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FILM CLUB: Vertigo [SPOILERS]

  
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
08:24 / 26.02.02
Just thought - though my actual thoughts on the film are a bit thin on the ground at the moment - that I'd bump this up and remind people that today's the day the discussion of Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo is set to commence.

Have at it!

For my money, I think it's the best Hitchcock I've seen - though there are a number that I've yet to watch. I thought it an immensely personal film, and one that was surprising, coming out of a major studio in the 50s... compare it to Rear Window and you'll note that it's a lot less 50s twee, and seems a lot - darker.

Will have more to add later, but would like to hear what people want to say about it. I've some books on the making of it, and a copy of the Boileau/Narjac novel that it's taken from, should the need arise...

[ 26-02-2002: Message edited by: The Return Of Rothkoid ]
 
 
Ethan Hawke
11:22 / 26.02.02
Thanks for starting this thread Rothkoid!

Maybe you should put *Spoilers* in the title.
***********
This is the first time I've watched Vertigo, and I'm not too familiar with the history around it, (I wasn't aware it was based on a book; go figure) so if I say something obvious or patently erroneous, be gentle, okay?

First impression: They really don't make them like this any more, do they? I love the camera movement, and the lighting is of course phenomenal. Again, it's probably a truism, but you ~really~ notice these things when they're done well, after a steady diet of Hollywood movies. I'm not a cineaste by any means, and I don't watch movies to look for technical tricks, but while watching this film you're really automatically struck by the way shots are chosen/framed. Someone with more film background can probably be more enlightening on this than I.

Going on with the "form" of the film, there are several long, dialogue-less sequences that you'd never see in most movies today, which I also enjoyed. It's a real treat, especially for someone who is working on a screenplay like I am (though not a *seriious* work of art) to see visual storytelling in action.

*****spoilers******

The story. If a movie plotted this way came out today, would we groan as we watch it? Is the story too pat, too implausible to believe? I will admit I kind of let out a guffaw when it was revealed what actually happened in the bell tower. Do we give Hitchcock a pass because of when the film was made, or because of his artistic ability? Does story matter much in this type of film?

I've got more thoughts on this, but I know there are plenty of peeps out there with much more knowledge than I. So let's hear it!
 
 
videodrome
13:37 / 26.02.02
Alright, let's get down to it.

First, the background:
Vertigo was poorly received when it opened in 1958. Critics were typically tolerant of Hitchcock - he was considered a very skilled craftsman, but little more than an entertainer. His pictures were popular and reliably entertaining, but not art. Audiences didn't like the film because it was much darker than anything else he'd done, and more obscure. Casting Stewart against type as the creepily obsessed detective turned audiences as well. Ironically, one of the picture's greatest detracters was Andrew Sarris, a prominent critic. He would, in the 60's, become one of the first proponents in the US of the French-originated 'auteurist' theory - i.e. that film was a medium subject to authorship, rather than comittee, and that the director was that author. The two US directors whose work was reinterpreted under this new microscope were John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock. When Vertigo was re-released in 1983/4, Sarris completely reversed his opinion, becoming and adherent of the Vertigo Hitchcock.
(Vertigo is one of the five "lost Hitchcock" films, along with Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rope and The Trouble With Harry. Hitch purchased the rights to these pictures and bequeathed them to his daughter. They were out of circulation for over 20 years, rereleased in 1984 - Vertigo in December 1983. These films had become almost apocryphal - critics who had come up after the 60's knew them only from prior reviews and later recollection.)

I don't think Vertigo is Hitch's best film - for me that's definitely Shadow Of A Doubt, a film to which this has vague ties. But Vertigo is his most beautiful and composed film - there's nothing in the Hichcock library to match it in terms of sound and image. Every bloody frame of this film is gorgeous (the close-up of Judy when Scotty is asking to take care of her is incredible), and also notable for being to the side of Hitch's typical style. His films were always very straight, classic Hollywood technique, but Vertigo looks like Hitch ran Citizen Kane before he shot every day - it's very much Welles through Hitch's eyes.

I see two main themes in Vertigo - longing and posession. The posession aspect is what people typically latch onto, but I find the longing to be more interesting and affecting. Much less creepy, though. Scotty wants the perfect woman and he wants to live in his past, free of his affliction. Madeline longs for her imagined past. There's a number of shots where the characters are dwarfed by the past - notably in the redwood forest, at the mission and under the Golden Gate, representing the old San Francisco for which Madeline's husband longs - with her suicide attempt prefiguring the revelation of their true relationship. Scotty has a line that vaguely points to his longing for the past - "That's the first time I've ever been happy about Coit Tower." The tower was completed in 1933 - part of the new San Francisco, added since his college days with Gavin. Arguably, the inability to live in the present is what destroys everyone in the film. If Scotty could just recognize what a woman he has in Midge, he could lead a perfectly happy life. It's worth noting that the opening scene of domesticity between Scotty and Midge recalls Rear Window, with Midge as a non-threatening version of Lisa Fremont. But the de-fanged blonde Midge is just not very interesting, so off he goes...

I need a break. I'll get to the obsession part (and more) if no one beats me to it. I want to hear what everyone else has to say, too...

(I will say that I like the reference in Twin Peaks - Madeline Fergusen (Scotty Fergusen) and the blonde/brunette double identity.)
 
 
Persephone
18:24 / 26.02.02
But wasn't it Midge who got cold feet in marrying Johnny? See, the whole Midge thing I think is the creepiest thing about Johnny. I think that she's sorry that she got cold feet, and she loves him, and he knows that she loves him, and maybe he loves her... but he won't ever go back to her to punish her. I don't know why I get that feeling, but I do. But I think definitely it was Midge who broke off the relationship first, and for the most part she lives in the present that became of that choice... except that her biggest failure comes when she tried to insert herself into the past in that painting she does. She breaks my heart more than anyone in the movie.

I guess this is obvious, but you know... the spiral. How ahead of his time was Hitchcock? I mean, I know that spiral goes back to Pythagoras & all; but my impression is that the Fibonacci spiral has been coming up in recent movies --as in Pi and Dark City-- informed by chaos theory, which I think is post-Hitchcock. But I stand ready to be corrected...
 
 
videodrome
19:23 / 26.02.02
You're right - Midge did break it off, though the reasons behind her decision are unclear. I like your feelings behind it, though - it definitely makes Scotty more creepy, and echoes the tone of the film. I've always supected she broke it off because he was a dick, but that doesn't have to change the notion that he's punishing her.

The scene with her painting is awful. I feel so bad for her, because she's been treating the whole thing as a lark, and the realization is crushing. None of the women fare very well in this, more so than in any other Hitch picture. They're either taken for granted or superficially desired, or both. I wonder how conscious Hitch was of the film as comment on his own relationship to his actresses. Scotty's 'deal' with Judy is very much like Hitch's with Eva Marie Saint, Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Janet Leigh and Tippi Hedren. Hedren is the only one of those to really publicly rebel - but she would have had the opportunity to see Vertigo already, and perhaps found the comparison too creepy. There's some dialogue in that sequence at the dress shop - "You certainly do know what you want, sir" that just rang very true, especially with the story of Tippi Hedren in mind.

Another thing: three times the phrase "the power, and the freedom" is used - by Gavin reminiscing about the lost SF, by the bookshop clerk "in those days, men had the power and the frredom to do that sort of thing" and Scottie at the end. Inneresting, when coupled with the topic of throwing women away and theme of obsession/voyeurism.

[ 26-02-2002: Message edited by: videodrome ]
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
19:38 / 26.02.02
quote:Originally posted by Persephone:
but he won't ever go back to her to punish herI get that feeling a lot, too. The idea of the sort of powerless lead taking control over the women in the movie is something that I noted with Rear Window - you'll remember that in that one, Stewart is prevaricating about marrying Grace Kelly (!!!), to the extent where he tries to out-gross her with tales of his photographer's hardships, far from the swanky magazine lifestyle she's used to. Both times, Stewart's affected by some kind of incapacitating illness, leaving him dependent on the women in the film - though he won't be ruled by them. It's odd.

But yes- I never understood him not going after Midge. It's obvious that she's remarkably sweet on him, and the way she looks at him when he reminds her that she broke their engagement off is quite... I dunno - filled with regret? Maybe I'm reading too much into it. But still - the fact that she humours him so much, is genuinely concerned about his illnesses - (first, by being motherly and comforting when he falls off the kitchen stool, secondly by the way she tries to draw him out of his coma-like state with music and talk and visits) is heartbreaking: the way she's upset after he's offended by her Midge-as-Carlotta painting and the way she leaves the Doctor's office after admitting that Scotty loves someone else, and that's why he's stuck in so deep...they're amazingly effective. I always feel sorry for Midge whenever I watch the flick, and will, invariably, turn to the person who I'm watching it with and tell 'em that he should've stayed with her. She drives a Karmann Ghia, too - mmmmmm!

As far as the Lissajous spirals in the titles go: quote:The original title concept hadbeen simply to overlay the title cards over a shot of the SF skyline, an obvious tribute to the city's visual appeal. But Hitchcock had something else in mind: a striking look that would draw the viewer immediately into the film's twisted psychological landscape.(Dan Auliner, VERTIGO: The Making Of A Hitchcock Classic) The idea of a vortex seems pretty obvious in this context: not necessarily a mathematical thing, but a graphical representation of confusion, maybe? I do like the way it spins out of the eye, though; very much like the circles-within-circles idea of Chaos Theory, I guess. Bass worked with avant-garde filmmaker John Whitney on this; apparently, some of his other stuff, a film called Lapis, influenced the end parts of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Here's some more info: quote:[Saul] Bass's sequence begins with the left side of the emotionless face of a young woman (not Novak, but an anonymous actress whose features were both specific and universal): "Here's a woman made into what a man wants her to be. She is put together piece by piece and I tried to suggest something of this as the fragmentation of the mind of Judy," Bass explained. Then it pans down to her lips, then up to her eyes, which shift in both directions before the camera finally dollies in or a close-up of the right eye. Out of this eye comes the title VERTIGO, followed by the Whitney/Lissajous spirals. "I wanted to achieve that very particular state of unsettledness associated with vertigo and also a mood of mystery. I sought to do this by juxtaposing images of eyes with moving images of intense beauty. I used Lissajous figures, devised by a French mathematician in the nineteenth century to express mathematical formulae, which I had fallen in love with several years earlier. You could say I was obsessed with them for a while - so I knew a little of what Hitch was driving at. I wanted to express the mood of this film about love and obsession."
As the credits continue, her eye fades away - the viewer is now within the eye - and Whitney's images spiral in, then quickly back out again, and one is back to the eye. THe final title card, "Directed by Alfred Hitchcock," is followed by a fade to black.Other things that strike me: the Herrmann score. I think this is one of the best things that he ever did. Psycho is a great score, too, but this one takes the cake for me - the blending of the Spanish themes with the romantic strings is phenomenal, though it also has a nod to minimalism with some of the organ-work that takes place during the trance-scenes: at the redwood forest and in the stable, for example. The musical effect of the slowly-entering castanets in the "Nightmare" sequence never fails to raise hairs on the back of my neck.

Interestingly, Herrmann recycled some of the tunes here in one of the Harryhausen flicks he scored. Can't recall which one, though... I just remember hearing it and thinking "That's Vertigo! You cheap-ass!".

Mr Todd: I thought the story was a little improbable, but worked within itself. I think something could be released with this narrative today and pass - I didn't have a problem with it so much in that respect. I do see what you mean about the painterly kind of aspect to the film, though; the rarefied air of obsession is further heightened by the fact that it is a langorous, sumptuous production - something to get lost in, visually, something that detaches one further. It's a great constrast to the hyperreal or gritty styles that're used today; it makes it more mystical, I feel.
 
 
videodrome
01:20 / 27.02.02
The mention of Bass' titles reminds me of something else that occurred during the film. You know the scene after Madeline dies, where Scotty is hallucinating/dreaming? When he falls out of the tower, he's represented by a very classic Saul Bass broken human figure. It's very similar to the image Bass used for the classic Anatomy of a Murder poster. I saw that and thought hey! it would be kinda neat if Hitch used that deliberately, knowing that audiences would recognize it and think 'anatomy of a murder' - kind of an interesting foreshadow, plotwise. The fact that Stewart is in both films made this more tantalizing.

Alas, Anatomy, the novel, was released in 1958, the film in '59. More than likely Bass recycled the image (well not more than likely - it's bloody obvious). The moral? Be careful kids (and me!) - it's really easy to read too much into things. Thank god for the IMDB - stops me from looking like a fool 100% of the time.
 
 
Persephone
02:10 / 01.03.02
Ah shit, I'm all messed up. Jimmy Stewart's character's name is John Scott, right? Everyone calls him Scottie but Midge calls him Johnny-O?

I've just been googling Fibonnacci and Lissajous spirals, and they are quite different. (Funny thing is, I googled "Lissajous spirals" and I got two returns: one went to a book review and the other went to Rothkoid's blog.) I suppose it doesn't signify mathematically what sort of spiral is used, it seems to have been a design choice mostly & then just that spirals generally suggest repetition with variation. Or sometimes I think repetition with entropy, which coincidentally (or not) we are discussing in the Canticle thread in Books.

quote:...and the way she looks at him when he reminds her that she broke their engagement off is quite... I dunno - filled with regret? Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

You know what's totally fascinating about that? On the documentary that's on the DVD, Barbara Bel Geddes says that Hitchcock would always yell at her "Don't act! Don't act!" For the scene you note, she says that she just obeyed Hitchcock calling out directions: "Look up! Look down! Look up! Look down!" So now when I see that scene, I very slightly hear the master's voice Look up... look down...

Which actually doesn't ruin the scene for me. Hitchcock is so much about control and controlling women; and as videodrome notes, that subtext is practically text in this film. The play I did last year was an adaptation of The Birds, actually, and that's pretty much what we did: raised the subtext of Hitchcock and Tippi right into the story.

And, big finish... Hitchcock's whole thing with the blondes is a perfect example of repetition with entropy. I think Tippi's lovely, but she's a few steps down from Grace Kelly. The only other acting she'd done before was in a diet soda commercial, plus she was a divorcee and a single mom to the future tacky Melanie Griffith. But besides that, Hitchcock was not able to exercise his usual control over this relatively insignificant blonde... he actually made a pass --approached her as Hitchcock the man, and not Hitchcock the director-- and she blocked him big time, humiliated him. Still powerful enough to strangulate her movie career, though.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
21:14 / 05.03.02
Trying to keep this one afloat: does Vertigo reveal any more of Hitchcock's peccadilloes than the other films in his output? It seems more personal, I feel - is this because of the subject matter (ie: is Hitch tricking the audience into thinking that he's revealing himself and his process of moulding-for-stardom?) or because he really is being caught in the lights here?

Persephone: the bit in the making-of doco is rather telling, innit? I keep hearing his direction, too - it's also interesting given that varying crew members recount how Hitchcock never even looked through a viewfinder in the course of a regular day; he knew exactly how things would look, as he'd already mapped it out in his head, perfectly. Does anyone think this shows in the film? Is there something somewhere that you think goes against the grain of the rest of the flick?

I'm also interested in what prompted Jimmy Stewart to take the role, other than the director. It's certainly against type - he's much more distasteful in the final scenes than in anything I've seen him in. Hitchcock revealed that Stewart was his Everyman - is Vertigo a successful picture of how Everyman can be warped by circumstance?

And finally; is the final message of Vertigo that controlling is, in the end, futile? Except for the two master manipulators in the film (Gavin Elster and Hitch himself), everyone gets fucked. Scottie loses his ideal woman, twice, as well as any feeling of usefulness/honour (the inquest effectively robs him of that), Midge loses her Johnny-O, Judy loses the love (twisted as it is) of Scottie and her life. It's a movie of loss, despite the romantic overtones, and I see that most in the film lose out. The lissajous spiral which you see in the beginning of the film overwhelms everyone except those who kicked it off.

Ooh - more on Lissajous figures here. quote:Parametric Cartesian equation:
x = a sin(nt + c), y = b sin(t)If that makes sense. Stuff on Lissajous himself is here. That page also says: quote:Lissajous was awarded the Lacaze Prize in 1873 for his work on the optical observation of vibration. Which is surprisingly useful in this context: the movie is all about vibrations in reality; distortions or shifts in what's [meant to be] real or not... a fitting graphic, then?

[ 06-03-2002: Message edited by: The Return Of Rothkoid ]
 
 
Shrug
12:27 / 24.03.06
*Old thread revival imminent*

I'm also interested in what prompted Jimmy Stewart to take the role, other than the director. It's certainly against type - he's much more distasteful in the final scenes than in anything I've seen him in. Hitchcock revealed that Stewart was his Everyman - is Vertigo a successful picture of how Everyman can be warped by circumstance?


I don't know why Stewart took the role but I think he was a very shrewd choice as protagonist. In as much the same way as in Rear Window much of the film is seen through Stewart's eyes. In both films an alignment of the spectator's view and that of Stewart take place. In Rear Window a more comfortable, although probably not subtler, one and in Vertigo an increasingly uncomfortable one marred by Stewart's ever growing obsession.

Jimmy Stewart always comes with these everyman connotations that benign affability he projects and one almost begins to feel affection toward him immediately regardless of the role. Our affection is encouraged further by Stewart's suffering within the film, by ten minutes in we're already aware of his incapacity and tragic past. And it is his amiableness and our affection along with the numerous point of view shots that make the audience even more inclined to identify with him. I think that is of the upmost importance when considering Vertigo. For example by the time we see the scene in the flowershop, Madeleine's unaware frame transposed with Stewart's lascivious reflected look, our identification (coalescing of viewpoints) begins to seriously disquiet. His possible delinquency becomes apparent then and by half way mark, when his fixation is disturbingly obvious, we actively struggle to extricate ourselves from Stewart's previously agreeable, now malign viewpoint. The main effect of Vertigo is achieved. Stewart's presence lulls us into a false sense of security, his playing against type is imperative to the effect. (Well this was, at least, my most tangible reaction). I've always felt Joseph Cotton to be similarly coded as the agreeable everyman and, perhaps to a degree, the same effect is toyed with in Shadow of a Doubt (although in that case totally without the enforced pov shots).

***************************

Btw: does anyone have any theories on why Judy chooses to jump at the film's end?
 
  
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