Tag Archives: Vertigo

The Big Sleep [1946)

If you’ve seen Mulholland Drive, you know the pleasure which being confused can bring.  Where is that confounded plot?  Yes, that is exactly what can happen here if you are not paying strict attention.  This film is notorious for being convoluted.  Perhaps the assertion is unfair.  Unlike Finnegans Wake, there is actually a plot (complete with characters) here, yet you must hold on tight to come out with any specific sense of what has just transpired.

In some ways The Big Sleep is similar to Hitchcock’s Vertigo in that both films seem to be buoyed along primarily by their mood and tone.  Whether it was specifically the doing of Faulkner (one of three screenwriters here) or not, the dialogue is perhaps the best ever written.  Inextricable from the razor-sharp repartee are the talents of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.  An underappreciated addition to this grand concoction of Howard Hawks is the contribution of Martha Vickers.  This was perhaps the only significant film role of her acting career (which also included television), but it is one for the ages!

Bogart, for his part, is stellar in his versatility.  His “undercover” stint at Geiger’s book shop is hilarious!  Dorothy Malone has a short-yet-incendiary part as the proprietress of Acme Bookstore.  She would go on to win an Oscar for best supporting actress by way of Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind (1956).  Even as late as 1992 she was making an impact on the film world (in Basic Instinct).

But it is Bogart who gives one of his greatest performances as the truth-seeking, street-smart Philip Marlowe.  Passion drives Marlowe to “soldier on” just as much as justice.  Bogart is the supreme example of insubordination gone right.  His fierce independence is infused into the character of Marlowe to stunning effect.  Bogart won’t quit.  Howard Hawks makes the whole thing seem real by having Marlowe shake with fear near the climax.  All we needed was a glimpse of his humanity to truly appreciate the insouciant superman we’ve been following.

-PD

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The Manxman [1929)

The Isle of Man has two movie theaters as of 2014.  Alfred Hitchcock’s last silent film was set on this little island between Great Britain and Ireland (though it was actually filmed in Cornwall).  It’s amazing how much a director can improve in one year.  The previous year had seen the release of Hitchcock’s dull “rom-com” The Farmer’s Wife.  Truth be told:  The Manxman is just a much better story.

In simplest terms, it is the drama of two men (best friends) in love with the same girl.  She’s in love with one of them, but unfortunately not the one she ends up marrying.  The whole thing bears a striking resemblance in tone to Ingmar Bergman’s Summer with Monika (1953).  In fact, the more general mood of the film might be successfully compared to Bergman and Dreyer (a Swede and Dane respectively).  This is not going against the history of The Isle of Man.  The Norse began settling on the isle in the 9th century.  The island’s history is tied not only to Norway, but also the Hebrides civilization.

More importantly, the dramatic material is simply much more suited to what would become Hitchcock’s signature style.  The girl (played by Anny Ondra) throws herself off the quayside in a suicide attempt.  She is not successful.  The viewer familiar with Vertigo might rightly snap to Kim Novak plunging into San Francisco Bay (and warming herself in Jimmy Stewart’s apartment after failing to drown herself).

The dénouement comes when Ondra stands before a deemster (name for judge on Isle of Man) for the crime of attempted suicide.  The judge just so happens to be the man she loves (and it’s his first day on the job!).  The courtroom drama nicely anticipates an underappreciated Hitchcock gem starring Alida Valli called The Paradine Case (1947).  Our film ends up in a bizarre admission by the deemster that he is not fit for the bench owing to his surreptitious dealings with Ondra.

The Manxman in question (played by Carl Brisson) is left to deal with the heartbreak of having been tricked from marriage to fatherhood and beyond.  We end up feeling pity for him, but for most of the film we sympathize with the star-crossed lovers (Ondra and Malcolm Keen).  Keen’s surname in the film is Christian (Philip Christian) and we see him struggle with his situation in a way that today might be termed quaint.  Max Weber might call it the Protestant love ethic.

In closing, this film is definitely worth watching.  There is particular anguish and tension (artfully conveyed) in the child custody scene.  Hitchcock’s ingenuity starts coming to the fore in his final experiment with silence.

-PD

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Vertigo [1958)

Lovesick.  To know love is to know vertigo.  The great French composer Olivier Messiaen described love as a dizzy feeling (I paraphrase).   To quote the great Bob Dylan from his best album (1997’s Time Out of Mind), “I’m sick of love.”

When I first saw Vertigo I didn’t particularly like it.  I was a neophyte cineaste and I suppose it went over my head.  Indeed, the film did not really click for me until I saw a 70mm restored print as part of the Paramount Theater’s summer film series in Austin, Texas some years back.  I finally began to appreciate the cinematography of Robert Burks…the way the city of San Francisco comes to life in front of the lens he shared with Hitchcock.  As a rather naïve film lover I had once seen Life Is Beautiful several times in the theater upon its release and there was something in the mise-en-scène which gave me a wonderful, cozy, rich feeling…an ambiance which I drank in with each successive viewing.  It is this aspect of film (mood) which really makes Vertigo go.

Bernard Herrmann’s music was never more important to a Hitchcock film than to the one at hand.  The whole production almost becomes a music video during Scottie’s initial trailing of Madeleine.  There is not a word of dialogue from the flower shop to the cemetery to the art museum.  I will not regale you with scholarly milliseconds, but I’m willing to guess that approximately five whole minutes go by completely buoyed by the photography of Burks and the music of Herrmann (all, of course, framed by the voyeuristic passage in our story…and all, likewise, under the watchful eye-of-eyes:  Hitch).

Suffice it to say that I now recognize this to be one of Hitchcock’s best films (if not the best) and therefore one of the best films ever made by any director.  Alfred Hitchcock seems to me as the Beethoven of cinema, but he might just as well be the Bach.  Of other analogies he might be considered our Rembrandt…and almost certainly our Shakespeare.

And so it is that the main protagonist in Vertigo is mood.  What mood?  Which?  Not just any, is it?  It is the mood of Tristan und Isolde…Wagner…that painful longing for love.  Bernard Herrmann borrowed nicely from old Richard in the rich, autumnal, self-consuming harmonies.  Other times, by the sea for instance, we are brought into the sphere of La mer by Debussy.  Whether at Fort Point or floating down endless San Francisco automobile inclines, the weightlessness is also reminiscent of the same composer’s Pelléas et Mélisande.  Herrmann even seems to reference Ravel in the pensive motif which seems like Carlotta’s Iberian clock (ticking to bolero snaps of the second hand).

Yes, Vertigo is a film which will send critics into an orgiastic dither from now till the end of time (I suppose).  My contribution is simple.  Watch it.  Then watch it again.  And then watch it yet again.  There are secrets in this tapestry.  It is pure mystery.

-PD

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To Catch A Thief [1955)

The first time I saw To Catch A Thief I was not overly impressed.  Seemed like simply a 106 minute postcard, but oh how wrong I was.  This is another Hitchcock masterpiece and, if not Vertigo-caliber, it should at least be considered in the same league as Alfred’s own excellent remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).

The whole gang’s here…  Cinematography by Robert Burks, editing by George Tomasini, music by…ok, not the whole gang…but most of them.

Grace Kelly is simply stunning.  When she first kisses Cary Grant, it is almost a heart-stopping moment–bursting with elegant sexuality.  Grant, for his part, was never better for Hitchcock (outside of North by Northwest).  And if the colors of mourning (to paraphrase Godard) made Notorious (1946) a less-than-vivid depiction of Rio de Janeiro, all sins are forgiven in this VistaVision take (breathtaking) on the French Riviera.  I can’t let those poseurs at Cannes have all the fun this week 🙂  I am home studying.  This is your dossier.  And there was only one film worth seeing this year anyway:  Adieu au langage.

Brigitte Auber gives a nice performance as the snotty enfant terrible and, though she herself is a pretty sight, Grace Kelly never looked better on film than in the “fireworks and diamonds” section of our film.  Indeed, Hitch knew the power of the Kuleshov effect as well as anyone and the cinematic intercutting of this scene places him with the greats of film editing like Eisenstein (though let’s not forget Tomasini…the credited editor).

Perhaps there is no stronger tie among Hitchcock films to la Nouvelle Vague than this panoramic view dans le Midi–especially to Truffaut (considering his book on Hitchcock…though it didn’t appear till 1967).  The fact that this film contains so much spoken French (sans subtitles) makes it unique in the director’s canon.  Grace Kelly herself would marry Prince Rainier III of Monaco not but eight months after the premiere and retire from filmmaking in her new role as the Monégasque Princess Grace.

Edith Head’s costumes were never more perfectly worn than by Miss Kelly (especially the white gown against her honeyed skin in the fireworks scene).

Most of all, this film should be considered among the essential Hitchcock along with the three perfect films (Rear Window, Vertigo and North by Northwest) [not forgetting the parallel perfection of Psycho].  Most, if not all, the secrets of filmmaking are contained in the work of cinema’s Beethoven:  Alfred Hitchcock.

 

-PD

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