Benjamin Samuel on Vertigo's influence on Hitchcock 30

I have to admit that Vertigo is the prime reason I became fascinated with Alfred Hitchcock. I first saw the movie at NYU’s media library while studying in New York (I should add – following a viewing assignment of “la jetee” for a writing course!), followed by a study of many of the famous critics books on Hitchcock, like those by F. Truffaut or Robin Wood... It was a real eye opener…

The arrangement of the composition of my work “Hitchcock 30” was also directly inspired by a scene from Vertigo: Where Scottie and Madeleine walk past the cut sequoia trunk. While the arrangement of my work displays not only a temporal section through each of the films (read from left to right) it also reads as a cross-section through Hitchcock’s life and career (read from top to bottom). Each strip of film representing a layer in time like the rings of the sequoia tree. The way the work is displayed in the museum also encourages a reading on that layer (there is a small board which lists the films and their year of release next to the work). I was imagining visitors and couples walking past, stopping, pointing to and exploring “moments” on the work, much like Scottie and Madeleine did in the famous scene. To illustrate the analogy, I sometimes show the following:

It always fascinates me to see what an impact the movie has on so many different people – so much so, that it inspired you to create a blog and myself to create a work like “Hitchcock 30”… Benjamin Samuel Frankfurt, Germany