Vertigo (1958)
A film review by David Cowen
Copyright 1996 David Cowen
Currently making the rounds in major market cities, the new 70mm restoration of Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO is playing to packed houses. While the film has been given the title "masterpiece" by many, and the restoration is one of the most expensive ever done, both VERTIGO and its restoration prove to be mixed blessings -- mostly impressive, but occasionally dissapointing.
VERTIGO tells the tale of John Ferguson (JAMES STEWART), known as Scottie to his aquaintances, an ex-cop who during a chase over the rooftops witnessed a fellow officer plummet to his doom. This has had a tremendous impact on Scottie, now suffering vertigo when going as far as a couple of steps on his friend Midge's (Barbara Bel Geddes) stepstool, thereby taking him "out of action." Soon, after a call from old college chum Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), Scottie is back on the prowl watching over Elster's wife Madeleine (Kim Novak) who appears to be possessed by unnatural spirits. As Scottie becomes more and more drawn into the case, by the stunning third act, the film abandons the guise of being a "thriller" and becomes a psychological drama focusing on the obsessive relationship between Kim Novak's character and Scottie.
This last third of VERTIGO is what makes it a classic: the motivations behind the Rube Goldberg contraption of the plot that dominates the first and second acts are revealed, the story is explained, and the film is left to examine the feelings present between Novak and Stewart. The portrait VERTIGO paints of love is a frightening one, one based more on obsession and image than one of understanding or companionship. As Scotty's desire for the image of Madeleine grows, he placates these feelings by dominating Judy Barton (also played by Kim Novak), shaping and modelling her back into the image of Madeleine that he desires, seemingly without care for her real feelings or respect for her personality. Amazingly, Stewart allows us to remains sympathetic with Scottie throughout the film, and it's easy to understand how the character's actions are motivated. Kim Novak plays a wonderful dual performance with a tremendous amount of range, believable both as the frigid Madeleine and the earthy Judy.
Unfortunately, the first two thirds of the film take the viewer through a setup which teeters on the absurd -- and that seems unnecessary complex and convoluted, as if Hitchcock were bound by the requirement to make a mystery full of red herrings. The first half of the film also has a pacing that many have described as "dreamlike", but could also be considered unnecessarily slow-paced. These detractions, however, are worth sitting through to reach the supurb final act.
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While I consider the restoration of VERTIGO to be a noble and worthy project, I feel that the restorers made some grave errors. While the film seems brighter and more colorful in the outdoors scenes, it often seems artificially dark and grainy indoors. The grain itself is often a problem even in the light scenes: despite the restoration, the print is far from pristine. In the first few seconds of many scenes, colors will shift dramatically from dark to light, or there is excessive noise on the print. While I realize that the lengths to which a film can be restored depends on the material that the restoration crew is working with, and that there certainly is an improvement, the picture quality of VERTIGO seems underwhelming when compared with, for example, the recent release of the restored TAXI DRIVER.
Bernard Herrmann's jarring score to VERTIGO sounds spectacular in stereo, but the foley work is distracting: certain sounds seem much brighter and clearly defined than others, and many new sound effects seem unnecessary. Scuffling footsteps, jingling handbags and ocean waves seem overly "bright" sounding and are too loud in the mix, to an extent that I caught myself laughing unintentionally at some of the new sound effects. Hopefully, if released on video, Universal will have an engineer EQ the sound effects tracks again to let them sound more in place with the dialogue and location.
Despite these qualms, the new 70mm Vertigo is definately worth seeing -- catch it while you can.
-- signed: ESCHATFISCHE, david h t t p : / /w w w . f i s c h e . c o m (esch@fische.com) ------------------------------------------------------
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