I’ve been thinking about starting up a blog for some time now
and I’ve always loved watching movies, regardless of their era. My preferences
are all over the map. I love highly-regarded classics like The Godfather and The
Graduate, and I’m also someone who thinks Dumb and Dumber is the pinnacle of comedy. Make of that
what you will, but I think that will make this interesting. There’s no real formula
for what I plan to write about and hopefully their will be some surprises in
the films I choose. Most of all I hope this blog motivates you to develop an
appreciation for films. That said I figured I’d kick this off by talking about
one of the key films I remember watching growing up....
“Kevin, you want to
watch this movie, Vertigo?” my dad
asked me.
I
remember pausing for a moment or two. “Verti
… what?”
“Vertigo. It’s an Alfred Hitchcock
movie.”
All I knew of Alfred Hitchcock at
11 years old was that he was the portly gentleman who introduced episodes of his
television show on Nick at Nite.
I don’t really remember what
compelled me to sit down and watch Vertigo
(1958) with my dad. I probably figured I’d watch for a few minutes or so
and then go up to my room or run around outside. Better than spending two hours
watching a crusty old movie made 25 years before I’d even been born.
Once the movie began, it had the same
effect on me I imagine it had on millions of viewers before and after. I was
hypnotized from the start, with the opening credits that begin with a closeup
of a woman’s nervous face set to Bernard Herrmann’s haunting original score.
Vertigo, like almost all of
Hitchcock’s films, is a mystery and suspense picture. It’s about a detective (Stewart)
who develops a debilitating fear of heights while chasing down a suspect and is
forced to retire. While he’s out of commission, he’s approached by an old
friend to follow his wife (Novak), who has been acting strange. From there, the
movie follows what happens after Stewart begins tailing Novak. This is an
absolute bare-bones plot description, but revealing anymore gives away many of
the twists of the plot and would rob a first-time viewer of the experience I
had on my initial viewing of the film.
For anyone else who has seen Vertigo, it’s clear this is not a movie
that should be appealing to an 11-year old. The themes of obsession and control
were way above my head back then and elements I didn’t pick up on until seeing
the film again when I was older. The first thing that comes to mind when I try
to place what appealed to me then about it is how mysterious the film is and the
feeling of being lulled into a hypnotized state. There are long stretches in the film with little to no dialogue - simply the visuals on screen and the amazing musical score. There’s a 10-15 minute sequence early in the film that includes the bare minimum of dialogue as Stewart’s
character follows his friend’s wife by car through San Francisco, where the
film takes place. We watch along with Stewart as the woman he’s following stops
to buy flowers, admires a portrait in a museum, visits a cemetery, etc…
What I call hypnotic, some might
have written off as boring, but even at a young age I was sucked in by it.
After watching the film, I wasn’t relieved that I’d survived the chore of
sitting through an old movie. I wanted more. We had one of those paperback movie guides
in that house that have capsule reviews of seemingly every movie in history. I started looking up
all of Hitchcock films to see what they were about and how they were rated,
making a mental log of the films I wanted to see next.
Later that summer I watched Psycho (1960), the template for modern
horror films, and squirmed while watching the "Shower Scene". From there I
progressively saw more and more of Hitchcock’s films – The Birds, Rear Window, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest, etc.,
eventually expanding beyond just Hitchcock.
The way I saw it, I've only been
alive since 1983, so there was more than half a century of filmmaking to
stumble upon. I’m confident films like Citizen
Kane, Casablanca and Vertigo are
only going to increase in their regard as pieces of art, in the same way we
study the work of DaVinci or Mozart. To pay attention only to what’s appeared
during one's lifetime would at best be shortsighted and at worst, obtuse.
Eighteen years (!) after first seeing Vertigo, I don’t consider it my favorite
film. I don’t even know that I consider it my favorite Hitchcock film. I do
know that seeing Vertigo for the
first time was a catalyst. It opened up a world of films, of art, that was created long before I
entered this world.
Vertigo
stands out to me because it’s reentered the discussion of greatest films. This
past summer, the British film magazine Sight
& Sound released its highly-anticpated list, which is updated every 10
years, of the 10 greatest films of all time, as voted on by film critics around
the world. For the first time since 1952, the film rated at No. 1 was not Citizen Kane (1941), but instead Vertigo.
Is Vertigo really the GREATEST film of all
time? I don’t know. Who knows? What makes a film great, anway?
If
you’re talking in terms of simply story and entertainment value, I think The Godfather and Gone With the Wind might be your best bets. On the other hand, if
you’re talking about films that can be credited with moving the art form
forward, Citizen Kane is probably the pinnacle.
Vertigo
has had an interesting trajectory since it was first released in theaters
54 years ago. Upon its initial release, it was greeted with a lukewarm
response. Critics and the public viewed it as passable fare, but not in the
league of the Hitchcock’s previous classics.
The film received just two minor
Academy Award nominations and Hitchcock attributed the film’s failure to the
age gap between stars James Stewart (age 50) and Kim Novak (25). In French
director Francois Truffaut’s landmark book-length interview with Hitchcock
published in 1962, Vertigo is
mentioned only in passing.
Then, with the film already a hazy
memory, it disappeared altogether.
In 1973, Vertigo, along with five other Hitchcock films, were removed from
circulation (meaning they weren’t available for theatrical reissues or television airings) and didn’t reappear until it was rereleased in theaters in 1983.
By that time, Hitchcock had passed
away and perhaps a reevaluation of his films was in order. Regardless, Vertigo enjoyed commercial and critical
success upon its rerelease and even more praise when it was rereleased again in
1996 on the heels of a painstaking restoration.
The film first appeared on Sight and Sound’s list of greatest all-time films in 1982 at No. 7.
By 1992, it had moved up to No. 4 and to No. 2 in 2002. When the American Film
Institute created its controversial list of the 100 greatest American films in
1997, Vertigo was No. 60. 10 years
later, it had moved up to No. 9.
For many years Psycho (1960) was considered Hitchcock’s greatest work and public
opinion may agree, but at least among critics and cinephiles, Vertigo seems to have become regarded as the director’s
masterpiece. Of course these rankings
and evaluations over which classic film is superior to the other mean little.
The bottom line is Hitchcock had a LOT of classics on his resume. But for me, Vertigo stands out as a marker for my
appreciation of films.
I’ve watched many so-called classic
films, and I hope to discuss those and more modern films. There are also many more I’ve still never seen
and I’m hoping this blog will serve as an opportunity to examine what makes
them work so well.
