Barker’s Classic Movies #6: VERTIGO *****
“Too late. It’s too late, there’s no bringing her back.”
- Scottie Ferguson
Vertigo (1958)
running time: 2 hr., 7 m. / original studio: Paramount Pictures
produced & directed by Alfred Hitchcock; screenplay by Alec Coppel & Samuel Taylor, from novel D’Entre les Morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac; director of photography, Robert Burks; edited by George Tomasini; music by Bernard Herrmann
with: James Stewart (Scottie), Kim Novak (Madeleine/Judy), Barbara Bel Geddes (Midge), Tom Helmore (Gavin Elster)
If ever there was a movie that illustrated the unpredictable whims of art and commerce, it is Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. When first released in the summer of 1958, during the most productive and profitable era of Hitchcock’s career, Vertigo was a box-office disappointment, considered by audiences and critics alike to be nothing more than an unsatisfying curiosity from a popular entertainer. But as film studies blossomed in the sixties and Hitchcock’s image began to change, Vertigo accumulated recognition from many different quarters around the world, gaining in stature until it is now regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, a hypnotic masterpiece of uncomfortable insight and disturbing beauty.
It has often been reported that Vertigo’s source material, the novel D’Entre les Morts (literally From Among the Dead), was written expressly with Hitchcock in mind, but the book’s co-authors Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac repeatedly denied this claim over the years. There is no doubt, however, that Hitchcock was a fan of their work: earlier in the fifties, he had tried to secure the film rights to another Boileau-Narcejac novel, Celle qui n’etait plus (She Who Was No More), which would have been a perfect vehicle for the Master of Suspense, filled with guilt-ridden characters, creepy suggestions of the supernatural, and brilliantly orchestrated twists and shocks. But it was always necessary for the famous Alfred Hitchcock to bid secretly through an agent in order to keep the price of literary properties within reason, and he lost the rights for that novel to another filmmaker, Henri-Georges Clouzot, who turned it the classic Diabolique (1955).
By that time Hitchcock had acquired the even darker D’Entre les Morts, a mad pulp tragedy steeped in sexual neurosis and obsession. It was obvious to everyone in the director’s inner circle that the novel had touched a nerve, stirring passions and ideas that he’d never found a way to dramatize before. He spent much more time on the adaptation than usual, going through four writers in as many years, a period during which he also launched a weekly television show and made several other films. In the process the story’s milieu was shifted from wartime France to contemporary San Francisco, Hitchcock’s favorite American city, some of the character motivations were transformed and deepened, and the finale was given a more humanist spin than that of the novel. After numerous other delays, mostly caused by Hitchcock’s health, Vertigo finally went before the cameras in fall 1957.
It is a hard film to watch and absorb, calling into question our deepest assumptions about love and identity. Vertigo begins as a straightforward mystery-thriller: police detective Scottie Ferguson is forced into retirement after he develops acrophobia, a morbid fear of heights, which contributes to the death of a colleague. When an old school pal asks Scottie to keep a protective eye on his wife Madeleine, a beautiful neurotic obsessed with her family’s sordid past, Scottie accepts, following her as she wanders San Francisco in a seeming trance of worship to a notorious ancestor. But Scottie’s own vulnerability begins to take a toll: never tied down to anyone or anything before — except to his dangerous profession — he finds himself drawn ever deeper into Madeleine’s compulsive dance with death, and Vertigo takes a detour from the standard thriller plot, where mysteries neatly unravel and all is made right in the end, becoming a gripping slide toward pathological desire and the fringes of sanity.
To reveal more of the story would be unconscionable: among all of Hitchcock’s films, Vertigo’s power is the most dependent on the way it unfolds — relentlessly, like a recurring nightmare from which one day we will fail to awaken.
There are many reasons for Vertigo’s current reputation among critics and film historians. Certainly it can be taken as Encyclopedic Hitchcock, a culmination of themes which can be found throughout the director’s career: the attraction-repulsion paradox of heterosexual relationships; the omnipresence of theatrical ritual and role-playing in daily life; the deep connection between sex and the loss of personal identity; and most Hitchcockian, the utter subjectivity of existence, our inability to see or know each other except through the bizarre prism of our own personalities. Hitchcock’s films were always ambivalent about the possibility of love coexisting with happiness, but Vertigo represents his ultimate statement on the theme, coolly dissecting modern denial, leaving his audience with a savage critique of romance and its often illusory nature.
But there are other aesthetic reasons for admiring any Hitchcock film. Few directors from any era have possessed Hitchcock’s ability to blend form with content and Vertigo represents his mastery over film grammar at its most disciplined and uncompromising. It is a movie that must be watched as well as listened to, working out its many concerns through an elegant weave of color, movement, editing and composition.
The film’s first half contains several long sequences in which the imagery and action tell everything, as befits a director trained in the silent era, supplemented only by Bernard Herrmann’s lavish musical score. Spirals and vortices abound, from the swirling title sequence to the slowly reeling tracking shots of Scottie following Madeleine through San Francisco, to the staircase in the bell tower and Vertigo’s most famous, expressionistic effect: a simultaneous tracking out/forward zoom that signifies Scottie’s attacks of vertigo. It is a shot that has entered the lexicon of filmmakers everywhere, a universal sign for fear and anxiety.
The color green permeates the film, taking on connotations of sexual submission, eternity and the supernatural. Deep reds not only compliment the green, they symbolize power and the urge to control and dominate others. Hitchcock dresses his stars and his sets in both colors to eerie, sometimes humorous effect, implying a constant shifting of power relationships. And finally, there are the film’s endlessly multiplying doubles and doppelgängers. Watch for revelatory mirror images in key scenes, as well as a plot that reproduces itself with dreadful inevitability.
James Stewart gives an unforgettable performance as Scottie, moving from detached skepticism through shattered guilt to haunted rage with perfect pitch, possibly his finest hour in a career full of characters who wore their hearts — and their bitterness and terror — on their sleeves. But it is Kim Novak who is the revelation, a leading cinematic sex object of the fifties who was here given a rare opportunity to shine as an actress. Her performance in this film has long been underrated, but it is one of the best unsung acting jobs in classic cinema, becoming richer with every viewing, a naked portrait of a woman tortured by her desire to be desired and willing to suffer any dissolution of her own personality to extinguish her guilt and self-loathing.
Much has been made of the fact that Vertigo is Hitchcock’s most personal film, many commentators treating it as a daring self-examination in the guise of a Hollywood entertainment. His attempts to control every aspect of his actors’ performances and appearance are well documented (and often overstated), and Hitchcock himself often joked about it, as with his famous quip about treating actors like cattle (see Notes). Vertigo certainly represents the flip side of that self-deprecation, a harrowing admission, perhaps, of the consequences in trying to remake and/or control others. But it’s never wise to read too much autobiography into an artist’s work, or to see Vertigo as some sort of confessional cinema. A man shaped by a more circumspect and private era, Hitchcock was first and always the sly showman, one who never made a public statement that wasn’t glossed with irony, innuendo or outright leg-pulling.
If Vertigo reveals anything about its director, it is Hitchcock the consummate professional, a maestro whose control and understanding of his medium drove him to explore its outer limits, over and over again. Hitchcock’s true guiding obsession was filmmaking itself; Vertigo stands as his most serious attempt to make us look deeper into the art form that he spent a lifetime practicing, a startling suspense drama, continually spiraling inward to uncover not just its own riddles and enigmas, but a murky corner of the human condition as well: the certain dangers of trying to relive the past.
That is more than enough baggage for one masterpiece to carry.
NOTES:
CRITICAL APPROVAL: In the most recent Sight and Sound poll of international film critics, Vertigo received the second highest number of votes for greatest film of all-time, behind enduring number one Citizen Kane. Organized by the British Film Institute, the poll has been taken each decade since 1952, its history a fascinating barometer of evolving cultural tastes. Vertigo first appeared on the poll in 1982.
Check out the poll web site for a terrific introduction to the best of classic and world cinema. There is now a second poll of working directors, which offers a sometimes amusing contrast to the critics’ list. Vertigo placed sixth among the filmmakers.
THE ENABLERS: Much of Vertigo’s formal elegance can be attributed to its pivotal moment in Hitchcock’s career, dead center in the decade 1954 to 1964, when he had assembled his finest team of regular collaborators: perfectionist cameraman Robert Burks, who shot twelve Hitchcock films during this period; master film editor George Tomasini (nine films); incomparable costume designer Edith Head (eleven films), who instinctively grasped the film’s color scheme and talked Kim Novak into wearing gray in her introductory scenes; and the title design by Saul Bass, which establishes Vertigo’s atmosphere from the very beginning. He later did the memorable title designs for North By Northwest and Psycho.
Finally, no composer understood how a Hitchcock film should sound quite like Bernard Herrmann did. The music he wrote for Vertigo is simply one of the best scores ever written for a movie, inspired by the “Leibestod,” or Love-Death, from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Herrmann scored seven Hitchcock films, as well as orchestrating the avian sound effects for The Birds.
“TO LAY A GHOST”: Hitchcock first shaped the overarching design of Vertigo with the help of Paramount contract writer Alec Coppel. Their version contained most of the structure and events which make up the film as we know it, including the indispensable opening rooftop sequence. But it still needed real people for its characters.
Überagent Kay Brown suggested Samuel Taylor, a playwright and San Francisco native, who hit it off with the Master by repeatedly calling the script in progress To Lay a Ghost. It was Taylor who understood the emotional depths Hitchcock was trying to mine and gave real life to Scottie, Madeleine and Judy. He also added the characters of Midge and Pop Leibel, and invented at least one other indispensable scene (see SPOILER-RAMA below).
Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic by Dan Auiler (St. Martin’s Press, 1998) is an excellent history of the film, from its conception to its present reputation.
THE CAMEO: Hitch makes his trademark appearance at 11 minutes and 18 seconds, carrying a lunch box. Don’t blink.
“INGRID, IT’S ONLY A MOVIE”: Whether or not Vertigo is his masterpiece, Hitchcock had more than his share of great films in a career that spanned fifty-four years and fifty-three features: cf. The 39 Steps (1935), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Notorious (1945), Strangers on a Train (1951), Rear Window (1954), North By Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960).
In addition, there are numerous minor masterworks containing dazzling visuals, brilliant performances and good old entertaining juice, all of which have their ardent supporters: Foreign Correspondent (1940), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Rope (1948), To Catch a Thief (1955), The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964).
See the classic study Hitchcock by François Truffaut (Simon & Schuster, revised 1985), still the best introduction in print to this all-important cinematic innovator.
THE OVERACHIEVER: the great James Stewart (1908-1997) was among the most beloved film stars of his day, a genuinely admirable person, and smarter than he’s often given credit for. Son of a hardware store owner, graduate of Princeton’s architecture school, he first became famous exemplifying wholesome masculinity in the thirties, then sidelined his own Oscar-winning career to be a bomber pilot in WWII, flying twenty missions over Germany. It was an experience that darkened his choice of roles thereafter.
A master of timing and inflection, no Classic Hollywood actor was more mesmerizing more often than Jimmy Stewart: cf. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Philadelphia Story (his Oscar, 1940), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Winchester ’73 and Harvey (both 1950), Anatomy of a Murder (1960), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962).
He made four Hitchcock films, epitomizing the director’s Everyman alter ego and exploring some interesting depths: Rope, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and Vertigo. A full business partner with Hitchcock on all four films, Stewart worked closely with Samuel Taylor on the final draft of Vertigo while Hitchcock was in the hospital recovering from surgery. It’s very unlikely, as some have suggested, that he could have turned in this performance without knowing exactly what he was revealing about the male animal, and about himself.
THE DVD: The ace restoration team of Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz saved the master print of Vertigo from near total fading in 1996; the film now has a remastered score from the original stereo recordings and a gorgeous Technicolor image transferred to 70mm safety stock. This is the master Universal uses for the DVD. The Hitchcock estate plans to reissue the film theatrically every ten years or so, which means it’s about due to be in theatres again. See it on the big screen if you can.
Universal owns the distribution rights to an enormous number of Hitchcock films, which they acquired from the director’s daughter at a fair price, and they do a good job with transfers and extras. The Vertigo disc is lighter on bonus material than other films in Universal’s Hitchcock library, but it’s readily available in stores and on the web for an average price of $14.99.
Dedicated Hitchcock collectors should visit The Alfred Hitchcock DVD Information Site
SPOILER-RAMA: Do not read this last section if you haven’t seen Vertigo, or if you haven’t seen it for a long time:
The flashback scene, in which Judy remembers the murder of Elster’s wife and decides to keep it a secret from Scottie, was added late in the writing at Taylor’s urging. But Hitchcock vacillated for months on whether to keep it in the film while the people around him — associate producers, production chiefs, colleagues from his TV series — haggled over its merits, some for and some against. In hindsight it is clear the scene is absolutely necessary, creating a very Hitchcockian layer of suspense around the film’s outcome. Without the scene, nothing Judy does in the final third would make sense; with the scene, it becomes Judy’s story as well as Scottie’s.
If it seems as though Scottie intends to kill Judy during the bell tower finale that could be a holdover from the novel, which actually ends with the protagonist strangling his Madeleine-makeover after realizing he’s been had. The modification by Taylor and Stewart is one of the greatest summations by a detective ever put on film, often sparking applause in the theatre. It also humanizes the climax, turning from mere revenge to horrifying tragedy. The take Hitchcock used for the summation speech goes slightly out of focus at one point, but he was willing to sacrifice visual perfection to Stewart’s thrilling performance.
Studio censors, ever ready to miss the point, were adamant that Gavin Elster must be caught and made to pay for his crimes. Hitchcock actually shot a brief final scene with Midge and Scottie, in which we learn from the radio that a manhunt for Elster is in progress, but it was thankfully never used. It appears in the DVD special features, hidden after the documentary. To find it, go to the chapter list for Obsessed with ‘Vertigo’ and thumb through to #14, “Hitchcock’s Foreign Censorship Ending.”
WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID:
“Alfred Hitchcock, who produced and directed this thing, has never before indulged in such farfetched nonsense.” — John McCarten, The New Yorker, June 7, 1958
“…another Hitchcock-and-bull story in which the mystery is not so much who done it as who cares.” — Time magazine, June 1958
“In complexity and subtlety, in emotional depth, in its power to disturb, in the centrality of its concerns, Vertigo can as well as any film be taken to represent the cinema’s claims to be treated with the respect accorded to the longer established art forms.” — Robin Wood, Hitchcock’s Films, 1965
“For those who remember it fondly as Hitchcock’s lost masterpiece, there are some surprisingly rough edges; for those to whom it’s unfamiliar, it may seem unbearably cruel. What is sure to startle anyone is the spectacle of the film,…whose every element is precisely geared to the larger whole…(Hitchcock) never shaped a film as fervently or perversely as he did this one.” — Janet Maslin, The New York Times, 1983
“For such a personal work with such a uniquely disturbing vision of the world to come out of the studio system when it did was not just unusual - it was nearly unthinkable.” — Martin Scorsese, 1998
“…I was once quoted as saying that actors are cattle. My actor friends know I would never be capable of such a thoughtless, rude, and unfeeling remark…What I probably said was actors should be treated like cattle.” — Alfred Hitchcock
Barker’s Classics #5 was Goldfinger
