American Sniper|Del Rey Landing, Marina del Rey — A Wedding Before the Second Tour

Dress whites, a yacht, champagne, and then a phone call: the unit is shipping out. Kyle marries Taya on the water and learns he is going back to Iraq before the reception is over. Eastwood staged it in Marina del Rey, at Del Rey Landing on Bora Bora Way, on the western side of the largest man-made small-craft harbour in the United States.

Marina del Rey was dredged out of the Ballona wetlands and opened in 1965. It holds around five thousand boats across eight basins, and the whole thing sits on county land — which is why a film crew can work here at all, and why the waterfront stays public even where the slips do not. Del Rey Landing is the fuel dock and marina at the end of Bora Bora Way, a working corner of the harbour rather than a scenic one: diesel pumps, cleats, gulls, the smell of bait and fibreglass.

There is a public promenade along the water at the foot of the street, and Mother's Beach, the harbour's flat-water swimming cove, is a short walk north. You do not need a boat to see any of it.

Go in the late afternoon when the charter boats come back in. The masts move together on the swell and the sound of halyards against aluminium carries the whole length of the basin — a small, constant, unmilitary noise, which is the point of the scene. Photo: Marina del Rey harbour.