| Collector's Corner October 2004
 VertigoStarring: James Stewart,
Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Music: Bernard Herrmann
Theatrical release: 1958
DVD release: 1998
Video: Widescreen (letterbox)
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Released by: Universal Studios
Detective Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) resigns
from the police force when he discovers that he has acrophobia. Out of the blue, he hears
from an old college mate, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), who asks Scottie to shadow his wife,
Madeleine (Kim Novak). When Scottie asks why, Elster offers the preposterous reason that
Madeleine is being possessed by a figure from the past. Scottie recommends a psychiatrist,
but Elster pleads with him. Scottie agrees to consider the proposition.
On the off chance that you may not have seen the film,
I’ll stop the synopsis there. Vertigo is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s
masterworks, a tale with plot twists and turns that keep you wondering what’s
happening during the first half of the film, and, during the second half, why.
It’s a film where one man’s emotions, already fragile and frayed from trauma,
are ripped, twisted, and thrown about like a trailer home in a tornado. Vertigo is
also a movie of exquisite visual beauty and groundbreaking camerawork, and it has what is
widely considered to be one of the best film scores ever composed. The motion picture has
been ranked as the second best of all time in the once-per-decade polling of the
world’s most prestigious film critics by Sight and Sound, the journal of the
British Film Institute, and is ranked eighth in the BFI’s polling of international
directors. Vertigo is on the American Film Institute’s list of the Top 100
Films, and is preserved in the National Film Registry. Amazingly, it was a commercial
flop.
A little history
Hitchcock had just finished making The Wrong Man. It
was a project he had little passion for, done for no salary, just to help out the folks at
Warner Brothers during a time of industry turmoil. He was on the hunt for a new project.
Meanwhile, French novelists Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac found out that Hitchcock
had previously wanted the rights to their novel Celle qui n' tait plus, and had
been disappointed when Henri-Georges Clouzot made the novel into Les Diaboliques.
They began writing another novel, in hopes that Hitchcock would make it into a film. The
result was D'Entre les Morts (roughly, "of between the deaths"), which
Paramount bought on Hitchcock’s behalf. Hitchcock loved the story and asked for a
script.
The first scriptwriter hired, Alec Coppel, left the project
early because Hitchcock was unhappy with the characters. The next writer, Samuel Taylor,
worked entirely from an outline developed by Hitchcock, supposedly never having read the
novel or Coppel’s draft. (Coppel later took the matter to the Writer’s Guild,
which gave both screenwriters credit.)
Hitchcock always cast his female leads with care, and his
first choice for Madeleine was Vera Miles, not Kim Novak. Miles had the classy, aloof
sexuality that Hitchcock treasured in his leading women (think of Grace Kelly, Eva Marie
Saint, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh), a charged nature that appealed both to Hitchcock’s
Victorian exterior and his more rakish fantasies. When Miles became pregnant, Hitchcock
took it personally and decided to move on without her. Paramount wanted their golden girl,
Kim Novak, for the role, but Hitchcock wasn’t impressed, as he explained to François
Truffaut*:
"Miss Novak arrived on the set with all sorts of
preconceived notions that I couldn’t possibly go along with. You know, I don’t
like to argue with a performer on the set; there’s no reason to bring the
electricians in on our troubles. I went to Kim Novak’s dressing room and told her
about the dresses and the hairdos that I had been planning for several months. I also
explained that the story was of less importance to me than the overall visual impact on
the screen, once the picture is completed."
Besides arguing with the director, Novak brought a racy,
suggestive tone to the role, even going braless, something considered a little wanton in
the day -- not at all what Hitchcock wanted. Somehow, despite the rancor, the two
succeeded in bringing some magic to the screen.
Casting the leading man was much easier. Hitchcock had
worked with Jimmy Stewart three times before -- in Rope, Rear Window, and The Man Who Knew Too Much -- and
knew he was easy to work with. Stewart had an uncanny ability to display love, affection,
fear, anger, and hurt with the smallest movement of his eyes. He also had the capacity to
move the story along without saying a word, a trait Hitchcock respected.
There was one final detail for Hitchcock to figure out. He
remembered a feeling he had had at an Arts Ball in London, when he had been "terribly
drunk and had the sensation that everything was going far away from me." * Somehow,
he wanted to be able to give that impression on the screen. He had been working on the
idea since 1940, when he made Rebecca, but had never solved the problem. After
thinking about it for years, he came up with an ingenious solution (some claim second-unit
director Irmin Roberts actually solved the problem): to run the camera backward on a dolly
while exactly matching the movement with a forward zoom. The result is Scottie’s
famous sense of vertigo as he looks down the staircase.
The Universal DVD
Before he died, Hitchcock bought back from the studio five
of his films, including Vertigo, so that he might leave them to his daughter,
Patricia. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to give them the care they deserved, so the
restoration of Vertigo was quite expensive and time-consuming. The famous
restoration team of Robert Harris and James Katz went through heroic efforts (nicely
outlined in the "making of" extras on this disc) to bring Vertigo back to
life. When they were finished, the film had a limited theatrical release and is now safe.
The DVD is, unfortunately, letterboxed, but that’s the
only bad thing I can say about it. The colors are beautifully rendered, especially the
ethereal greens that Hitchcock uses throughout, and the dark scenes have excellent detail.
Harris and Katz did an excellent job of remastering the sound -- Bernard Herrmann’s
score comes through beautifully. Because it was recorded with two different orchestras,
there are some subtle shifts in timbre through the film, but in general, the strings have
a nice rosiny sound and the brass has bite. Universal’s Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is
rich, not gimmicky, with the surrounds used almost solely to create depth of soundstage.
The commentary track has some fascinating moments as
producer Herbert Coleman talks with Harris and Katz, but I wished for Jimmy Stewart, who
died while they were working on this DVD release, and Kim Novak, who is still alive. There
are a useful half-hour program from cable channel AMC, theatrical trailers, and bios.
There is also an alternate ending dictated by censors in foreign lands. It proves, once
and for all, that governments should keep their hands off the arts.
By Hitchcock’s calculation, Vertigo took 20
years to break even. Sometimes it takes hindsight to recognize genius.
...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com
* Alfred Hitchcock as told to François Truffaut in his
book, Hitchcock (1967). |
