Alfred Hitchcock was the Master of Suspense. His movies are masterful and extremely well-crafted. And of all his great career, 1958's Vertigo is his most exquisite. Granted, it is not his most fun movie, that honor goes to North By Northwest. Nor is it his most iconic film, that would be a battle between Psycho and The Birds. And neither is it my favorite; that honor goes to Rear Window. But Vertigo is certainly Hitchcock's most artistic film, and is likely to be his most enduring and influential movie. After all, this past year it was Vertigo was named as Sight and Sound's top film of all time. For 50 years Citizen Kane had the honor of being named the best film of all time in this poll of the nation's top filmmakers and critics. Vertigo finally unseated it. Does Vertigo deserve such an honor?
Absolutely.
Vertigo does all the important stuff so well it could nearly be called a perfect movie. The acting is superb, especially Jimmy Stewart. Now, I love Jimmy Stewart, but this is his best film and a departure from the style of many of his other roles. He plays Scottie Ferguson with a lighthearted flare at first, then a dark and obsessive drive later. He puts himself quite passionately into the role; this is the best acting performance in a Hitchcock film. Opposite him is Kim Novak in the double role of Madeleine Elster and Judy Barton. Novak often gets overlooked as an actress, but it is quite certain that Vertigo would not be effective without her convincing performance. She nails this role, convincingly portraying herself as calm, cool, alluring, mad, confused, mysterious, suicidal, hopeful, abused, and ultimately terribly frightened. There are other speaking roles, but really it all comes down to Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, and they earn their accolades.
Technically speaking the movie is a marvel. The editing is wonderful. I love the drawn out shots that are allowed to go on for significantly longer than the audience might expect. I love the sequences when Scottie is following Madeleine that contain little, if any, dialogue. I love the wonderfully edited nightmare sequence that is still ingrained on the psyche of Hollywood. I love how careful editing can make a race up a tower feel so frantic and heart stopping.
The music by Bernard Herrmann is perfect and even a character of its own. It is hard to place the style, and you come away thinking that it was somewhat Spanish, yet otherworldly. Certainly it does nothing to reassure the viewer, but always keeps you on edge.
Vertigo is a movie beautifully shot, with Robert Burks getting credit behind the camera. Under the direction of Hitchcock he uses washouts and color effects to a high degree of effect, allowing us not only to see but experience the madness and obsession of the characters.
And then there is the famed "Vertigo Effect." Alfred Hitchcock pioneered the use of a great many techniques in filming. Not all of them worked well for him, but his greatest success was how he allowed the audience to experience Scottie's acrophobia, his fear of heights, his vertigo. By simultaneously pulling the camera physically backward while zooming in with the lens, you get the result of maintained focus on the subject but a highly unsettling change of perspective. You get the sensation of falling while not moving. This technique has become passe, used in almost every instance when a character sees something of great concern or realizes a horrible truth. It was used to great effect in Jaws. It was even used in Michael Jackson's Thriller video. But it had never really been seen before in movies until Vertigo, and Hitchcock capitalized on that quite well. The audience was seeing and experiencing something new, something unsettling, something that brought them into the action and made them part of the scene.
If there is a portion of Vertigo that is a bit weak it might be the writing. The story is about a detective hired to shadow a woman who may be mad, or even possessed. To explain any more would be criminal, if you have not seen it before. Let's just say that when the story is laid out simply it seems on first blush to be a bit absurd, even simplistic, melodramatic or corny. There are a few small plot holes, and also a few things that seem far too convenient. Just hearing the plot explained to you would not make you want to see the movie.
But that doesn't matter. The film is so well made, so meticulously constructed that it transcends the story. This is a movie about obsession, something even understood from the titles. There we are treated to an extreme, uncomfortable close-up of a portion of a woman's face. And as the camera pans from one side to the other we finally come up to her eye, and in the eye we see this spinning geometric patterns. We fall, mesmerized, into this woman's eye. Hitchcock had a way of making his title sequences fit into the story or set the tone of the film, but nowhere does he succeed better than in Vertigo. Vertigo is about obsession and guilt, and by the end of the film these forces transform the character we had thought a hero into a manipulative bully, an abuser even. And in my favorite shot, as the camera pans in a circle around Scottie and his remade Madeleine we clearly see that the obsession he thought would remove his guilt only plunges him into madness. He has his demons to overcome, but what toll will they take on him or others before he conquers them? There are no happy endings for the characters here; but then again, what happy endings are possible when obsession and guilt are your driving forces?
Vertigo ages well. It was not received enthusiastically by critics in 1958, nor did it do extremely well in theaters. Yet it seems to grow in influence as the years go on. And for me personally, each repeated viewing (and there have been many) brings new insight and seems a bit more powerful than the last. Vertigo will forever be regarded as Hitchcock's great artistic masterpiece.
Entertainment: 8/10
Artistic Value: 10/10
Technical Merit: 10/10
Overall: 10/10
No comments:
Post a Comment