Retrospective: The Films Of Alfred Hitchcock Pt. 2 (1940-1976, The Hollywood Years) | The Playlist
Retrospective: The Films Of Alfred Hitchcock Pt. 2 (1940-1976, The Hollywood Years) | The Playlist:
From the article:
"Vertigo" (1958)
Contrarians move on. We’re not going to argue with “Vertigo” ’s recent usurpation of the top spot in the Sight & Sound critics poll, because, inasmuch as any film deserves the title of Greatest Film of All Time (a whole different debate), this one probably does. An endlessly fascinating, heady blend of psychodrama, ghost story, perverse romance and ludicrously intricate murder plot, what’s perhaps most remarkable about it having climbed so high is just how crooked it is, how absurdly far it deviates from standard classic film format, and how subjective and ambiguous it remains after all the analyses. Contrast it, say, with the formal, crisp, perfection of “Citizen Kane” -- the film it deposed -- and ”Vertigo” feels like a glorious, soupy mess, perhaps the least contained of Hitchcock’s films, which should threaten every moment to burst the banks of disbelief and flood over into risibility. But it never does, instead it weaves its strange off-kilter spell that, like a fragrance or a snatch of melody, evokes much more than it states. And what in other films might have been glaring issues, somehow here contribute to that unique mood: Kim Novak is an actress we tend to find awkward onscreen, but here the themes of artifice and performance and deception, not to mention the inherent misogyny of the conceit, are given a unique spin by the discomfort of her portrayal of Judy/Madeleine. And the plot, in another film, would be the highest, archest camp, but even as the story spins off in ever more eccentric directions, Hitch’s tonal mastery is total, and so elements that should be lurid or grotesque (and in subsequent films, like “Marnie” or “Frenzy” he went there quite frequently) instead become resonant and full of delicious, dark irony: a cyclical greek tragedy playing out on the streets of San Francisco. The fact is, “Vertigo” lives and breathes and expands wildly beyond the confines of its 35 millimetres (or 70 if you catch it in its VistaVision original), so perhaps it’s no surprise that its critical ascent took a while. Maybe “Vertigo” wasn’t so much released as planted all those years ago, and needed the space of intervening decades to grow in the collective filmgoing unconscious: for those who first saw it to realise the long-term unshakability of its peculiar charms, and for critics to go back and worry at it. Finally, though, we realised that “Vertigo” is just not going to give up its secrets any time soon, which has only made us love it more. It may well become the most written-about film of all time, but its portrayal of guilt and hauntedness and fear and fixation is just too rich and nuanced to allow a definitive interpretation. Except maybe, if you set any store by this sort of thing, that “it’s the greatest.” [A+]
Hitchcock Cameo: Moving on from the string section, he carries a trumpet case in the street at the 0:11:40 mark.
From the article:
"Vertigo" (1958)
Contrarians move on. We’re not going to argue with “Vertigo” ’s recent usurpation of the top spot in the Sight & Sound critics poll, because, inasmuch as any film deserves the title of Greatest Film of All Time (a whole different debate), this one probably does. An endlessly fascinating, heady blend of psychodrama, ghost story, perverse romance and ludicrously intricate murder plot, what’s perhaps most remarkable about it having climbed so high is just how crooked it is, how absurdly far it deviates from standard classic film format, and how subjective and ambiguous it remains after all the analyses. Contrast it, say, with the formal, crisp, perfection of “Citizen Kane” -- the film it deposed -- and ”Vertigo” feels like a glorious, soupy mess, perhaps the least contained of Hitchcock’s films, which should threaten every moment to burst the banks of disbelief and flood over into risibility. But it never does, instead it weaves its strange off-kilter spell that, like a fragrance or a snatch of melody, evokes much more than it states. And what in other films might have been glaring issues, somehow here contribute to that unique mood: Kim Novak is an actress we tend to find awkward onscreen, but here the themes of artifice and performance and deception, not to mention the inherent misogyny of the conceit, are given a unique spin by the discomfort of her portrayal of Judy/Madeleine. And the plot, in another film, would be the highest, archest camp, but even as the story spins off in ever more eccentric directions, Hitch’s tonal mastery is total, and so elements that should be lurid or grotesque (and in subsequent films, like “Marnie” or “Frenzy” he went there quite frequently) instead become resonant and full of delicious, dark irony: a cyclical greek tragedy playing out on the streets of San Francisco. The fact is, “Vertigo” lives and breathes and expands wildly beyond the confines of its 35 millimetres (or 70 if you catch it in its VistaVision original), so perhaps it’s no surprise that its critical ascent took a while. Maybe “Vertigo” wasn’t so much released as planted all those years ago, and needed the space of intervening decades to grow in the collective filmgoing unconscious: for those who first saw it to realise the long-term unshakability of its peculiar charms, and for critics to go back and worry at it. Finally, though, we realised that “Vertigo” is just not going to give up its secrets any time soon, which has only made us love it more. It may well become the most written-about film of all time, but its portrayal of guilt and hauntedness and fear and fixation is just too rich and nuanced to allow a definitive interpretation. Except maybe, if you set any store by this sort of thing, that “it’s the greatest.” [A+]
Hitchcock Cameo: Moving on from the string section, he carries a trumpet case in the street at the 0:11:40 mark.
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