A month of Vertigo
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Blogger Lady Eve is doing a month of Vertigo with guest bloggers. You'll have to do some catching up as I'm doing now, the what I've read so far is entertaining and insightful. The banner on this entry takes you to the calendar for the month. But to make it a little easier for you, here is the link to month's first entry written by R.D. Finch of The Movie Projector.
I'm providing a taste below, you'll need to visit Finch's great blog for the finish.
MONDAY, JANUARY 9, 2012
Deadly Obsession: Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo
****
Country: US
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
What's that old Oscar Wilde thing? "Each man kills the thing he loves . . . " That I think is a very natural phenomenon, really.
In his fifty-five year long career in films, Alfred Hitchcock directed sixty-seven movies. At least a dozen of these are bona fide masterpieces, and about an equal number are excellent movies that fall just short of the masterpiece mark. By any measure that's an impressive record, one unequaled by any other filmmaker I can think of. Even more impressive is that Hitchcock's pictures are not rarefied works of art of interest mainly to aesthetes and film scholars, but full-blooded movies that appeal equally to ordinary filmgoers looking for accomplished entertainments and to cinephiles looking for an intellectually and artistically stimulating film-viewing experience. Of all Hitchcock's pictures, none managed to combine these two modes—entertainment and art—so skillfully, so intriguingly, and so pleasingly as his 1958 film Vertigo.
Most people are familiar with the plot of Vertigo. A retired San Francisco police detective, John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart), psychologically traumatized after a rooftop chase to apprehend a criminal ends badly, is targeted as a dupe by his old college friend Gavin Elster, who exploits Scottie's crippling fear of heights to bring off an intricate scheme to murder his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak). The film's plot is a clever one and since this is a mystery thriller with hints of the supernatural (can Madeleine really be the reincarnation of her ancestor, as she believes?), neither the audience nor Scottie realizes what is really happening until quite far into the film. This allows the viewer's understanding of the situation to be manipulated, just as Scottie's is, to create a mood of suspense and, after the truth is revealed to the viewer about three-quarters of the way through the film, for that suspense to be prolonged as the film proceeds in a completely unexpected direction right up to its shock ending.
Such a narrative strategy requires . . .
Country: US
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
What's that old Oscar Wilde thing? "Each man kills the thing he loves . . . " That I think is a very natural phenomenon, really.
—Alfred Hitchcock, in a 1963 interview
In his fifty-five year long career in films, Alfred Hitchcock directed sixty-seven movies. At least a dozen of these are bona fide masterpieces, and about an equal number are excellent movies that fall just short of the masterpiece mark. By any measure that's an impressive record, one unequaled by any other filmmaker I can think of. Even more impressive is that Hitchcock's pictures are not rarefied works of art of interest mainly to aesthetes and film scholars, but full-blooded movies that appeal equally to ordinary filmgoers looking for accomplished entertainments and to cinephiles looking for an intellectually and artistically stimulating film-viewing experience. Of all Hitchcock's pictures, none managed to combine these two modes—entertainment and art—so skillfully, so intriguingly, and so pleasingly as his 1958 film Vertigo.
Most people are familiar with the plot of Vertigo. A retired San Francisco police detective, John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart), psychologically traumatized after a rooftop chase to apprehend a criminal ends badly, is targeted as a dupe by his old college friend Gavin Elster, who exploits Scottie's crippling fear of heights to bring off an intricate scheme to murder his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak). The film's plot is a clever one and since this is a mystery thriller with hints of the supernatural (can Madeleine really be the reincarnation of her ancestor, as she believes?), neither the audience nor Scottie realizes what is really happening until quite far into the film. This allows the viewer's understanding of the situation to be manipulated, just as Scottie's is, to create a mood of suspense and, after the truth is revealed to the viewer about three-quarters of the way through the film, for that suspense to be prolonged as the film proceeds in a completely unexpected direction right up to its shock ending.
Such a narrative strategy requires . . .
Thank you, Dan, for recommending "A Month of VERTIGO." The idea for this project came to me after reading the British translation of Boileau/Narcejac's "D'Entre les Morts" (which I became curious about after reading your book). I wanted to blog about "Vertigo," but it was a daunting task - where to begin, how to (ever) end??? So, I contacted a few blogger friends, some with areas of specialty (costume design, screenwriting, etc.) and we took on "Vertigo" as a group. The result has far exceeded any expectation I had when the idea first occurred...
ReplyDeleteThanks again - and I hope to be listing your name among the guest contributors soon..