Firstimpressions run deepest, of people and
movies. Mine for Vertigo was formed on May 16, 1971, to which disadvantages
were the following: it was an ABC broadcast, which meant snowbound Channel 8
out of High Point,
never a good signal, and on a Sunday night, with (high) school the next day, an
obstacle to relaxation. Still, it was Hitchcock, a last of his key (color) thrillers
I'd not seen. Oft-overlooked isfact that way more folks saw features on
television than in theatres. A single broadcast of Vertigo drew millions beyond
number that had bought tickets in1958, or for a 1963 reissue with To Catch A
Thief. We think of Vertigo as being "lost" for most of the 70's and
into the 80's, but prior to that, and since 1965, it had been overexposed by
the networks (five runs spread among NBC, ABC, and CBS --- I can't think of
another that played all three nets). As proposed earlierat GPS, Vertigo took a
much needed decade's rest before the Hitchcock estate (and owning partner James
Stewart) leased the title and others of AH to Universal for 1983 theatre dates
and eventual home video release.
Again to that Sunday in 1971, andexpectation
brought to Vertigo by this seventeen-year-old seeing it a first time. Most of
Hitchcock had been clicko for me to that point. I regarded him a director
incapable of making bad pictures. And Vertigo was a Paramount, my favorite Hitchcock address,
with familiar stars and VistaVision fanfare the happy opener of viewing nights
before. ABC broadcast was in color, not necessarily a given in those days of black-and-white
prints a time-to-time hazard, at least in syndication, and ABC per policy ran a
35mm print, an always-advantage where a movie was shown on networks, as opposed
to local stations confined to 16mm (a collector friend years later got
possession of ABC's print, which was IB Technicolor and in mint condition, but
cropped fromproper VistaVision ratio to full-frame for TV use).
Further bane to freevee was advertising, a
canker unknown to TCM viewership, but a bloat on Vertigo, which was long (128
minutes) to begin with. Sponsor share of broadcast made for slow march from
9:00 to 11:30 that night, but when had any network shown movies withoutinterruption? (at best they'd be limited, as with ABC premiere of The Robe on
3-25-67). Vertigo had begun its 9:00 broadcast with by far the most dynamic opening scene of any Hitchcock movie I'd seen --- the chase on rooftops, still my nominee for the Master's greatest grabber (did AH and Howard Hawks confer? ... because Rio Bravo a following year had the same kind of lock-us-in-seats beginning). I remember waiting through the Bonanza hour (rival NBC's
counter-programming) forVertigo to regain its first momentum. Was this a ghoststory? That
seemed more the province of a Roger Cormanthan Hitchcock. The first half, in
fact, seemed like variation on Tomb Of Ligeia, only with longer wait for
malevolent spirit of "Carlotta Valdes" to possess Kim Novak and
bedevil Jim Stewart. That would have been OK if this were AIP with Vincent
Price, but was spook theme worthy of Hitchcock and star ensemble? The answer
was a long time coming --- 77 minutes, in fact, before Vertigo has a first
spasm of action with "Madeleine's" fall from the bell tower --- and
even longer that night on ABC, where it was 10:30 and drooping eyelids through
which I saw the belated jolt.
All of old films were put to disadvantage by
television. That's only been alleviated in the last twenty-five or so years
with early AMC and arrival of TCM. Vertigo played under a cloud since last IB Tech
35mm to theatres (the 1963 reissue), through network depredations (far fewer had color TV's
in the 60's), then withdrawal from 1973 till Universal had it back on screens,
but with horridprints. By then, original elements were blown, and it took hero
effort to fix Vertigo even half-right. The show could use a revisit yet,
digital leaps paving way for upgrade that couldn't be imagined even a short
decade ago. Universal should do a spruce-up on Vertigo like Spartacus got,
latter hugely improved by a latest Blu-Ray. In meantime, I'll keep watching
what's here, the debate ongoing as to whether Vertigo is indeed greatest of Hitchcocks
(or movies overall). Here's query I'll leave the topic on --- has anyone
watched Vertigo in a crowded house? (I've not) How was the response? Being no
humor in it like Rear Window or North By Northwest, did all sit stony silent--- was there, heaven forbid, unintentional laughs, or worse, walkouts? I'm
thinking a general audience here, not film geeks predisposed to like it.
I've seen it with audiences a couple of times, and I don't think an audience has ever really warmed to it as they do to Rear Window or even Dial M for Murder-- it lacks the humor that helps knit us all together as an appreciative audience for Hitchcock's tricks and winks. Frankly, although I can appreciate the dreamlike spell Vertigo casts, I think it's one of those movies that's made for ultra-film buffs, by which I mean not lovers of Betty Grable but people who sit through a movie thinking of the piece they're going to write about the symbolism and camera movements and male gaze and whatnot. Best movie of all time, as Sight & Sound recently voted it? Best movie for a film critic or professor to show off while talking about it seems more like it to me.
To me it is too much of a petri dish of a movie, I can accept it on those terms, the most Lynchian of Hitchcock films... but I'll never love it as I do Rear Window, North by Northwest, The Lady Vanishes, Notorious or Strangers on a Train, to name my top five Hitch.
V has never been anywhere near the top of my fav Hitchcock's. I put it right above THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY in terms of entertainment, and that isn't a compliment.
Give me NXNW, PSYCHO, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, SABOTEUR, SHADOW OF A DOUBT or REAR WINDOW any day.
I saw this with young audiences which has always been the audience for the movies. I'd double underline the if it was possible here. The film holds them firmly in its grip. Not film buffs. Not film students feeling superior to the film they are watching but the real audience for the movies which is those who put down their hard earned cash and say, "Impress me." They were impressed.
I don't think audiences were meant to warm up to "Vertigo". This was Hitchcock putting his deepest feelings on the screen, and you either accept them or not. My wife and I saw it on its most recent, restored release (2000 or so) in New York at the late, great Ziegfeld Theatre. I don't remember the audience's reaction, but my wife -- watching it for the first time -- found it disconcerting and vaguely upsetting. Even the opening credits made her dizzy.
As for me, I love it, and place with "Rope", "Rear Window" and "Strangers on a Train" in top 4 fave Hitchcock movies.
Some films suffer because the big shocks and twists are almost common knowledge. To some extent "Vertigo" falls into that category -- even the ad art tips a bit too much for my taste.
"Vertigo" offers a complete movie -- Is this woman crazy or actually haunted? Can the detective overcome his own obsessions to save her from hers? -- before taking the characters and facts in an entirely different direction. One could only imagine the impact on filmgoers who thought Hitch was playing by the usual well-made story rules. Anybody else would likely have treated the haunted-blonde story as a short-as-possible prologue and hurried to the "real" plot.
It's the second part of the movie that everybody seems to talk and write about. I finally saw it through only a few years ago, after seeing it referenced and described all over. I was aware this was all setting up the obsession-driven part and somebody was going to drop from a tower, so Hitchcock's big surprise shift (not a mere twist, although there are a few) was spoiled. But at least I was taking the first part at face value, and not as a scheme exploiting the detective. Even the truth about Novak's character was news.
The first half isn't mere padding or diversion. We think we get what's going on and where Hitch is leading us. The last part of the film forces us to look back and see how we were gamed as much at the detective, and to wonder what WAS that blonde really thinking / feeling at any given moment.
Hitchcock's deepest feelings? VERTIGO is in the wading pool concerning any sort of deep meaning, way more style than substance, and the second part of the movie only makes me think Jimmy Stewart needs a pair of glasses if he can't recognize that the woman he's that obsessed about is still standing in front of him wearing a dark wig.
When VERTIGO topped CITIZEN KANE for greatest movie of all time, it did nothing but show just how weird, obsessive and even stupider film critics had become if this was the film that spoke to them. It's not even on my hundred best Hitchcock films list if I ever bothered to make one.
Films like "Vertigo" always played better in Europe - audiences there are more cerebral. Basically, a film lacking in 'action' is perceived as 'boring' in America. "Vertigo" leaves most other movies - of its era - for dust. It is unique. That said, the older I get, the less patience I have with most movies - or the culture, generally. It becomes repetition, after awhile. We have seen it all. But "Vertigo" has the sensuous quality of a dream, and is pretty sophisticated and challenging for a studio movie of the 50's, and it has aged very well - it is modern and thoughtful at once. It has never been a popular movie, and never will be one, though it was made by a popular film director. It is a deliberately slow moving film about unhealthy obsession. Enough said.
The Europeans are more pretentious, but neither more cerebral or sophisticated, the French loved Jerry Lewis, the Brits loved Benny Hill and ARE YOU BEING SERVED, and Franco and Ciccio were Italian superstars for decades----nuff said. Challenging is a word used for artistically-inclined endeavors that basically fail at what they think they're trying to do.
VERTIGO is no more sophisticated than any other Hitchcock film, in fact, something like REAR WINDOW has far more interest and sophistication in it's looking at peoples inherent voyeurism than anything VERTIGO offers, and it keeps the audience awake. VERTIGO shows perhaps more than we want to know about Hitchcock's own unhealthy obsessions and self-indulgences, but it sacrifices logic and plot-construction for style and general humorlessness. It's a film only critics and those who want to fancy themselves pretentious European-types can love, and they can have it. All the lingering "sensual" camerawork in the world can't hide the lack of a story worth telling.
I just re-watched my VERTIGO blu-ray a few weeks ago and sometimes when I re-watch a film I don't like it as much. However I enjoyed it MUCH more than I did back in 1984 and 20 years old, when it was re-released. Well I am 52 now, which is very close to the age of Jimmy Stewart's character in the film. Suddenly I "understood" it in a way that was not possible in 1984 when I was 20.
The reason I bring up age is that IMDB says Hitchcock blamed the film's failure on Jimmy Stewart's age and indeed he never hired him again - but having a younger 1950's movie star play the role would have ruined the film (who would Hitchcock have even chosen from Hollywood's newer crop of leading men?) IMO, a younger man could have conceivably been able to meet another woman, but the likelihood of 50 year old disgraced former cop Jimmy Stewart finding another Kim Novak - the very apotheosis of a young, beautiful woman - would be much more of a challenge. So the obsession makes sense and the film resonates all the more strongly.
I saw it in the 80s reissue as a teenager and then in the 90s for the restoration release at the Uptown theater in DC, on that HUGE curved 70mm screen.
In the first release...in first half of double feature with Rear Window...indeed it was stony silence. The only laugh coming when Midge shows Johnny her joke painting of Carlotta. I remember to this day when the nun popped up out of the darkness at the end...my stomach dropped. People sitting around me gasped out loud. It left me completely shaken and unnerved, a one-two punch with the shock of seeing Judy fall (the effect of it all is almost non-existent on TV).
By contrast that night Rear Window had people howling with intended laughter (and a few nervous screams)...and was a different experience entirely.
It was sold out showing. PACKED. One of my favorite moviegoing experiences ever.
In the later 70mm release...I think it was more of that crowd that likes to see "old" movies and laugh at them. People were laughing at the dream sequence especially. The visual effect of the elongated stairs also got derisive laughter. Despite the giant screen and powerful soundtrack...it didn't have anywhere near the power of seeing it for the first time years earlier. The "oh this is so campy" reaction from the audience killed its chances.
I love the movie, love the music, love the cinematography, love the valentine to San Francisco and the ghostly, depressing feel of it all. But I'm able to admit the first half is slow, and the plot features the worlds most ridiculously complicated scenario for someone murdering their wife.
During a desperate chase in the middle of the "Animaniacs" cartoon movie "Wakko's Wish," Yakko and Wakko Warner arrive at a canyon and look down from the precipice at the seemingly-bottomless chasm below. Realizing that they must use a rickety rope bridge to cross the canyon, a worried Wakko asks his brother, "Do you get vertigo?" To which Yakko replies: "Nah, I've seen that movie three times and I still don't get it."
I'm happy to have written that line, and for me, it's the absolute truth. Love Hitchcock's "North By Northwest," "Shadow Of A Doubt," "Strangers On A Train" and many others. As for Vertigo, well, I've seen that movie three times and I still don't get it.
Okay. We'll agree to disagree on VERTIGO (I think it's a masterpiece). I can't impose my prejudices on others. But I hardly recognize the picture in some of this discourse.
Even when the film sometimes moves at what I will concede is a gradual pace, it's more engaging and gripping than most of, say, TORN CURTAIN and TOPAZ. [Bernard Herrmann's haunting score is absolutely crucial to the movie; the composer is practically the film's co-director.] There's more weight and substance to VERTIGO than many suspense films. I accept that some find it slightly lugubrious; I believe it is brooding and troubling.
One thing I like very much about the movie is how we initially identify with and relate to Scottie (after all, he's played by Jimmy Stewart), appreciate (and, even to an extent, share), his obsession with Madeleine... and eventually, we find ourselves no longer able to do this. We can just mostly look at him, and watch a broken man who has lost his reason (and raison d'être). We don't know what he'll do; how can he heal himself? When he finds Judy and decides to remake her in Madeleine's image, this is possibly the most terrifying thing in the picture. Jimmy Stewart, a cinematic bastion of sanity and integrity (certain Mann movies notwithstanding), is going nuts, re-modeling and re-dressing a shopgirl into the visage of his dead loved one. Disturbing and discomfiting? Absolutely. But Hitchcock isn't yet finished with Scottie -- or us...
It is true that the film plays best in a theatre -- I feel it draws one in most strongly with a large image and good sound -- though I will admit that I've occasionally seen it with respectfully uncomfortable audiences. [A 1983 film festival audience didn't much know what to make of it; I chalked at least some of this up to the wan, faded print Universal struck back in the day.] The later fairly glorious looking Robert Harris restoration largely brought the film back to life, and repeated viewings of U's 70mm print at NY's Ziegfeld proved very rewarding. I believed the movie was communicating its deeply melancholy and even despairing thesis pretty well to the audiences who had come to see what all the fuss about the show was about.
I dunno whether you're gonna do another book -- and, besides, you probably have enough ideas for future books without annoying input from the likes of me -- but this morning I re-read your three VERTIGO posts from 2011, and I was deeply impressed all over again by your intelligence, knowledge and sheer acumen. With your post this week, that's a whole chapter of a book focusing on personal views on specific films and fascinating details about their marketing.
You and I may respectfully disagree on the merits of the movie, but your writing is refreshingly and disarmingly open. You basically say, "Not my cuppa tea, but go ahead -- differ with me. This is what I think, anyway. And, by the way, VERTIGO was shown on national television five times between 1965 and 1973, airing on all three networks..." Terrific stuff. I love your prose. It never palls or gets old.
The idea of Technicolor striking a single 35mm full frame IB print of the movie for network use is sort of unimaginable to me. [Or did they make one for each feed, east and west?] Anyhow, wasn't the expense of making dye-transfer prints generally defrayed by volume (i.e., making a lot of 'em)? An amazing detail... and you later knew someone who later owned the print!
Thank you again for all your hard work and scholarship.
Regards, -- Griff
Awfully nice of you to point out these things, Griff. Another book? Probably not in the near future, as books do cost, as opposed to GPS being free, so there's more readers for the site than would buy in to a print version. Sort of like theatrical vs. network runs for those Hitchcock films ...
I saw it in a theater in its 80s re-release along with Rear Window. Earlier, I had read Donald Spoto's "Art of Alfred Hitchcock," and his lengthy, perhaps obsessive rhapsodizing over Vertigo. I enjoyed the movie, perhaps not to the extent Spoto did. I read that Hitchcock's technicians had taken measurements of one of the salons at Ransohoff's department store so it could be reconstructed on a Paramount soundstage. So, did Martin Ransohoff get bitten by the showbiz bug at this point and start the Filmways company?
Earlier this month, I saw “Rear Window” at the Ambler, a small theater in a small town outside Philadelphia that had been built in the late 1920s. It was just a neighborhood theater then, but with an art deco style typical of the time that shades the multiplexes of today. The auditorium was filled for this evening showing and the audience was very much into the film. There was laughter and gasps, and when the James Stewart character fell from the balcony, there were several screams.
I first saw “Vertigo” in 1984, when Universal re-released it, and then again, theatrically, when it was restored in 1996. On neither occasion was I aware of any audience involvement with the film, but then, it would not have mattered to me. When I saw it the first time, it was an intensely personal experience for me, and I would have been oblivious to how anyone else was reacting to it, or even whether there was anyone else. Afterwards, driving home, I found myself rehearsing scenes from the film, imagining with each turn of the steering wheel that I was Scotty, pursuing that most elusive of things, an expression of the romantic ideal.
I suspect that others have had just such a reaction to the film. Probably most people have at least a sense of this ideal, though for most of them it is sublimated into more commonplace activities. For a wanderer such as Scotty, though, he would have come across some aspect of it or another, in someone’s smile or another’s wit, in the depths of this one’s eyes or the texture of that one’s hair or how it is highlighted by the sun. Each quality would be as a facet to a jewel, though he would not necessarily be aware of this or even that there was a jewel, only that each experience would have left him with an unaccounted-for yearning for something just beyond that moment. But then, very suddenly, he would seemingly be brought before the jewel entire, his heart opened before it, and he would realize that completion could be found, for himself and for her, only by becoming one with it.
The essential tragedy in “Vertigo” is that both Scotty and Judy were enslaved by an image—that of “Madelaine,” the dream-haunted beauty—that was no more than a device created by an evil man to hide a murder. This does not mean that the image itself was false, for great art has often been created under less than auspicious circumstances, by men who were always less than perfect. Elster had given Madelaine her outward form, but her inner beauty was Judy's. “Vertigo” itself was created by a most fallible man and reveals his own inner passions and sadness. Here these passions have been allowed to reveal truth and beauty, though in his own life they would themselves become the stuff of a minor tragedy not untouched by the tawdry or shameful.
What it does mean, however, is that we give up much that is sweet and tender and attainable, to have something which ultimately may not be attainable, at least not in this world. The romantic ideal may be as a sun, so hot and consuming that we approach it only at our peril. Even so, we might come to know this in a darkened theater, watching a film projected upon our imaginations and hearts over a space of time. For the wanderers among us, perhaps it is enough.
From a comment on Vertigo I wrote for Wellesnet some time ago:
I rewatched Vertigo yesterday, and the verdict is...that Bernard Herrmann wrote the greatest score in film history. If I had just closed my eyes and imagined Vertigo, with Herrmann's score blaring in the background, I would vote Vertigo into the number one slot in the Sight and Sound poll. Unfortunately I watched the actual film.
Sorry, I tried. Hated it this time, really hated it. Bad script. Boring. Poorly motivated characters. Unbelievable situations. Rampant stupidity. Psychotic behavior. Sketchy photography. Poor process work. Only Herrmann's sublime score, elevating this disaster into a realm where it does not belong.
Kim Novak is a beautiful, sexy woman. But Hitchcock mummifies her, slathering her with so much makeup that she looks ready for a morgue slab. Was this intentional? Whether it was or was not, it was a mistake. I'm sorry, but I got exactly zero erotic charge out of her. Hitchcock was brutally dismissive of Novack and her performance: "When you get her, you think you're getting a lot, but you're not." I used to blame Novack for her ineffectiveness in the role, but now I blame Hitch. Something in her was too hot for him, and he squelched it down. She wasn't "cold" enough for him.
Stewart is a failure, too. I never for a minute buy his "obsession" with Madeleine. One minute he is tailing Madeleine around San Francisco, the next he is in desparate love and, despite repeated punches on the rewind button, I couldn't figure out how he got there. What the hell does he see in Madeleine? What does she stir in him? She is obviously crazy, and he has been, for most of the narrative, sexless and almost immune to the allure of the opposite sex. I mean, isn't that what the entire subplot with Midge is all about? Because if it is not, why in God's name is Midge even in the picture? Madeleine jumps into the water, and Scottie is smitten. Huh? I don't buy it. Again, I no longer think that this is Stewart's fault; he tries hard, but Hitch and his scriptwriters just sink him. As an aside, I think Stewart was at his best in the scene where Midge reveals the portrait she has painted of herself as Carlotta. Scottie's mumbled, repressed fury is spot on, and the type of thing at which Stewart really excelled.
There is, of course, zero chemistry between Stewart and Novak. Their kissing and fumbling and groping is about as passionate as two carp lip-smacking in a fresh water tank, soaring music and circling camera not withstanding. In fact, Stewart looks profoundly uncomfortable during these scenes, and Novak seems to be having a tough time, too. Vera Miles got herself pregnant and ran for the hills when she figured out what Vertigo was all about; did Stewart and Novak figure it out too late? Both of them are fighting the picture, to its detriment.
The great final shot of Vertigo is one of its strengths. Question for you Vertigo fans: does Scottie jump off the roof after Judy, end up insane and in an asylum, or live happily ever after with Midge, cured of his Vertigo?
Vertigo is a film Stinky admires more than he loves. Stinky has several friends who dislike Vertigo, and he does his best to defend the movie, especially one made within the constraints of the Hollywood system.
To Stinky, it's a cold, problematic, yet personal movie, deserving serious attention. Unlike, say, Marnie.
If Vera Miles got pregnant deliberately, it wasn't in disdain for the script. Rather, it was AH's obsessive, Scottie-To-The Max "Star makeover". Miles was seriously wrong for it. With her, the possession elements wouldn't have jelled.
I love Vertigo, BUT I find it a very uncomfortable experience. In a good way, of course.
To me, it feels like Hitchcock is revealing some stuff about himself, or maybe I bring it to the movie since I've read a jillion Hitchcock books. Either way, it's a very personal film that borders on too personal.
As far as that 35mm IB full-frame network print is concerned, it would not have been cropped from the original Vistavision ratio - exactly the opposite. The entire frame would have been exposed during photography but protected for the various Vistavision aspect ratios that were recommended at the time, and achieved by masking off the top and bottom of the frame during projection. You sae more image on the network broadcast, not less, just as you would from thousands of films similarly composed for 1:85 (or 'flat') projection since the widescreen conversion of the mid-50's.
I actually buy the idea of Stewart becoming obsessed with Novack. Certain women, even crazy ones -- sometimes especially crazy ones -- just create some kind of heat for withdrawn guys. Not that I'm speaking from experience...
I had several 16mm prints of Vistavision and other widescreen titles, including "The Ten Commandments," where the image was enlarged to fill the standard frame, causing image loss on the left and right. I never saw the 35mm "Vertigo" network print in question, but the collector who had it reported to me that the picture was indeed cropped, an unnecessary adjustment, but one that was apparently made, at least for this particular print.
23 Comments:
I've seen it with audiences a couple of times, and I don't think an audience has ever really warmed to it as they do to Rear Window or even Dial M for Murder-- it lacks the humor that helps knit us all together as an appreciative audience for Hitchcock's tricks and winks. Frankly, although I can appreciate the dreamlike spell Vertigo casts, I think it's one of those movies that's made for ultra-film buffs, by which I mean not lovers of Betty Grable but people who sit through a movie thinking of the piece they're going to write about the symbolism and camera movements and male gaze and whatnot. Best movie of all time, as Sight & Sound recently voted it? Best movie for a film critic or professor to show off while talking about it seems more like it to me.
To me it is too much of a petri dish of a movie, I can accept it on those terms, the most Lynchian of Hitchcock films... but I'll never love it as I do Rear Window, North by Northwest, The Lady Vanishes, Notorious or Strangers on a Train, to name my top five Hitch.
And this is a far better telling of the original story from which they actually stolen, made two years earlier.
This is much better than VERTIGO by far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_90yJlSgtLk
V has never been anywhere near the top of my fav Hitchcock's. I put it right above THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY in terms of entertainment, and that isn't a compliment.
Give me NXNW, PSYCHO, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, SABOTEUR, SHADOW OF A DOUBT or REAR WINDOW any day.
I saw this with young audiences which has always been the audience for the movies. I'd double underline the if it was possible here. The film holds them firmly in its grip. Not film buffs. Not film students feeling superior to the film they are watching but the real audience for the movies which is those who put down their hard earned cash and say, "Impress me." They were impressed.
I don't think audiences were meant to warm up to "Vertigo". This was Hitchcock putting his deepest feelings on the screen, and you either accept them or not. My wife and I saw it on its most recent, restored release (2000 or so) in New York at the late, great Ziegfeld Theatre. I don't remember the audience's reaction, but my wife -- watching it for the first time -- found it disconcerting and vaguely upsetting. Even the opening credits made her dizzy.
As for me, I love it, and place with "Rope", "Rear Window" and "Strangers on a Train" in top 4 fave Hitchcock movies.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Some films suffer because the big shocks and twists are almost common knowledge. To some extent "Vertigo" falls into that category -- even the ad art tips a bit too much for my taste.
"Vertigo" offers a complete movie -- Is this woman crazy or actually haunted? Can the detective overcome his own obsessions to save her from hers? -- before taking the characters and facts in an entirely different direction. One could only imagine the impact on filmgoers who thought Hitch was playing by the usual well-made story rules. Anybody else would likely have treated the haunted-blonde story as a short-as-possible prologue and hurried to the "real" plot.
It's the second part of the movie that everybody seems to talk and write about. I finally saw it through only a few years ago, after seeing it referenced and described all over. I was aware this was all setting up the obsession-driven part and somebody was going to drop from a tower, so Hitchcock's big surprise shift (not a mere twist, although there are a few) was spoiled. But at least I was taking the first part at face value, and not as a scheme exploiting the detective. Even the truth about Novak's character was news.
The first half isn't mere padding or diversion. We think we get what's going on and where Hitch is leading us. The last part of the film forces us to look back and see how we were gamed as much at the detective, and to wonder what WAS that blonde really thinking / feeling at any given moment.
Hitchcock's deepest feelings? VERTIGO is in the wading pool concerning any sort of deep meaning, way more style than substance, and the second part of the movie only makes me think Jimmy Stewart needs a pair of glasses if he can't recognize that the woman he's that obsessed about is still standing in front of him wearing a dark wig.
When VERTIGO topped CITIZEN KANE for greatest movie of all time, it did nothing but show just how weird, obsessive and even stupider film critics had become if this was the film that spoke to them. It's not even on my hundred best Hitchcock films list if I ever bothered to make one.
RICHARD M ROBERTS
Films like "Vertigo" always played better in Europe - audiences there are more cerebral. Basically, a film lacking in 'action' is perceived as 'boring' in America. "Vertigo" leaves most other movies - of its era - for dust. It is unique. That said, the older I get, the less patience I have with most movies - or the culture, generally. It becomes repetition, after awhile. We have seen it all. But "Vertigo" has the sensuous quality of a dream, and is pretty sophisticated and challenging for a studio movie of the 50's, and it has aged very well - it is modern and thoughtful at once. It has never been a popular movie, and never will be one, though it was made by a popular film director. It is a deliberately slow moving film about unhealthy obsession. Enough said.
The Europeans are more pretentious, but neither more cerebral or sophisticated, the French loved Jerry Lewis, the Brits loved Benny Hill and ARE YOU BEING SERVED, and Franco and Ciccio were Italian superstars for decades----nuff said. Challenging is a word used for artistically-inclined endeavors that basically fail at what they think they're trying to do.
VERTIGO is no more sophisticated than any other Hitchcock film, in fact, something like REAR WINDOW has far more interest and sophistication in it's looking at peoples inherent voyeurism than anything VERTIGO offers, and it keeps the audience awake. VERTIGO shows perhaps more than we want to know about Hitchcock's own unhealthy obsessions and self-indulgences, but it sacrifices logic and plot-construction for style and general humorlessness. It's a film only critics and those who want to fancy themselves pretentious European-types can love, and they can have it. All the lingering "sensual" camerawork in the world can't hide the lack of a story worth telling.
RICHARD M ROBERTS
I just re-watched my VERTIGO blu-ray a few weeks ago and sometimes when I re-watch a film I don't like it as much. However I enjoyed it MUCH more than I did back in 1984 and 20 years old, when it was re-released. Well I am 52 now, which is very close to the age of Jimmy Stewart's character in the film. Suddenly I "understood" it in a way that was not possible in 1984 when I was 20.
The reason I bring up age is that IMDB says Hitchcock blamed the film's failure on Jimmy Stewart's age and indeed he never hired him again - but having a younger 1950's movie star play the role would have ruined the film (who would Hitchcock have even chosen from Hollywood's newer crop of leading men?) IMO, a younger man could have conceivably been able to meet another woman, but the likelihood of 50 year old disgraced former cop Jimmy Stewart finding another Kim Novak - the very apotheosis of a young, beautiful woman - would be much more of a challenge. So the obsession makes sense and the film resonates all the more strongly.
I saw it in the 80s reissue as a teenager and then in the 90s for the restoration release at the Uptown theater in DC, on that HUGE curved 70mm screen.
In the first release...in first half of double feature with Rear Window...indeed it was stony silence. The only laugh coming when Midge shows Johnny her joke painting of Carlotta. I remember to this day when the nun popped up out of the darkness at the end...my stomach dropped. People sitting around me gasped out loud. It left me completely shaken and unnerved, a one-two punch with the shock of seeing Judy fall (the effect of it all is almost non-existent on TV).
By contrast that night Rear Window had people howling with intended laughter (and a few nervous screams)...and was a different experience entirely.
It was sold out showing. PACKED. One of my favorite moviegoing experiences ever.
In the later 70mm release...I think it was more of that crowd that likes to see "old" movies and laugh at them. People were laughing at the dream sequence especially. The visual effect of the elongated stairs also got derisive laughter. Despite the giant screen and powerful soundtrack...it didn't have anywhere near the power of seeing it for the first time years earlier. The "oh this is so campy" reaction from the audience killed its chances.
I love the movie, love the music, love the cinematography, love the valentine to San Francisco and the ghostly, depressing feel of it all. But I'm able to admit the first half is slow, and the plot features the worlds most ridiculously complicated scenario for someone murdering their wife.
During a desperate chase in the middle of the "Animaniacs" cartoon movie "Wakko's Wish," Yakko and Wakko Warner arrive at a canyon and look down from the precipice at the seemingly-bottomless chasm below. Realizing that they must use a rickety rope bridge to cross the canyon, a worried Wakko asks his brother, "Do you get vertigo?" To which Yakko replies: "Nah, I've seen that movie three times and I still don't get it."
I'm happy to have written that line, and for me, it's the absolute truth. Love Hitchcock's "North By Northwest," "Shadow Of A Doubt," "Strangers On A Train" and many others. As for Vertigo, well, I've seen that movie three times and I still don't get it.
Griff has his "Vertigo" say ...
Dear John:
Okay. We'll agree to disagree on VERTIGO (I think it's a masterpiece). I can't impose my prejudices on others. But I hardly recognize the picture in some of this discourse.
Even when the film sometimes moves at what I will concede is a gradual pace, it's more engaging and gripping than most of, say, TORN CURTAIN and TOPAZ. [Bernard Herrmann's haunting score is absolutely crucial to the movie; the composer is practically the film's co-director.] There's more weight and substance to VERTIGO than many suspense films. I accept that some find it slightly lugubrious; I believe it is brooding and troubling.
One thing I like very much about the movie is how we initially identify with and relate to Scottie (after all, he's played by Jimmy Stewart), appreciate (and, even to an extent, share), his obsession with Madeleine... and eventually, we find ourselves no longer able to do this. We can just mostly look at him, and watch a broken man who has lost his reason (and raison d'être). We don't know what he'll do; how can he heal himself? When he finds Judy and decides to remake her in Madeleine's image, this is possibly the most terrifying thing in the picture. Jimmy Stewart, a cinematic bastion of sanity and integrity (certain Mann movies notwithstanding), is going nuts, re-modeling and re-dressing a shopgirl into the visage of his dead loved one. Disturbing and discomfiting? Absolutely. But Hitchcock isn't yet finished with Scottie -- or us...
It is true that the film plays best in a theatre -- I feel it draws one in most strongly with a large image and good sound -- though I will admit that I've occasionally seen it with respectfully uncomfortable audiences. [A 1983 film festival audience didn't much know what to make of it; I chalked at least some of this up to the wan, faded print Universal struck back in the day.] The later fairly glorious looking Robert Harris restoration largely brought the film back to life, and repeated viewings of U's 70mm print at NY's Ziegfeld proved very rewarding. I believed the movie was communicating its deeply melancholy and even despairing thesis pretty well to the audiences who had come to see what all the fuss about the show was about.
Regards,
Griff
More on VERTIGO from Griff:
Dear John:
I dunno whether you're gonna do another book -- and, besides, you probably have enough ideas for future books without annoying input from the likes of me -- but this morning I re-read your three VERTIGO posts from 2011, and I was deeply impressed all over again by your intelligence, knowledge and sheer acumen. With your post this week, that's a whole chapter of a book focusing on personal views on specific films and fascinating details about their marketing.
You and I may respectfully disagree on the merits of the movie, but your writing is refreshingly and disarmingly open. You basically say, "Not my cuppa tea, but go ahead -- differ with me. This is what I think, anyway. And, by the way, VERTIGO was shown on national television five times between 1965 and 1973, airing on all three networks..." Terrific stuff. I love your prose. It never palls or gets old.
The idea of Technicolor striking a single 35mm full frame IB print of the movie for network use is sort of unimaginable to me. [Or did they make one for each feed, east and west?] Anyhow, wasn't the expense of making dye-transfer prints generally defrayed by volume (i.e., making a lot of 'em)? An amazing detail... and you later knew someone who later owned the print!
Thank you again for all your hard work and scholarship.
Regards,
-- Griff
Awfully nice of you to point out these things, Griff. Another book? Probably not in the near future, as books do cost, as opposed to GPS being free, so there's more readers for the site than would buy in to a print version. Sort of like theatrical vs. network runs for those Hitchcock films ...
I saw it in a theater in its 80s re-release along with Rear Window. Earlier, I had read Donald Spoto's "Art of Alfred Hitchcock," and his lengthy, perhaps obsessive rhapsodizing over Vertigo. I enjoyed the movie, perhaps not to the extent Spoto did.
I read that Hitchcock's technicians had taken measurements of one of the salons at Ransohoff's department store so it could be reconstructed on a Paramount soundstage. So, did Martin Ransohoff get bitten by the showbiz bug at this point and start the Filmways company?
When Dan Mercer saw VERTIGO theatrically:
Earlier this month, I saw “Rear Window” at the Ambler, a small theater in a small town outside Philadelphia that had been built in the late 1920s. It was just a neighborhood theater then, but with an art deco style typical of the time that shades the multiplexes of today. The auditorium was filled for this evening showing and the audience was very much into the film. There was laughter and gasps, and when the James Stewart character fell from the balcony, there were several screams.
I first saw “Vertigo” in 1984, when Universal re-released it, and then again, theatrically, when it was restored in 1996. On neither occasion was I aware of any audience involvement with the film, but then, it would not have mattered to me. When I saw it the first time, it was an intensely personal experience for me, and I would have been oblivious to how anyone else was reacting to it, or even whether there was anyone else. Afterwards, driving home, I found myself rehearsing scenes from the film, imagining with each turn of the steering wheel that I was Scotty, pursuing that most elusive of things, an expression of the romantic ideal.
I suspect that others have had just such a reaction to the film. Probably most people have at least a sense of this ideal, though for most of them it is sublimated into more commonplace activities. For a wanderer such as Scotty, though, he would have come across some aspect of it or another, in someone’s smile or another’s wit, in the depths of this one’s eyes or the texture of that one’s hair or how it is highlighted by the sun. Each quality would be as a facet to a jewel, though he would not necessarily be aware of this or even that there was a jewel, only that each experience would have left him with an unaccounted-for yearning for something just beyond that moment. But then, very suddenly, he would seemingly be brought before the jewel entire, his heart opened before it, and he would realize that completion could be found, for himself and for her, only by becoming one with it.
The essential tragedy in “Vertigo” is that both Scotty and Judy were enslaved by an image—that of “Madelaine,” the dream-haunted beauty—that was no more than a device created by an evil man to hide a murder. This does not mean that the image itself was false, for great art has often been created under less than auspicious circumstances, by men who were always less than perfect. Elster had given Madelaine her outward form, but her inner beauty was Judy's. “Vertigo” itself was created by a most fallible man and reveals his own inner passions and sadness. Here these passions have been allowed to reveal truth and beauty, though in his own life they would themselves become the stuff of a minor tragedy not untouched by the tawdry or shameful.
What it does mean, however, is that we give up much that is sweet and tender and attainable, to have something which ultimately may not be attainable, at least not in this world. The romantic ideal may be as a sun, so hot and consuming that we approach it only at our peril. Even so, we might come to know this in a darkened theater, watching a film projected upon our imaginations and hearts over a space of time. For the wanderers among us, perhaps it is enough.
From a comment on Vertigo I wrote for Wellesnet some time ago:
I rewatched Vertigo yesterday, and the verdict is...that Bernard Herrmann wrote the greatest score in film history. If I had just closed my eyes and imagined Vertigo, with Herrmann's score blaring in the background, I would vote Vertigo into the number one slot in the Sight and Sound poll. Unfortunately I watched the actual film.
Sorry, I tried. Hated it this time, really hated it. Bad script. Boring. Poorly motivated characters. Unbelievable situations. Rampant stupidity. Psychotic behavior. Sketchy photography. Poor process work. Only Herrmann's sublime score, elevating this disaster into a realm where it does not belong.
Kim Novak is a beautiful, sexy woman. But Hitchcock mummifies her, slathering her with so much makeup that she looks ready for a morgue slab. Was this intentional? Whether it was or was not, it was a mistake. I'm sorry, but I got exactly zero erotic charge out of her. Hitchcock was brutally dismissive of Novack and her performance: "When you get her, you think you're getting a lot, but you're not." I used to blame Novack for her ineffectiveness in the role, but now I blame Hitch. Something in her was too hot for him, and he squelched it down. She wasn't "cold" enough for him.
Stewart is a failure, too. I never for a minute buy his "obsession" with Madeleine. One minute he is tailing Madeleine around San Francisco, the next he is in desparate love and, despite repeated punches on the rewind button, I couldn't figure out how he got there. What the hell does he see in Madeleine? What does she stir in him? She is obviously crazy, and he has been, for most of the narrative, sexless and almost immune to the allure of the opposite sex. I mean, isn't that what the entire subplot with Midge is all about? Because if it is not, why in God's name is Midge even in the picture? Madeleine jumps into the water, and Scottie is smitten. Huh? I don't buy it. Again, I no longer think that this is Stewart's fault; he tries hard, but Hitch and his scriptwriters just sink him. As an aside, I think Stewart was at his best in the scene where Midge reveals the portrait she has painted of herself as Carlotta. Scottie's mumbled, repressed fury is spot on, and the type of thing at which Stewart really excelled.
There is, of course, zero chemistry between Stewart and Novak. Their kissing and fumbling and groping is about as passionate as two carp lip-smacking in a fresh water tank, soaring music and circling camera not withstanding. In fact, Stewart looks profoundly uncomfortable during these scenes, and Novak seems to be having a tough time, too. Vera Miles got herself pregnant and ran for the hills when she figured out what Vertigo was all about; did Stewart and Novak figure it out too late? Both of them are fighting the picture, to its detriment.
The great final shot of Vertigo is one of its strengths. Question for you Vertigo fans: does Scottie jump off the roof after Judy, end up insane and in an asylum, or live happily ever after with Midge, cured of his Vertigo?
Vertigo is a film Stinky admires more than he loves. Stinky has several friends who dislike Vertigo, and he does his best to defend the movie, especially one made within the constraints of the Hollywood system.
To Stinky, it's a cold, problematic, yet personal movie, deserving serious attention. Unlike, say, Marnie.
If Vera Miles got pregnant deliberately, it wasn't in disdain for the script. Rather, it was AH's obsessive, Scottie-To-The Max "Star makeover". Miles was seriously wrong for it. With her, the possession elements wouldn't have jelled.
I love Vertigo, BUT I find it a very uncomfortable experience. In a good way, of course.
To me, it feels like Hitchcock is revealing some stuff about himself, or maybe I bring it to the movie since I've read a jillion Hitchcock books. Either way, it's a very personal film that borders on too personal.
As far as that 35mm IB full-frame network print is concerned, it would not have been cropped from the original Vistavision ratio - exactly the opposite. The entire frame would have been exposed during photography but protected for the various Vistavision aspect ratios that were recommended at the time, and achieved by masking off the top and bottom of the frame during projection. You sae more image on the network broadcast, not less, just as you would from thousands of films similarly composed for 1:85 (or 'flat') projection since the widescreen conversion of the mid-50's.
I actually buy the idea of Stewart becoming obsessed with Novack. Certain women, even crazy ones -- sometimes especially crazy ones -- just create some kind of heat for withdrawn guys. Not that I'm speaking from experience...
I had several 16mm prints of Vistavision and other widescreen titles, including "The Ten Commandments," where the image was enlarged to fill the standard frame, causing image loss on the left and right. I never saw the 35mm "Vertigo" network print in question, but the collector who had it reported to me that the picture was indeed cropped, an unnecessary adjustment, but one that was apparently made, at least for this particular print.
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