the film stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Sean Connery. While most of the film is set in Russia (and filmed there, for the first time in Western movies at the end of the Cold War era), Barley, Sean Connery’s heavily drinking editorial character, has a home in Lisbon where he takes refuge in the middle and end of the film, while he waits for the girl to join him after his escape from Russia.

The House of Spirits (1993) has an all-star cast with Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Winona Ryder, Antonio Banderas, and Vanessa Redgrave in a supporting role. The film is set in Chile, based on the novel by Isabel Allende, but was filmed on location in Portugal and Denmark. The rural Alentejo region of southern Portugal with its hills, mountains, and hot, dry summers goes double for Chile, and Lisbon provides part of the city backdrop for the drama.

Roman Polanski’s contemporary thriller The Ninth Gate (1999) stars Johnny Depp as a rare book dealer searching for a supernatural demonic text. In the course of his travels across Europe through France and Spain, in order to locate the authentic copy of the book for his client, he visits Sintra in Portugal. It is a picturesque area of ​​Portugal just outside Lisbon with many evocative hilltop palaces and castles. Depp visits the Biester Chalet with its turreted outline hidden in a lush green forest that exudes mystery.

The Lisbon Story (1994) was never a big box office draw, but being produced by Wim Wenders it has a certain appeal to moviegoers. Set in and around Lisbon, it was originally commissioned by the city as a promotional documentary until Wim Wenders added a story line and some fictional characters to make it into a full-length film. Of all these films, it is the one that probably shows the most representative views of Lisbon itself, although the others are much more glamourous!

Keep looking for modern movies with locations in Portugal, as it’s sure to appear more and more on film production companies’ wish lists.