When Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 movie “Vertigo,” opened Thursday in a newly restored 70 mm version–advertised everywhere as “Hitchcock’s masterpiece”-it capped one of the most unusual critical and audience turnarounds in all of American film.This is a movie, one of the strangest and most disquieting ever made in Hollywood, that was at first considered a failure. Now, it’s endlessly analyzed, debated and taught. It is one of the most influential of all American movies.
“Vertigo”–which is about a detective (James Stewart’s John “Scottie””Ferguson) suffering from acrophobia and the client’s wife whom he follows and falls in love with (Kim Novak as Madeleine Elster)–seems to haunt the minds of audiences, critics and other filmmakers.
With its long, dreamy chase sequences set in a San Francisco that seems enveloped in poetic mist, its great nerve-jangling Bernard Herrmann score, its mood of lyrical anxiety and its lacerating theme of loss and life’s second chances–the picture has become for many a true cinematic touchstone. In the last two Sight and Sound international polls of the century’s best films, “Vertigo’ climbed into the top 10, alongside textbook classics like “Citizen Kane” and “Seven Samurai.”
But back in 1958, on its first release, “Vertigo” was a relative flop–especially compared to previous recent Hitchcock successes like “Rear Window” (1954) “To Catch a Thief” (1955) and “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1956).
Audiences stayed away, despite the box office clout of both Stewart and Novak, and despite Hitchcock’s enormous popularity–which, with his movies, monthly mystery magazine and weekly TV show, was then at its peak.
If the mass audience seemed puzzled by the film–especially, perhaps, by its obsessive hero, unhappy ending and lack of the usual Hitchcockian comedy–the cognoscenti of the time were openly contemptuous. Here and in Hitchcock’s native Great Britain, “Vertigo’s” maker was derided by serious writers as a once-talented innovator who had sold out to Hollywood, an unambitious entertainer whose best movies were made two decades before, in England in the ’30s.
“Vertigo” was also castigated as a failed thriller, with Hitchcock inexplicably giving away his movie’s “surprise ending” half an hour early. Critics attacked the use of glamorous movie stars, expensive sets, the plot full of coincidences and calculated twists.
If you had called “Vertigo” a masterpiece back in 1958, you probably would have been considered a fool. Now, 38 years later, the mood of moviegoers–and critics–has changed. Where in 1958 the notion of a popular Hollywood moviemaker trying to express personal feelings and ideas in his work was a novelty, today it is solidly established.
`Flaws’ key to the story
With age, “Vertigo” has become more romantic, more appealing. And because other moviemakers have repeatedly copied Hitchcock’s films–especially “Vertigo,” “Psycho” and “North by Northwest”–it’s natural that modern filmgoers would return to the source.
Once they do, it’s easy to see why all these qualities that seemed flaws to the movie’s 1958 critics–the obsessive hero, the double heroine, the bleak and harrowing climax, the sense of moodiness, strangeness and even despair–are, instead, the very heart of the story. “Vertigo” is about romantic illusion and loss. And though it has some antecedents in the dark and moody post-war romances of the mid to late ’40s–movies like “Portrait of Jennie,” “Laura” and Hitchcock’s own “Notorious” and “Spellbound”–it deliberately throws away or ignores many things that we expect from a classic Hollywood movie. Even a Hitchcock one.
“Vertigo” begins and ends in wordless nightmare, with the main character, Scottie, poised above an abyss. In the beginning, Scottie–retired from his police career after acrophobia strikes him in the middle of a rooftop chase–is hired to tail Madeleine by her husband, wealthy shipbuilder Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). Elster, suave but troubled, explains that his wife may be in the grip of a suicidal obsession with her great-grandmother, Carlotta Valdes, who killed herself at 26.
So the retired cop follows the beautiful, enigmatic gray-suited blond through flower shops, churches, graveyards, art museums, old apartment houses and the Mission San Juan Batista–whose ominous tower is the site of two key sequences.
Eventually, he goes from voyeur to savior: rescuing Madeleine from a jump into the San Francisco Bay. He takes her to his room and falls in love, to the anger of his longtime girlfriend, the resolutely sensible Midge Wood (Barbara Bel Geddes). Yet, agonizingly, he loses Madeleine, when his acrophobia seizes him again as she races up the mission tower steps to her apparent date with doom.
Darkness swallows him up. Then, after a period of melancholia and bad dreams, Scottie seems to find his love again, in the person of Judy Barton (also played by Novak), an equally lovely but outwardly brash and cynical working girl whom he begins to date. Soon, obsessively, he tries to make Judy over in Madeleine’s image–despite her objections and mounting fear. This is his second chance, maybe his last. And it is also, as we can clearly see from the look of longing, lust and fury in his eyes–a ruinous idee fixe that may destroy them both.
Obviously it is not the mystery plot of “Vertigo” that matters so much–but the emotions of the characters. “Vertigo” is a tour de force of subjective visuals, full of carefully selected color schemes, technical tricks and camera motifs that lead us into Scottie’s mind and anguish (and later, into Judy’s as well). Herrmann’s score–with its crashing chords, swooning strings and hair-raising ostinato figures–is a key element too: pulling us along on waves of terror, into whirlpools of dread.
Desire, darkness, destruction
The actors, including chipper, sardonic Bel Geddes, make huge contributions. It is largely because Novak is so chillingly lovely and Stewart such a brilliantly empathetic actor–because he can seem so ordinary, yet so nakedly emotional–that the film has such power. (In 1958, of course, Stewart and Novak were often dismissed as two more overfamiliar Hollywood faces.)
In retrospect, we can see how wrong the “serious” critics of the time were–about Stewart, Hitchcock, Novak, Herrmann and almost everything else. The movie is not ruined by its midpoint revelation, but given another viewpoint, another layer of complexity and interest. And it was not in the ’30s, that Hitchcock was at his peak, but in the ’50s–when he directed 11 often remarkable movies (including “Strangers on a Train,” “Rear Window,” “North by Northwest’ and “Psycho”) and 17 high-quality TV episodes, both for “Suspicion” and his own weekly show, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.”
In 1958, Hitchcock was afire with creativity, prolific and assured. “Vertigo” was a gamble, but one he obviously thought he could afford.
It was after 1960 and the worldwide success of “Psycho” that his career began to deteriorate–ironically because of a personal obsession that almost seems to duplicate Scottie’s. Hitchcock, who always considered the cool Philadelphia beauty Grace Kelly his favorite actress, had lost her when she married Monaco’s Prince Rainier III in 1956 and abandoned the movies for a life of royal splendor (and, some say, misery). Trying to recreate Kelly’s image in a succession of other leading ladies–in Vera Miles, in Kim Novak, in Eva Marie Saint and finally, ruinously, in Tippi Hedren–he painted himself into a humiliating psychological corner.
“Vertigo” has been repeatedly called Hitchcock’s masterpiece and most personally revealing film–and, in a way, it is. From the very first images of Saul Bass’ credit sequence, the whorls and patterns revolving in darkness, the huge eye bathed in red, the movie lets us feel the heartbeat and divided soul of its hero. And its creator. It is a movie about desire, darkness and the pull toward destruction. Most of all, it is about impossible love and overwhelming fear–conveyed with consummate control and art. Watching it, we feel the fear, suffer the desire.
Why did the movie’s reception change so dramatically? Mostly, because the lovers of “Vertigo,” and the kind of filmmaking it represents, prevailed against its detractors (who still exist). “Vertigo’s” strongest admirers tend to believe that the movies, despite the enormous complexity of the filmmaking system and the huge number of collaborators it demands, can be a personal art, in which a filmmaker can tell stories that express his or her deepest feelings and ideas. And they believe that “Vertigo” is a supreme example.
And so it is.
10 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT ”VERTIGO’
1. The source for “Vertigo” was a French mystery novel, “D`entre les Morts,” by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who also wrote the original “Diabolique,” which Hitchcock admired. The authors reportedly penned “D’entre les Morts” hoping Hitchcock would adapt it.
2. “Vertigo” received only two 1958 Oscar nominations, for art direction and sound.
3. “Vertigo’s” mesmerizing title sequence is by Saul Bass–who later did the storyboards for the shower scene in “Psycho.”
4. Other movies that borrowed from, or were much influenced by, “Vertigo” include Jonathan Demme’s “The Last Embrace,” Brian De Palma’s “Obsession,” Mel Brooks’ “High Anxiety,” Francois Truffaut’s “The Bride Wore Black” and Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown.”
5. Hitchcock’s original choice for the roles of Madeleine/Judy was Vera Miles, who had starred in his 1957 “The Wrong Man” and whose image he intended to model on Grace Kelly’s. But Miles lost the part when she got pregnant.
6. If you look closely at the portrait of Carlotta, you will notice a resemblance not just to Kim Novak, but to Grace Kelly.
7. After Columbia loaned their top female star, Kim Novak, to Paramount for “Vertigo,” Paramount reciprocated by loaning Stewart back to Columbia. There, he co-starred with Novak in another 1958 release, “Bell Book and Candle.”
8. Contrary to legend, the first newspaper reviews on “Vertigo” were very good. It was the “serious” magazine reviews in “Time,” “Newsweek” and “The New Yorker” that dismissed the movie.
9. Scenarist Samuel Taylor was chosen to do the script largely because he was a native San Franciscan familiar with the story’s many locations.
10. The famous shots that visualize Scottie’s sensation of vertigo as he struggles up the mission tower steps were made by shooting down a model staircase, with a camera that was simultaneously tracking out and zooming in.
”VERTIGO”
(star) (star) (star) (star)
Directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock; written by Alec Coppel & Samuel Taylor, based on the novel “D’Entre les Morts” by Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac; photographed by Robert Burks; edited by George Tomasini; art direction by Hal Pereira, Henry Bumstead; music by Bernard Herrmann; titles by Saul Bass; restoration by Robert A. Harris, James C. Katz. A Universal release (original release: Paramount, 1958); opened Thursday. Running time: 2:08. MPAA rating: PG.
THE CAST
John “Scottie” Ferguson ……………….. James Stewart
Madeleine Elster/Judy Barton ………………… Kim Novak
Midge Wood ………………………… Barbara Bel Geddes
Gavin Elster …………………………….. Tom Helmore
