VERTIGO (1958) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1997 Ted Prigge
Director: Alfred Hitchcock Writers: Samuel A. Taylor and Alec Coppel (from the book "Entre Les Morts" by Pierre Boileu and Thomas Narcejac) Starring: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Babara Del Geddes
On the surface, "Vertigo" looks like a manipulative jokester of a movie, constantly giving you ideas, then turning the exact opposite direction with them, frustrating you. Then, of course, half way through, the film pulls a 180, chaning the underlying mood from a detective mystery film to a sick obsession flick. But the second half is merely fueled by the first half, which presents the idea of sexual obsession then goes full blast with it in the second half.
When "Vertigo" initially came out in the 50s, it was criticized for many of the same things I said in the first paragraph. Manipulative. Stupid. Not enough suspense. But a couple years later, people finally GOT the film, and now it's a classic. This film is not to be watched literally, but to be watched introspectively. Everything this film is about is beyond the surface, inbedded in symbolism and theme, creating a film that is not just one of Hitchcock's best, but probably his most personal film.
The story centers around a detective named Scottie (James Stewart), who suffers a massive tragedy when he and another cop are chasing a crook on rooftops in San Francisco, and he nearly tumbles to his death, only to watch as the cop who tries to save him falls to his own demise. From this, he receives a nasty dose of achrophobia, fear of heights, which gives him vertigo, which is dizziness, which is exactly what Hitchcock takes us through.
Stewart is hired by an old college chum a bit later to follow his wife (Kim Novak), who seems to have developed a bit of insanity, and wanders off aimlessly, and turns out to believe she is her great-grandmother, a woman who went insane and killed herself. As Scottie spies on her, he becomes more and more obsessed with her, and after he saves her when she tries to drown herself, he falls deeper in love with her. Until one day when fate steps in with her bit of insanity, and at a monestary in California, she runs to the top of a bell tower, and throws herself to the ground, all while Scottie is crippled on the stairs by his fear of heights.
Scottie enters a deep ravine of depression, but one day sees a woman who looks just like her (also Kim Novak), just a brunette. He approaches her, and they begin dating. Of course, it turns out she was really the other woman, and was posing as the original so the husband could kill her and get away with it. Now, this is pretty hard to swallow, I know, but do yourself a favor, and don't get hung up on it. The really great part is yet to come.
What happens is Scottie and her are really in love, but Scottie's really in love with what she was pretending to be, since she was the one he had to follow. So, he begins to transform her into her, buying her the exact same dresses, dying her hair, and making her look exactly like her. His obsession reaches its fullest when she emerges from the bathroom in a room lit by neon lights from outside, looking exactly like the original. It's one of the most frightening and brilliant scenes in movie history.
This is, of course, a metaphor for the way Hitchcock had to mold women into these women they really aren't, to satisfy himself. He had, I suppose, felt horrible about the ways he screwed with these women's personalities, and dumped them for another one. In most of Hitchcock's films, the events were a metaphor for something else, but this is one of the most disturbing ones. The film is not really a great suspense film, but really a fantastic introspective drama into the mind of a person much like the master of suspense himself.
P.S. Make sure you get the widescreen remastered/reissued version that came out this year.
MY RATING (out of 4): ****
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