Vertigo
To make things clear first: This is different than „Requiem for Dream“. I have thoroughly enjoyed watching „Vertigo“ and I think it is a good movie, but ultimtately it just did not blow me away. Perhaps I have expected too much, but everyone seems to love this movie to an extent I do not understand.
Of course „Vertigo“ had a great story: it was mysterious, it had a shocking end, and most of all, I really love the „Vertigo effect“ and Alfred Hitchcock’s directing. I will probably never understand why he is so incredibly famous, and why he was the only director I have ever known until I was, like, 15. So, what is so great about „Vertigo“ apart from that?
For myself, the film had quite a few weaknesses. First of all, I don’t like Kim Novak all that much. I loved her in „Kiss me, Stupid“ because I like how she was the comparably less attractive, but funny and good-hearted prostitute. It was a role that fit her perfectly. Here, she is supposed to be the fine woman, who is supposed to have the charme of a femme fatale. For me, she doesn’t unfortunately. Her face is beautiful, but in a different way than your typical film noir actress.
Second, I found it a little weird that the end of the movie came so incredibly fast. Just two, three seconds there was this last shock and then it was all over. No single shot about what happened to the characters afterwards, sadly not even anything about this other woman who was in love with the main character. I understand that it is perhaps a little difficult to do some sort of epilogue, but was it really the best thing to suddenly end the movie like that?
Finally, my biggest irk with the story is that I don’t quite accept its „psychological depth“ or whatever. From what I saw, I think that the main character is just an obsessive idiot who was unable to love a woman beyond her surface. Perhaps there is more to it, but right now, I can’t see it, and that makes the latter part of the whole story incredibly sad and unnecessary. It is a pity because it is quite beautiful how Judy fell in love with that ex-cop. But I don’t think you were supposed to feel sorry for her or anything.
So, why do you like „Vertigo“?
i actually agree with most things you point out, and there are films of his that are wittier (Rear Window), more suspenseful (Psycho, North By Northwest), have more refined plots (Shadow of a Doubt, Under Capricorn) and far more elegant endings ( oh my god, Notorious) than Vertigo does.
I can’t imagine that someone like Hitchcock (someone who would make something as hilariously self-ironic as that trailer for The Birds) would ever bother to create something that is particularly “deep” or consciously loaded with meaning (“The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.”), he simply wanted to produce engaging films for the audience’s entertainment. That many of the films turn out to be such intelligent and probing works of great cinematic innovation, is more of a by-product of his intuition, in my opinion (I feel like that about Orson Welles).
So why do I like Vertigo so much, haha. Uh, I think it was pretty much the first film I saw which made me literally gasp at moments when the filmmaking seemed so perfectly and effortlessly matching the story and characters it was depicting. On one hand the plot is incredibly fleet, as you said, there isn’t much besides Scotty’s obsession. As a murder mystery or film noir it also pretty much fails, because the protagonist is really too desperate and sorta dumb.
I think what left such a great impression on me was not so much the plot, but several scenes that are so well crafted and so confounding in their emotional ambiguity, that placed amongst the framework of the murder mystery, seemed to play out on a purely aesthetic level that I find uncommon for Hitchcock (I kinda love this Roger Ebert quote: “Notorious’ is the most elegant expression of the master’s visual style, just as “Vertigo” is the fullest expression of his obsessions.”) For example the scene when Judy shows Scotty the log in the woods, when Judy wakes up in his apartment after he put her to bed, when he first sees her with that stunning green dress in the restaurant, and of course that sequence in the hotel room in which she “transforms” for him.
Even after several viewings I’m not sure how to feel towards the characters, but the the intensity (visually and by the amazing score) through which their situation is expressed I find breathtaking. And that’s SOME by-product, hahahahahaha.
Ohh, I knew that you would have a great answer to my question, and what an elaborate answer! Thank you :3
I can completely understand that watching “Vertigo” must be quite a revelation when you approach it without any expectations, and then you are surprised with the intensity of the film. For me, I think it was the other way around: I too have found the scenes you mentioned quite well done, especially Judy’s gradual transformation into Madeleine was quite powerful indeed. That alone just doesn’t make one of my personal favorites, I suppose.