VERTIGO TRIM SCANDAL BREWS
Bright Lights Film Journal :: The Scandal of Vertigo: It's Not What You Think
You should read this article if you love and care for Vertigo and film preservation and presentation. At first glance, you may shrug and think, big deal, what's a few seconds? Peter answers that question deep in his expose:
This is even truer of the fade-out a few minutes later as Midge berates herself with the words "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" to end the scene. On the '84 laserdisc one sees her fading out but visibly saying the word three times. She spits it out at the end, which is worth seeing, but no other home-video version includes the footage, and so in all probability you haven't seen it.3 In all probability, that is, you have yet to see Vertigo in full.
On all subsequent home-video releases (including the '97 Signature Collection laserdisc), the fading-out happens faster — twice as fast on Blu-ray as on the '84 laserdisc — and all up we lose variously between 0.40 and 0.69 seconds here, the effect of which is to turn Midge momentarily into a disembodied voice: on the post-'84 releases, we hear her say the third "stupid" a moment after she has faded entirely from sight.
Hitchcock was certainly capable of prolonging dialogue into a fade-out and beyond his visuals when he wanted to: he used this technique unforgettably in Under Capricorn.
But he didn't use it in Vertigo.
Around three-quarters of the fades occur faster, over fewer frames...
You should read this article if you love and care for Vertigo and film preservation and presentation. At first glance, you may shrug and think, big deal, what's a few seconds? Peter answers that question deep in his expose:
This is even truer of the fade-out a few minutes later as Midge berates herself with the words "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" to end the scene. On the '84 laserdisc one sees her fading out but visibly saying the word three times. She spits it out at the end, which is worth seeing, but no other home-video version includes the footage, and so in all probability you haven't seen it.3 In all probability, that is, you have yet to see Vertigo in full.
On all subsequent home-video releases (including the '97 Signature Collection laserdisc), the fading-out happens faster — twice as fast on Blu-ray as on the '84 laserdisc — and all up we lose variously between 0.40 and 0.69 seconds here, the effect of which is to turn Midge momentarily into a disembodied voice: on the post-'84 releases, we hear her say the third "stupid" a moment after she has faded entirely from sight.
Hitchcock was certainly capable of prolonging dialogue into a fade-out and beyond his visuals when he wanted to: he used this technique unforgettably in Under Capricorn.
But he didn't use it in Vertigo.
Around three-quarters of the fades occur faster, over fewer frames...
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| Your humble correspondent |
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