Late Hollywood Director Otto Preminger’s Cap Ferrat Villa Is on the Market
The iconic property underwent a Philippe Starck redesign in 2009, but the designer was careful to preserve the original 1970s geometry
From the rocky coastal path that winds around the French Riviera’s exclusive Cap Ferrat, there’s a discreet green-painted door and steep stone stairs leading up to a thickly wooded property—but try as you might, only a flash of a white curved house is visible from below, or, for that matter, from the sea.
In 1972, the Austrian-born film director Otto Preminger—then 67 and famous for Laura, The Man with the Golden Arm, Exodus, and Anatomy of a Murder—bought this cliffside plot above the Baie des Fosses. Today, his former Riviera retreat, Villa Alpha, is on the market for $69 million, one of the Côte d’Azur’s most expensive private estates. Set on a 3,700-square-meter plot, the 900-square-meter villa includes nine bedrooms, a cinema room, and wine cellar, along with a spectacular circular pool that still feels straight out of Malibu. A liberal firebrand who had broken the Hollywood blacklist and defied the Production Code, Preminger joined friends David Niven, Gregory Peck, and Rex Harrison among the Cap Ferrat’s Hollywood contingent. The director’s plan was to build a private refuge with the same audacity that defined his films.
The project caused a stir: vegetation was cleared on protected land, prompting an inquiry before construction could resume. Two years later, the result—Villa Alpha—stood among the first ultramodern houses on Cap Ferrat, its semi-circular façade of glass and concrete. With panoramic sunrise and sunset views in full Technicolor across Saint-Hospice toward Monaco and Italy, the 900-square-meter villa combines seclusion with a sweeping sense of space. “Even the entrance is quite discreet,” says Edward de Mallet Morgan, head of the Private Office at Estate Prestige. “You can’t see the house at all from the road—it’s that kind of understated luxury.”
In 2009, French designer Philippe Starck reimagined the property, preserving the villa’s 1970s geometry while refining every surface of the light-drenched interiors. “Everybody is impressed by the property itself, but also impressed by the bespoke furniture,” says de Mallet Morgan. “A lot of it was designed to fit the space and to fit within the Starck reimagining, which really does work.” Some of the tables and built-ins echo the same metallic finishes found on the doors and handles, catching and multiplying the reflections through the glass walls. “Unlike many striking architecture and interior design updates that look dated,” he adds, “the difference with Alpha is that it has matured.”
The house remains as Preminger imagined it: self-contained and highly original, as if floating above the shimmering Mediterranean.