Vertigo (1958)
Hitchcock’s tale of obsession and murder is both a Noirish crime story with a would-be sap who refuses to take a fall for a dame (get it?) and a murder mystery disguised as a ghost story, except that the puzzle is solved for the audience midway thru, and it’s up to only the protagonist to throw away impossible supernatural explanations to finally arrive at a (still far-fetched, but at least) logical seeming one.
So much time is spent setting up the ghost/possession story that it’d be silly for critics to disregard it: A suicide with a tragic backstory buried in hallowed ground at the San Francisco Mission, (don’t most suicides traditionally get denied this? Also, a speedometer is not an odometer…) comes back to haunt one of her descendants and looking into it is up to John O. ‘Scottie’, a retired cop, former attorney suffering from acrophobia (triggered due to a recent colleague's accidental death, but likely dating further back than that) with a well-known obsessive streak (which is likely what gets him hired by an old college buddy to begin with) and which both makes him susceptible to improbably predictive psychological manipulation (having just criticized The Game for just this, can I give a pass to Vertigo? Sure, because it’s all a dream and said oneiric language is more than fully embraced by its director - note for example the neon light-based ghostly, green light as Judie comes out of an inexplicable fog to be finally revealed as 'Madeleine',) and get him to solve the mystery itself.
The introductory scene gets criticized (‘How did Scottie ever get out of it’) but the film is dreamlike with some near-seamless special effects (mostly matte paintings and rear projection,) added to a blatant surreally animated mid-film sequence, so it’s obvious the introduction is merely a fantasy or nightmare and not to be read literally.
Much is also made of the parallelism between the director’s treatment of his leading ladies and the obsessive recreation of an idealized female character by the male lead, (is the obsessive compulsion sexually based, or merely detection based? Why not both? But the detective/investigative aspect should clearly also not be ignored.)
Hitchcock gets as much as he can from San Francisco: The Presidio & The Golden Gate Bridge, Mission Dolores, the Legion of Honor, The Palace of Fine Arts, Muir Woods, the Coit Tower, etc. etc.) as is possible without going overboard, (it’s all justified anyway, as these characters constantly refer to themselves as ‘wanderers’, so it makes sense for them to wander about the city and its environs,) and his attention to visual detail is impeccable, (note the use of spirals thorough the film.)
This movie made me fall in love with Kim Novak as a kid, (one of my first film crushes, but contrary to Scotty/Hitchcock, with the Judy - who wants to be loved for herself - and not with the Madeleine persona); seemed overly dark (as it should, being tangentially about Scotty's would-be necrophilia,) later in my movie watching life; but felt just about perfect last night.
Also with James Stewart and Barbara Bel Geddes.
Hitchcock’s tale of obsession and murder is both a Noirish crime story with a would-be sap who refuses to take a fall for a dame (get it?) and a murder mystery disguised as a ghost story, except that the puzzle is solved for the audience midway thru, and it’s up to only the protagonist to throw away impossible supernatural explanations to finally arrive at a (still far-fetched, but at least) logical seeming one.
So much time is spent setting up the ghost/possession story that it’d be silly for critics to disregard it: A suicide with a tragic backstory buried in hallowed ground at the San Francisco Mission, (don’t most suicides traditionally get denied this? Also, a speedometer is not an odometer…) comes back to haunt one of her descendants and looking into it is up to John O. ‘Scottie’, a retired cop, former attorney suffering from acrophobia (triggered due to a recent colleague's accidental death, but likely dating further back than that) with a well-known obsessive streak (which is likely what gets him hired by an old college buddy to begin with) and which both makes him susceptible to improbably predictive psychological manipulation (having just criticized The Game for just this, can I give a pass to Vertigo? Sure, because it’s all a dream and said oneiric language is more than fully embraced by its director - note for example the neon light-based ghostly, green light as Judie comes out of an inexplicable fog to be finally revealed as 'Madeleine',) and get him to solve the mystery itself.
The introductory scene gets criticized (‘How did Scottie ever get out of it’) but the film is dreamlike with some near-seamless special effects (mostly matte paintings and rear projection,) added to a blatant surreally animated mid-film sequence, so it’s obvious the introduction is merely a fantasy or nightmare and not to be read literally.
Much is also made of the parallelism between the director’s treatment of his leading ladies and the obsessive recreation of an idealized female character by the male lead, (is the obsessive compulsion sexually based, or merely detection based? Why not both? But the detective/investigative aspect should clearly also not be ignored.)
Hitchcock gets as much as he can from San Francisco: The Presidio & The Golden Gate Bridge, Mission Dolores, the Legion of Honor, The Palace of Fine Arts, Muir Woods, the Coit Tower, etc. etc.) as is possible without going overboard, (it’s all justified anyway, as these characters constantly refer to themselves as ‘wanderers’, so it makes sense for them to wander about the city and its environs,) and his attention to visual detail is impeccable, (note the use of spirals thorough the film.)
This movie made me fall in love with Kim Novak as a kid, (one of my first film crushes, but contrary to Scotty/Hitchcock, with the Judy - who wants to be loved for herself - and not with the Madeleine persona); seemed overly dark (as it should, being tangentially about Scotty's would-be necrophilia,) later in my movie watching life; but felt just about perfect last night.
Also with James Stewart and Barbara Bel Geddes.
statistics: Posted by hermanthegerm — 4:03 PM - Today — Replies 2 — Views 171