USA
3.5*
Director:
Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriters:
Alec Coppel
Samuel A. Taylor
Director of Photography:
Robert Burks
Running time: 128 minutes
I’ve always considered Vertigo to be one of those acclaimed works of art that are accessible and even enjoyable from a distance, like James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, but if you try to approach them from the beginning and have an immersive experience, the effect is often frustration.
I understand the film. It is about obsession. But Hitchcock doesn’t approach his material with the intention of having us share the experience of the main character, Scottie, and obsessing with him; rather, he chooses to subtly warn us of the dangers that lie ahead if Scottie stubbornly proceeds along this path. We know that things won’t end well, because the whole atmosphere of the film is indicative of this inevitability.
Now, I realise that many viewers would disapprove of my slight dissing of one of Hitchcock’s best-known films, a film that even managed to reach the No. 2 spot on the coveted Critics’ Top 10 Poll of the British film magazine, Sight and Sound, in 2002, but let me tell you why the film doesn’t work for me.
In this film about obsession and illusion, Hitchcock’s primary concern should have been the viewer’s identification with Scottie, played by Jimmy Stewart, including his point of view. Unfortunately, the issue of point of view is the film’s big flaw.
Consider the following scenes and the shots out of which they consist:
1) The famous restaurant scene, where Scottie sees Madeleine for the first time. He is seated at the bar and looks to his far right, where Madeleine is seated at a table, her back turned towards him. Hitchcock introduces Madeleine by first focusing on Scottie, then panning to her and physically tracking in onto her. This shot is intercut with a shot of Scottie at the bar, followed by his point of view – a shot that contains Madeleine, filmed from his position. Later in the scene, when Madeleine leaves the restaurant, she pauses behind Scottie, whose face is turned away from her. Her face is framed from the side, we only see the right side of her face against the red backdrop of the wall behind her, but Scottie doesn’t see anything.
2) In the moments before Madeleine’s apparent suicide, Scottie runs after her. At first, he looks up at the Mission’s bell tower and we get a shot that we perceive to be his point of view. Madeleine runs into the church, followed by Scottie. There is a chase up the staircase, but Scottie looks down and is struck by his acrophobia (vertigo). Madeleine leaves through a trapdoor at the top and we see her, through an opening in the wall, falling back down to earth, having supposedly jumped to her death.
The first scene, as I described it, is mostly from an external perspective, except for the one or two brief shots taken from Scottie’s position at the bar, which may be labelled his point-of-view shots. But in a later scene in Scottie’s car, he flips through the museum catalogue and while looking at the painting of Carlotta Valdes, there is a flash, very clearly meant to be subjective, of Madeleine’s face as she stood behind him. This shot is impossible since he could not witness this particular image, having had his face turned away when it happened.
After Scottie’s first visit to Judy, the actress who played Madeleine, Judy, has a flashback to the events at the Mission. She “sees” the same shot that we had attributed to Scottie, namely the bell tower, and there are other external shots that seem altogether inappropriate in a flashback scene that ultimately ought to be very subjective.
Hitchcock’s failure to orientate his film successfully with regard to its presentation of perspective creates fluidity that does not allow the viewer to align himself/herself with the character of Scottie. However, one scene that is successful in this respect is the scene at the cemetery, in which Hitchcock often intercuts a lateral tracking shot, meant to indicate Scottie’s trajectory, with a reverse tracking shot that frames Scottie himself moving forward, towards us.
The film’s obsession with power and death, especially towards the end of the story, becomes a bit tedious, and while Scottie’s intentions are quite clear (he wants to get the woman back whom he loved and for whose death he feels responsible – even though he’s not responsible and calling their relationship “love” is a bit grand), Judy seems masochistically determined to endure Scottie’s near-abusive behaviour when he restricts her choices in clothes, hairstyles, and so on. This aspect of the film alienates the viewer from both characters because the idea of “conditional love” is very unappealing.
I found one particular scene’s editing frustratingly bad, namely the scene in which Scottie, in his car, pursues Madeleine’s car through San Francisco. There is a very clear lack of continuity from one shot to the next and generally feels like a choppy editing job, with the car turning in one direction while the driver is clearly turning the steering wheel in the opposite direction. Jimmy Stewart has a less pathetic character than in many of his other films, but he still seems to be one step behind the viewer. Also, being a former policeman, Scottie should be able to follow someone (in the cemetery, in an art museum) without being spotted. But the only reason he didn’t seem to be spotted is that Madeleine/Judy knew he was there and pretended not to notice. Such bad tailing diminished his value as a character in my eyes.
But the film will be praised for its meticulous attention to detail, and the choice of colour (in particular, the various traces of green) the film is beyond reproach. My favourite scene, in terms of the character’s interaction with the soundtrack, is the scene with the sequoias: Bernard Herrman’s music is almost distressingly calm and quiet, even though Scottie is aggressively interrogating Madeleine. But in a film of this kind, dealing with real and illusory psychological problems, his music is at times unnecessarily loud and screeching – just consider the moment when Madeleine leaps into San Francisco Bay.
Vertigo is cold and analytical; a more immersive approach would have suited the material better, especially as a film. Kim Novak is wonderful, and the design of the film is well-chosen (the many instances of rear projection may be read as another hint at the real/illusory dichotomy of Madeleine’s character). But it is far less enjoyable than Hitchcock’s other great films, and for me, Vertigo will always be more of a cerebral joy than an engaging work of fiction.