a thread for hitchcock's 'vertigo'

of = at

nobody's in charge of the ideas in Suspicion

yet Cary Grant can be in charge of my ideas

Cary Grant can charge for his ideas

this thread always reminds me that an ex-friend who fucked off to toronto still has this DVD

gotta rectify that

fling him off bell tower imo

tell him "it can't matter to ya"

it's too late

I haven't re-read my posts from January 2017 when I first saw Vertigo, but I have done a total 180 on it, it's brilliant and hypnotic and seems to exist outside of time, in a way unlike any other film I've ever seen. Second only to Shadow of a Doubt for my favorite Hitchcock. I was nonplussed when I saw it for the first time, and last night was only the second time I'd seen it. but it'd stuck in my mind for a year and a half. I also think some of the key themes are more resonant with me now.

Wazzabout this intriguing giallo take on Vertigo currently showing on MUBI, One One on Top of the Other?

Ah Alfred you gave me a good laugh

Cheers my
Friends

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tesqTwX7cpc

just watching youtube and revisited this scene and it is so Twin Peaks! especially at .5 speed (try it!). this scene is the transformation of Kim Novak's character into someone with a new identity.

visually it kind of feels like a formal precursor to the Black Lodge, with green curtains instead of red. Jimmy Stewart trapped framed in that menacing backdrop, the music building to a dramatic crescendo, the minor key melancholy eeriness of it all. def see this movie if you are a fan of Twin Peaks/Mulholland Drive.

this is a good list of influences
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/twin-peaks-david-lynch-influences

"Green Fog" is showing at the local cinema this weekend. (Guy Maddin's Vertigo remake made with misc. clips from various SF-based films.) Might check it out, esp. since it's playing with the Hitchcock version as a double-bill.

It's fun, and at only 65 minutes should make a good second half of a double feature

(even better as a first, but not for Vertigo virgins)

yes, it's good

i think Lynch even intro'd Vertigo at the IFC Center once

Scotty is one sick fuck

turns out Maddin put The Green Fog up for free on Vimeo six months ago

Wow

yeah! so good

omg thanks sic

Awesome! Good work sic

was I too high when I re-watched this for the first time in 10+ years last night or 1) does the lighting in the scene at the Argosy book shop actually gradually dim throughout the scene and 2) are they driving on the "wrong" side of the road both times they drive to the bell tower?

1. Yes https://alfredhitchblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/06/vertigo-deconstruction-of-a-scene-argosy-book-shop/

Saw 1958's Bell, Book, and Candle listed on TCM over the weekend, didnt get a chance to watch it but looking to catch it this week. Posting here bc wiki sez: "It stars Kim Novak as a witch who casts a spell on her neighbor, played by James Stewart"... wtf! Surprised I never heard of this, anyone seen it? Is it the rom-com companion to Vertigo that it sounds like?

Yes, it's charming (no pun intended) and it features a cat named Pyewacket, you can't go wrong

I only saw this for the first time last night (the list of films I haven't seen would make people on ILF blush and turn away, I suspect). Damn but I can't stop thinking about it. I'm unsure about Novak - there's a blankness there but it feels deliberate and stylised: she's a vessel or a plaything that various men manipulate and distort. The analogue for Hitchcock is pretty clear.

So many great scenes but the scene with the sequoias is running round and round my head. And the line that jumped at me was (if films are Rorschach then...): "Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere."

I keep thinking about this today. It's impossible coming to such a revered film (a film that comes at you out of a bathroom, cloaked in neon mist) - such that I already want to watch it again, now that I've got the first watch out of the way. The thing that keeps coming to me is James Stewart's eyes - how much acting he does with them. There is a moment in Ernie's, the first time he sees Judyline, when a look almost passes between them, that is all eyes: after the fact it's clear that he'd fallen for her, and she was trying to tell him (tell might be too strong a verb - suggest, insinuate).

As a couple of people have said, I want to eat in Ernies. All that red though - like a restaurant in the Tanz dance academy.

Good posts, Chinaski!

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/robert-downey-jr-vertigo-remake-paramount-1235563018/

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/272/014/e6a.jpg

No. Just no.

imagine if it's terrible and people watch it as a joke and it becomes more well known than the original with a generation of people.

Rewatched for the first time in a long while, because my wife and kids had never seen it. My wife liked it but was skeptical of its claims to all-time greatness — "Not even the best Hitchcock," she said. The kids were mostly kind of baffled, my oldest objecting particularly to the fact that by the end there are no sympathetic characters in sight. His most telling comment was, "I don't know, it made me uncomfortable." I said, don't you think it was supposed to? He said, "Maybe, but I didn't like feeling that."

I do think it's great, and also uncomfortable. Mostly it's a really strange film. It never loses its eeriness, even once you get the reveal of Judy's complicity. It's like the film has conjured ghosts and loses control of them, it stays haunted. Also this was the first time I'd watched it since Twin Peaks: The Return, and it reminded me how much Vertigo is embedded in the Twin Peaks DNA.

Cool. Feel free to watch THE GREEN FOG when you get a chance.

turns out Maddin put The Green Fog up for free on Vimeo🕸 six months ago

I always wonder if Vertigo, (or the book it was adapted from, which I haven't read) was drawing in some way on this Capek short story.

https://openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu/premedical-society/2020/10/29/karel-capek-vertigo/

Huh! Good little story, and definitely seems like it could be related.

It'll never be my favorite Hitchcock.

Same; it'll always be my second- or third-favorite

I have too many I need to revisit to have a solid ranking. Vertigo's in the top tier. And I think it's distinct — obviously it shares a lot of obsessions with other Hitchcocks, but its vibe is specific and odd.

What are the chances that "Mad Men"'s Matthew Weiner had this film in mind when he created his own character named Midge, who was herself an illustrator/painter?

Very good. I'd never even considered that.

Oh, good call on Midge in Mad Men. I mean, the Mad Men opening montage of the silhouette guy falling is a direct Vertigo reference, right?

I think Vertigo is a great art installation and a middling movie. Your oldest kid is right!

It's an interesting question whether it's supposed to make you feel uncomfortable. Hitchcock wanted his audiences to feel scared, sure, but he was also firmly on the entertainment side, I think if you had suggested to him he was trying to challenge his audience he'd have reacted with disgust. He's def using Jimmy Stewart for shock value in the way everyone's described, but does he want the audience to be freaked out by him? Or to relate to him, while still feeling weirded out by the turns the film takes?

Well, it explains why the film was a box office disappointment.

Yes, and Hitch saw it as a failure because of that. So I don't think his intention was to alienate people.

Most directors make a film which departs quite a bit from what they have been doing.

Saw "Make way for Tomorrow" (McCarey) yesterday and you can see the comedic touch that he displayed in "Duck Soup" which ultimately served other, more tragic, ends and ended up bombing at the box office.

I think this is where auteur theory can really fail as often directors aren't in control, is how I break it down

Oh they often aren't but I think Hitchcock absolutely was throughout the 50's.

Amusing to imagine Hitchcock crafting *that* ending and thinking he had a box office success on his hands.

Yeah I mean, it's hard to say his intention wasn't to alienate people when he a.) abruptly shifts the POV from Scottie to Judy in the last section, and b.) makes Scottie more and more unlikable and crazy right up to the end. Basically daring audiences to follow along. Which was part of his bag of tricks anyway, confounding expectations — but maybe in Vertigo he went farther than the audiences were willing to.