Listen now | Today’s episode is Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. To be honest, we are both a bit baffled as to why this film is so highly regarded. In fact, we feel like it’s a muddled mess that continuously misses the mark. Hitchcock also seems determined to make sure there is no ambiguity, which makes it hard to interpret the film in a way that might save it.
I was really excited halfway through the movie when I thought it was going to be about him trying to prevent passing on his "curse" to the painter lady before he died. It was disappointing when it turned out to be an elaborate ruse : p
I also remembered that there's a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali in "Spellbound". The quotation from Bataille related to the cosmos and the inner reality also connects well to the title sequence of "Vertigo". So the relation to surrealism is there in "Vertigo", after that I think it's a matter of deciding whether Hitchcock succeeded or not to be convincing about it.
now i really want a whole hitchcock month: movies by de palma, dario argento, truffaut in his hitchcock mode and maybe a shyamalan wildcard to top the month off
I just read Ebert's review of "Vertigo", it's weird that he liked it that much but wasn't impressed by "Lost Highway" which is almost a remake (one of my favorite by Lynch, the soundtrack is amazing). Also I'm like Flyingwaffle, I really like "Body Double". I haven't seen "Dressed to Kill" in a while but I remember liking the museum scene.
For Vertigo, my favorite shot is during the nightmare scene with the three actors turning their heads at different speeds. I thought it was freaking cool, a bit like in Psycho for the swamp scene.
There’s a popular interpretation of this film that reads Jimmy Stewart as an avatar of Hitchcock himself, “directing” Kim Novak into fitting his desires while falling deeper into obsession. I think that interpretation took off enough that Vertigo become a kind of shorthand for Hitchcock’s whole career, and when people praise it as an all time classic, they’re kind of casting a proxy vote for Hitchcock as a director.
I think that interpretation is... somewhat interesting? At best it makes the movie slightly more interesting to talk about, but not much more interesting to watch.
More importantly, you can play a vastly more interesting version of that game with Citizen Kane, where Orson Welles casts himself as an upstart genius who abandons his principles and drives everyone away, and at one point literally frames himself as Hitler! So even going by the metric of “How fun is it to psychologically analyze the director”, the fact that Vertigo dethroned Citizen Kane as the best movie ever made in the last Sight and Sound poll is baffling.
I think this was my favorite episode so far. I’m also baffled by this movie’s reputation, and it was very cathartic to hear both of you agree and try to find anything salvageable here.
I get a bit more from the movie than you did. The 25-30 minute chunk when Jimmy Stewart is just outright psychologically tormenting Kim Novak really works for me. It’s extremely uncomfortable in a way that feels very intentional. The ultimate ending with the nun is a silly anticlimax, but leading up that, I think there’s a very effective rising tension as we get increasingly worried what Stewart will do to her. As much as it would be film sacrilege, I’d love to see a remake that just focuses on that element and aggressively cuts or rewrites everything else.
But 25 compelling minutes isn’t enough to salvage a film, especially when the path to get there is so outrageously contrived and tedious. The first half hour of this film is 5 minutes of plot and 25 minutes of driving! And I 100% agree that Hitchcock constantly undercuts any depth the movie might have by making everything literal in a way that’s total nonsense. Calling the plot contrived is way too charitable.
This one is tough, my life partner and I watched it 15 years ago for a film studies elective course and it kind of disenchanted both of us from cinema. Like if that's the best this art form had to offer for the last 100 years, we might as well read Joyce and Proust and move on with our lives.
So like I wrote previously in other comments, the way it was presented was about how it was a bridge between classical cinema and modern cinema (with emphasis on immersion-breaking devices.) French New Wave directors-to-be were writing reviews in the 50s and took American directors as models because french cinema at the time was abysmal. A cursory introduction to the cinema theory of philosopher Gilles Deleuze was also done. Basically, it's about how the hero is not performing actions but looking at things so time stretches and there is an intensification of attention to details (à la Proust).
The thing with all this theory is that presented like this it feels like a joke, like, the movie is not good and comparing Hitchcock to Proust feels completely blown out of proportion. Also, it's an analysis that is very literary-based. Even though the idea was to find corresponding images that feel Proustian, Deleuze does not write like a visual art historian but like a very obtuse philosopher. His books on cinema are somewhat more readable but it's definitely not a lesson on visual composition or editing (and as far as I remember his treatment of film music is very limited).
Now, I had more time to read in the last couple of years and I also took the time in the last two weeks to actually check out how people from the French New Wave reacted to Vertigo. I'll post stuff and everything so everybody can make up their mind, but to me it really feels similar to the way Tarantino completely reinterpreted B-Movies, only here with a background of high culture from Europe so it's moving away even further from the source material.
So for this comment, I'll try to give a historical feel of the reception by the French New Wave. I'm not a historian so some stuff may be slightly off, but it's more about the spirit than complete accuracy. Basically, the people at the Cahiers du cinéma (especially Godard) were polymaths with an incredibly deep knowledge of art, so they probably picked up on every little cultural reference there is in the movie, like the Magritte painting mentioned by Casey.
Just before I start, I want to say that to me, that kind of analysis of spotting references is similar to talking about Marvel universe and it does not make Vertigo any better because the references come from high art. Like Casey said Hitchcock didn't do anything interesting with that particular Magritte-like visual idea. But I'll go through the things I noticed, hopefully it will be of some interest.
So to start off, for historical background, there's the Eric Rohmer review of 1959, the notes by Chris Marker from 1994 and the Truffaut interview with Hitchcock from 1962. I'm not going to go through them, but the most important thing to notice in my opinion is that Rohmer starts by quoting Plato, Marker talks about Proust and Truffaut emphasizes oneirism, so they really try hard to put Vertigo on the level of high art. By the way, I think the way he starts his review by quoting Plato is kind of in poor taste and he is not specific enough to be very helpful...
To dig deeper into cultural references I think the music by Bernard Herrmann is the best place to start. Obviously, Herrmann had a vast knowledge of culture and took his inspiration from late romantic music and early modernism. I found some harmony analysis and picked up on a few references so I'll share that.
For the chase scene at the beginning, Herrmann took his inspiration from Sibelius, whose symphonies are really dark and introspective. So it's not standard chase scene music.
The habanera in the museum is very similar to Ravel. Then again, the music is not straightforward, it's a mix of Spanish music and dreamy timbral colors and harmony.
On the visual side of things, I'm going to focus on the embrace scene. Since Truffaut talks with Hitchcock about the passive look of the female character and we talked about portraiture last week I tried to pay more attention to facial expressions. This scene in particular reminded me of a passage on Manet in "Histoire(s) du cinéma" where Godard talks about modern portraiture and Manet in particular.
"I had a book in my hand Manet, by Georges Bataille. All the women of Manet seem to say I know what you are thinking about, probably because until this painter, and I knew it from Malraux, the inner reality remained more subtle than the cosmos. The famous and pale smiles of Vinci and Vermeer say first me, me and then the world and even the woman with the pink scarf of Corot does not think what Olympia thinks, what Berthe Morisot thinks, what the barmaid of the folies-bergère thinks because the world finally the interior world joined the cosmos and with Edouard Manet begins the modern painting, that is to say the cinematograph, that is to say forms which go towards the word, very precisely a form which thinks."
I read another analysis of the scene which I thought was worth mentioning, where the author compares it with a similar scene in "Lost Highway". It's in the book "Bodies in Suspense" by Alanna Thain, which is a reworking of Deleuze theory. So she categorizes the shot of Judy as a crystal-image, meaning that in a single shot the image makes you feel or see multiple versions of the same character. So you see the blond version of the character but you feel the whole baggage of the rest of the movie in the image (you feel that the redhead version of the character is underneath). Here's the scene in "Lost Highway", it's a similar idea because it's the first time you see the character as a blond: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPEYsazrKIw. Deleuze called that crystal-image, probably in reference to Edgar Allan Poe's poem "To the River".
Finally, to talk a little bit about literature, the plot of Vertigo is similar to the novel Bruges-la-morte by Georges Rodenbach which is something people from the Cahiers assuredly knew. I have not read it so can't comment further on that. Like I said earlier there's also Proust who is mentioned as a comparison.
So there you go, I hope it can be of some use and that it makes for a better overview than what is generally presented. Lynch, Scorsese, de Palma, Truffaut and Godard got some mileage out of the film so it's at least interesting for that.
I was really excited halfway through the movie when I thought it was going to be about him trying to prevent passing on his "curse" to the painter lady before he died. It was disappointing when it turned out to be an elaborate ruse : p
I searched the internet to see if there were other influences from Magritte on Hitchcock and I found a comparison of a painting to a marketing photograph from "The Birds". https://mma.pages.tufts.edu/fah189/2002/bstone/magritte.html
I also remembered that there's a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali in "Spellbound". The quotation from Bataille related to the cosmos and the inner reality also connects well to the title sequence of "Vertigo". So the relation to surrealism is there in "Vertigo", after that I think it's a matter of deciding whether Hitchcock succeeded or not to be convincing about it.
now i really want a whole hitchcock month: movies by de palma, dario argento, truffaut in his hitchcock mode and maybe a shyamalan wildcard to top the month off
(or clouzot, in a merciful version)
I just read Ebert's review of "Vertigo", it's weird that he liked it that much but wasn't impressed by "Lost Highway" which is almost a remake (one of my favorite by Lynch, the soundtrack is amazing). Also I'm like Flyingwaffle, I really like "Body Double". I haven't seen "Dressed to Kill" in a while but I remember liking the museum scene.
For Vertigo, my favorite shot is during the nightmare scene with the three actors turning their heads at different speeds. I thought it was freaking cool, a bit like in Psycho for the swamp scene.
The shot in question: https://youtu.be/4WAxDlUOw-w?t=36
Totally agree with you on that shot!
There’s a popular interpretation of this film that reads Jimmy Stewart as an avatar of Hitchcock himself, “directing” Kim Novak into fitting his desires while falling deeper into obsession. I think that interpretation took off enough that Vertigo become a kind of shorthand for Hitchcock’s whole career, and when people praise it as an all time classic, they’re kind of casting a proxy vote for Hitchcock as a director.
I think that interpretation is... somewhat interesting? At best it makes the movie slightly more interesting to talk about, but not much more interesting to watch.
More importantly, you can play a vastly more interesting version of that game with Citizen Kane, where Orson Welles casts himself as an upstart genius who abandons his principles and drives everyone away, and at one point literally frames himself as Hitler! So even going by the metric of “How fun is it to psychologically analyze the director”, the fact that Vertigo dethroned Citizen Kane as the best movie ever made in the last Sight and Sound poll is baffling.
I think this was my favorite episode so far. I’m also baffled by this movie’s reputation, and it was very cathartic to hear both of you agree and try to find anything salvageable here.
I get a bit more from the movie than you did. The 25-30 minute chunk when Jimmy Stewart is just outright psychologically tormenting Kim Novak really works for me. It’s extremely uncomfortable in a way that feels very intentional. The ultimate ending with the nun is a silly anticlimax, but leading up that, I think there’s a very effective rising tension as we get increasingly worried what Stewart will do to her. As much as it would be film sacrilege, I’d love to see a remake that just focuses on that element and aggressively cuts or rewrites everything else.
But 25 compelling minutes isn’t enough to salvage a film, especially when the path to get there is so outrageously contrived and tedious. The first half hour of this film is 5 minutes of plot and 25 minutes of driving! And I 100% agree that Hitchcock constantly undercuts any depth the movie might have by making everything literal in a way that’s total nonsense. Calling the plot contrived is way too charitable.
This one is tough, my life partner and I watched it 15 years ago for a film studies elective course and it kind of disenchanted both of us from cinema. Like if that's the best this art form had to offer for the last 100 years, we might as well read Joyce and Proust and move on with our lives.
So like I wrote previously in other comments, the way it was presented was about how it was a bridge between classical cinema and modern cinema (with emphasis on immersion-breaking devices.) French New Wave directors-to-be were writing reviews in the 50s and took American directors as models because french cinema at the time was abysmal. A cursory introduction to the cinema theory of philosopher Gilles Deleuze was also done. Basically, it's about how the hero is not performing actions but looking at things so time stretches and there is an intensification of attention to details (à la Proust).
The thing with all this theory is that presented like this it feels like a joke, like, the movie is not good and comparing Hitchcock to Proust feels completely blown out of proportion. Also, it's an analysis that is very literary-based. Even though the idea was to find corresponding images that feel Proustian, Deleuze does not write like a visual art historian but like a very obtuse philosopher. His books on cinema are somewhat more readable but it's definitely not a lesson on visual composition or editing (and as far as I remember his treatment of film music is very limited).
Now, I had more time to read in the last couple of years and I also took the time in the last two weeks to actually check out how people from the French New Wave reacted to Vertigo. I'll post stuff and everything so everybody can make up their mind, but to me it really feels similar to the way Tarantino completely reinterpreted B-Movies, only here with a background of high culture from Europe so it's moving away even further from the source material.
So for this comment, I'll try to give a historical feel of the reception by the French New Wave. I'm not a historian so some stuff may be slightly off, but it's more about the spirit than complete accuracy. Basically, the people at the Cahiers du cinéma (especially Godard) were polymaths with an incredibly deep knowledge of art, so they probably picked up on every little cultural reference there is in the movie, like the Magritte painting mentioned by Casey.
Just before I start, I want to say that to me, that kind of analysis of spotting references is similar to talking about Marvel universe and it does not make Vertigo any better because the references come from high art. Like Casey said Hitchcock didn't do anything interesting with that particular Magritte-like visual idea. But I'll go through the things I noticed, hopefully it will be of some interest.
So to start off, for historical background, there's the Eric Rohmer review of 1959, the notes by Chris Marker from 1994 and the Truffaut interview with Hitchcock from 1962. I'm not going to go through them, but the most important thing to notice in my opinion is that Rohmer starts by quoting Plato, Marker talks about Proust and Truffaut emphasizes oneirism, so they really try hard to put Vertigo on the level of high art. By the way, I think the way he starts his review by quoting Plato is kind of in poor taste and he is not specific enough to be very helpful...
Eric Rohmer: https://letterboxd.com/cahiers/film/vertigo/
Chris Marker: https://chrismarker.org/chris-marker/a-free-replay-notes-on-vertigo/
Truffaut and Hitchcock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywmoD-qrFKE
To dig deeper into cultural references I think the music by Bernard Herrmann is the best place to start. Obviously, Herrmann had a vast knowledge of culture and took his inspiration from late romantic music and early modernism. I found some harmony analysis and picked up on a few references so I'll share that.
- Rick Beato on the Prelude: https://youtu.be/SmaxctDKRIU?t=924
- Half-diminished 7ths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHTYzOF2lSI
For the references, the most interesting one in my opinion is Tristan and Isolde by Wagner when Scotty and Judy embrace.
- Vertigo: https://youtu.be/tesqTwX7cpc?t=79
- Wagner (in an orgasmic version by Bernstein): https://youtu.be/zZreeVzaOEo?t=1063
The jump of octaves in the nightmare scene reminded me a lot of the apocalyptic passage in Beethoven 9.
- Vertigo: https://youtu.be/4WAxDlUOw-w?t=23
- Beethoven: https://youtu.be/bhsvnTGXqkQ?t=550 (especially here: https://youtu.be/bhsvnTGXqkQ?t=572)
The cemetery scene is like a slowed-down version of Janacek quartet, with a romantic duet at the violins and weird bass-clarinet harmony.
- Vertigo: https://youtu.be/bDwPJ5IaJ2g?t=36
- Janacek: https://youtu.be/FoFVWr3FcB0?t=950
For the chase scene at the beginning, Herrmann took his inspiration from Sibelius, whose symphonies are really dark and introspective. So it's not standard chase scene music.
- Vertigo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7sznnL0NZ0
- Sibelius: https://youtu.be/2lHncn68uyQ?t=1310
(the passage similar to Vertigo is a bit later: https://youtu.be/2lHncn68uyQ?t=1392)
The habanera in the museum is very similar to Ravel. Then again, the music is not straightforward, it's a mix of Spanish music and dreamy timbral colors and harmony.
- Vertigo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-kcczAff40
- Ravel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hsWDoTgn5g
On the visual side of things, I'm going to focus on the embrace scene. Since Truffaut talks with Hitchcock about the passive look of the female character and we talked about portraiture last week I tried to pay more attention to facial expressions. This scene in particular reminded me of a passage on Manet in "Histoire(s) du cinéma" where Godard talks about modern portraiture and Manet in particular.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cPzzbEzXXs
Here's the translation:
"I had a book in my hand Manet, by Georges Bataille. All the women of Manet seem to say I know what you are thinking about, probably because until this painter, and I knew it from Malraux, the inner reality remained more subtle than the cosmos. The famous and pale smiles of Vinci and Vermeer say first me, me and then the world and even the woman with the pink scarf of Corot does not think what Olympia thinks, what Berthe Morisot thinks, what the barmaid of the folies-bergère thinks because the world finally the interior world joined the cosmos and with Edouard Manet begins the modern painting, that is to say the cinematograph, that is to say forms which go towards the word, very precisely a form which thinks."
I read another analysis of the scene which I thought was worth mentioning, where the author compares it with a similar scene in "Lost Highway". It's in the book "Bodies in Suspense" by Alanna Thain, which is a reworking of Deleuze theory. So she categorizes the shot of Judy as a crystal-image, meaning that in a single shot the image makes you feel or see multiple versions of the same character. So you see the blond version of the character but you feel the whole baggage of the rest of the movie in the image (you feel that the redhead version of the character is underneath). Here's the scene in "Lost Highway", it's a similar idea because it's the first time you see the character as a blond: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPEYsazrKIw. Deleuze called that crystal-image, probably in reference to Edgar Allan Poe's poem "To the River".
Finally, to talk a little bit about literature, the plot of Vertigo is similar to the novel Bruges-la-morte by Georges Rodenbach which is something people from the Cahiers assuredly knew. I have not read it so can't comment further on that. Like I said earlier there's also Proust who is mentioned as a comparison.
So there you go, I hope it can be of some use and that it makes for a better overview than what is generally presented. Lynch, Scorsese, de Palma, Truffaut and Godard got some mileage out of the film so it's at least interesting for that.