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Girls, there are so many things I can say about this film, and will, but I will start with my grad school years at NYU. I took a film course as an elective, and as the semester rolled on, the professor kept hinting that he was going to show us a film that was not legally allowed to be shown at the time--I forget why--and that we were not to tell anyone he had shoun it.
Well, I thought it was going to be something daring, foreign, with a touch of eroticism. In a way, it turned out to be that way, for the film we saw, Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo," had a more European sensibility than most American film, especially of that time. I had seen it on TV years before, while still in my teens, and after screening it a few days ago for what was my fourth viewing, I can say this is a film that does not stay static. Instead, it gets better and better with each viewing.
I would also bet, dollars to donuts that Ingmar Bergman saw this film before making his 1966 classic "Persona," as did Robert Altman before filming his 1977 gem, "Three Women."
"Vertigo" is a film about obsession, and let's start with the director's obsession with blonde women. This film offers a diptych of them, what with Kim Novak's Madeline, and Barbara Bel Geddes' Midge. Then there is Novak again as Judy Barton. Ah......But let me get to some other details.
James Stewart, in one of his darkest performances, plays John "Scotty" Ferguson, a retired detective due to his suffering of the titular illness. He is roped in by a former college friend, Gavin Elster, played by Tom Helmore, to following his wife, Madeline, about, and this sets in motion a cat and mouse game that does not end until a confrontation in a church bell tower.
For viewers'' sakes, that is as much of the plot I will divulge. The force of this film is Kim Novak's performance as Madeline/Judy. As the former, she is so elegant looking--my God, how I would want to wear that green dress in that red walled restaurant, or the white coat when she kisses Stewart by the sea with the waves majestically dashing against the shore--yet switches adeptly to crudeness when playing Judy, a girl who seems to have come from the wrong side of the tracks. It is to Novak's credit as an actress, and Hitchcock's direction, that she is able to pull this off so adeptly. I would never have expected it of her.
I had forgotten how lushly technicolored this film is. San Francisco is to this film what Venice Italy was to "Summertime."
"Vertigo" has any number of interesting shots--Madeline's apartment building, the museum and the portrait of Carlotta Valdez, with matching flowers, in the museum where Madeline sits, the iconic shot of Madeline "jumping" into the bay--demonstrating this may not be Hitchcock's masterpiece, as some declare, but his most visually arresting film. And one can see here the foreshadowing of his next film which I consider his masterpiece--1960's "Psycho."
Watching "Vertigo" is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, one that fascinates again and again. I do not know when, if ever, I will see it again, but I can say with certainty it will continue to fascinate viewers.
And, oh my God, Kim's outfits!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4 comments:
Hitchcock had an unusual five picture deal with Paramount that covered Rear Window, Trouble With Harry, remake of Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, and Psycho. The deal granted complete ownership rights to Hitchcock eight years after each movie was released. Upon gaining ownership, Hitchcock was adamant that they never be seen again, steadfastly refusing any access from the 1960s thru his death in 1980.
The sole exception was Psycho, which he sold to Universal in 1963 in exchange for a large block of Universal stock shares. In 1983, his estate sold the other four "forbidden films" to Universal for $6 million outright.
To this day, no explanation for the 23 year ban has ever been given by Hitchcock or his estate aside from the elusive phrase "personal reasons". Biographers have reported his friends and associates hinting Hitch was so infuriated by the public indifference to Vertigo that he pulled all the films from pure spite and petulant, but it doesn't seem anyone has gone on record with proof.
There was a huge publicity push in 1984 when the films were officially re-released in theaters. I eagerly ran to see Vertigo at the Zeigfeld, and was bitterly disappointed when I found it to be a crashing bore. Years later, I tried again the first time it played Film Forum, and at that screening I was bowled over by its impact. Most likely because I'd had some time under my belt by then, living and loving as an adult. Vertigo is not a movie that can be properly appreciated by kids or teens: you have to have some relationship mileage on you before you "get" it. Once you do get it, its devastating to experience, for all the reasons you list above and more. I've been in Madeline's predicament more than once and it isn't a good or healthy place to be, so this movie is cathartic therapy every decade or so when I see it again.
On several occasions, Hitchcock noted Vertigo was his most personal film, which for him was kind of a shocking admission given premise is warning on the dangers of trying to remake another person into some fantasy of what you want instead of accepting them for who they are.
The fact that Hitch recognized this toxic pattern himself enough to exercise it in a movie, yet would go on to brutally repeat it with Vera Miles and Tippi Hedren shortly after, is a cautionary tale of how self awareness won't lead to self improvement unless one sincerely wants to change.
My Dear, Thank you for a cogent explanation. I never understood the isolation of these films. I too saw "Vertigo" at the Ziegfeld. I wonder if we were both there?
Wouldn't it be funny if we WERE at the same Zeigfeld screening? I remember Vertigo was impossible to get into: lines went around the block. My friends and I could only find seats in the first row, which I'm sure was a factor in my failure to appreciate it at the time.
BTW, do you have the classic treatise "Hitchcock's Films" by Robin Wood on your bookshelf? He had a very interesting theory that Hitchcock kept pulling on a thread exploring aspects of arrested straight male sexual development over the course of his peak mid-century films.
Cary Grant in North By Northwest is stuck in a rut of one night stands because he craves the attention of (yet is simultaneously repulsed by) his overbearing spoiled shallow mother, with hints that he's on the brink of "turning gay" until he's "brought back to normalcy" by his urge to protect and bed Eva Marie Saint.
Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window refuses to commit seriously to Grace Kelly, preferring the distraction of spying on other peoples lives and pursuing a teenage boys comic book fantasy of a murder investigation.
Stewart (again) in Vertigo refuses to move forward with loving pragmatic Barbara Bell Geddes because she doesn't have a shred of the mystique or intrigue that feeds his inchoate fixation on his idea of the perfect fantasy woman. Gavin Ulster cannily senses this and uses it to manipulate Stewart via Madeleine.
The theme reaches its apotheosis (or is it nadir?) with Norman Bates in Psycho, who is so suffocated and trapped in immaturity by his abusive unstable Mother that his repression explodes in sexually tinged violent murders, until he descends irredeemably into the final madness of annihilating his own personality.
If nothing else, testing this theory gives one a new reason to rewatch the films!
My Dear, No, I don't own the Robin Wood book; it sounds fascinating. I always thought Norman Bates was just a short step from turning gay. That he was attracted to Janet Leigh always puzzled me. But then I have always maintained that closet cases gays are the most dangerous out there.
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