Reviewing my top 5 Movies of all Time
Day 5 – Vertigo
Thanks for reading the top 5 list of
favorite films. Obviously every critic
and every person has their own top 5 list.
There is no magical thing that makes your list better than any others, as
each person has their own set of standards.
But for those who consider Keanu Reeves to be a top 5 actor, all I can
say to them is: “I hate you! I hate you!
I hate you!” We all have reasons for why we choose one picture to be better
than another. There are the sci/fi geeks
who insist that 2001 : A Space Odyssey
be on the best films of all time. While
I think it is an amazing film, it lacks the ability to maintain its brilliance
across platforms, and the acting in a good deal of it, in my humble or not so
humble opinion, is really dull. And to
be honest, with some rare exceptions, many of Kubrick’s films seem to have
characters that walk around lifeless.
2001 exists as an extreme example of lifeless characterizations for
me. There are those who will argue with
my last pick, insisting that Hitchcock has directed better films, or even that
if I am going to pick brilliant directors of the last half century, I should be
picking a film of Howard Hawks because he seemed to be able to adapt to
whatever genre he was directing, putting together a compendium of work that was
amazing in every single genre and not merely in one. And if we were discussing my top 5 favorite
directors of all time I might see the point of that argument.
But I am looking at my top 5 films. Some of you may say that the films on my list
are skewed towards the classic genre.
Well I grew up a huge classic movie fan, so: “duh!” Classic films existed in a time where less
was more (something today's Hollywood directors should take into
consideration). They knew how to tell a
story and infer things for much greater impact.
Now films shoot for being all about experience and little about
story. It’s sad that the best stories in
film now are often cartoons because they exist with the same limitations that
the Hayes code placed on cinema in working with that medium. They have to develop their stories. But that doesn’t mean that you have to
believe that. I am totally ok with all
of the disagreement. In fact, I
encourage it.
Given these reasons I culminate my list of
top 5 films with a Hitchcock classic: Vertigo. Hitchcock ranks up there as one of the best
directors of all time. He is as an
auteur. His films had a uniqueness about
them that made them distinctly Hitchcock.
When anyone watches a Hitchcock film, they know that they are watching
such a film. Given my affinity for
Hitchcock and feeling like one of his films had to be up here on the list, I
started thinking about what was the quintessential Hitchcock film. He had his suspense movies like Rear Window, Rebecca and North by
Northwest. He had his horror films
like Frenzy and Psycho. And then he had his
forays into comedy like The Trouble with
Harry. So I had to make a rational
choice. I eliminated the comedies;
because while fun, they were generally not what one would think of when they
thought of Hitchcock. Certainly we see
him as a master of suspense and I could go with that but I landed on Vertigo because I think it perfectly
blended elements of horror which would be a hallmark of his later films, with
that which was merely suspenseful.
Vertigo begins with a detective named Jimmy (James Stewart), up on the
rooftops of San Francisco, chasing after a criminal. While up there he doesn’t quite make a ledge
and ends up holding on to the edge of a building for dear life. When a fellow police officer tries to help
him out he ends up falling to his death.
This shock sends Jimmy into a panic and making him realize that he has
acrophobia. This phobia produces in him
vertigo, or a dizziness that is produced by the heights to which he has a hard
time handling. He is forced to retire
because of his condition, and tries to figure out what to do with his
life. His ex-fiancée tries to help him
out, but fears that only another shock would produce the kind of circumstances
to conquer his fear.
At that point an old friend steps in, Gavin
Elster (Tom Helmore), asks him to tail his wife because he is concerned that
she is going to do something drastic to herself, because she is being haunted
by some distant family member called Carlotta Valdes. While skeptical, Jimmy tails Madeleine Elster
(Kim Novak) to make sure that she does not do anything drastic to herself. But he cannot help but get involved the more
he tails her, and they end up making a connection and falling for one
another. But Madeleine appears driven to
do something outrageous to herself, and she climbs to the highest tower of
mission San Juan Batista and jumps to her death. Jimmy tried to tail her to the top of the
tower but his acrophobia and vertigo prevented him from reaching there and
stopping her. He walks away from the
incident in a daze, not even calling the police. The investigation rules it as a suicide,
although with some culpability making its way to Jimmy.
Jimmy goes into a tailspin and enters a
psych ward because he is unable to cope with the loss of Madeleine. We enter his world of vertigo, wherein he
constantly feels like he spirals to his death.
His ex-fiancée tries to help him through this once again but she is
rebuffed. When he does exit the mental
hospital he roams about the city listlessly.
He was unable to do his job as a policeman; and he couldn’t even do work
as a detective. His life seems to be a
spiral downwards when he runs into Judy Barton, also played terrifically by Kim
Novak. In her he sees the image of the
woman he had loved and lost. It begins
like this is some form of redemption for Jimmy, but slowly the realization
creeps in about the true depths to which his mind has sunk. All one can do is sit back in horror as Jimmy
transforms this beautiful woman into the image of Madeleine. First there is the clothes, and then the eyes
and makeup, followed by the hair. A long
360 degree pan and kiss transforms the beautiful Judy Barton, into the image of
Madeleine Elster. And Jimmy sits and
stares with a wild look in his eye as his masterpiece in transformation is
complete. Nothing good can come from
this, and there is the inevitable tragic result, which I will not divulge here for those uninitiated in Vertigo.
In Vertigo, like other Hitchcock films, there are elements that make them unmistakably his.
The first is the MacGuffin.
Hitchcock meant that this was some form of plot device that would drive
the story forward. In this instance we
have Jimmy’s Vertigo that makes him seek other work, which makes him incapable
of helping Madeleine, and which he was driven to fixing by the end of the
film. The second is the use of the
innocent man. In his early work there
was always some innocent man who was sucked into some plot that he couldn’t
escape until he worked it all out by the end.
The thing that makes Vertigo
so unique in the Hitchcock cannon is that we do have the innocent man, although
as the film goes on, we are less and less convinced of his innocence. He seems to be more warped than any other
person that is around him. His maniacal
glances in mirrors, his drive to change Judy into something she was not, and
the ultimate conclusion to the madness does not indicate that Jimmy is innocent
at all. One cannot be sure what to think
of him by the final frame in the film.
And while things do resolve themselves for Jimmy, we are not necessarily
able to wrap up everything in a nice package by the end. It’s classic Hitchcock, with a twist.
After The
Wrong Man, when considering his next film, he saw the movie Les Diaboliques. As a result, Hitchcock
was keen on filming something that was written by the French writing team of Pierre
Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. He made
sure that he got an option on the work D'entre les morts (From Among the Dead). From there he took it to four different
writers, although the final credits were given to Alec Coppel and Samuel
Taylor. In each of the instances he had to be familiar with whoever the writer
was, because despite whatever they put down in a screenplay, Hitchcock was
going to make something that was quintessentially him. He storyboarded every shot that he was going
to take and would be intimately involved with every detail of the
shooting. Hitchcock had to approve
whatever was being written, and the first draft of the screenplay Hitchcock felt
was so bad that he requested that it be burned.
Whoever got final credit for the film or not, every frame of Vertigo screams Hitchcock.
As far as the acting in the piece, we have
the incomparable James Stewart. Some
actors hated Hitchcock because they felt like he would treat them like
cattle. James Stewart did not seem to be
among them. This is one of four pieces
he would make with Hitchcock, including Rope, Rear Window and a remake of The
Man Who Knew Too Much. While he was not necessarily the first actor that would
be considered for the role (some believe that Cary Grant was Hitchcock’s first
choice), one cannot envisage another person playing the role.
James Stewart, when he began his career in
the Hollywood system would be found in mostly comedies and romances, with the
occasional forays into drama. Although
for those of you who remember his brief but humorous take as a murderer in After the Thin Man with William Powell
and Myrna Loy, I applaud your dedication to film history. Even in a movie like Destry Rides Again, an early western, we see Stewart as a kind of
every-man who we can relate to. By the
time he had come back from being involved in World War II his films would take
a decidedly darker turn. After the war,
with maybe the exception of It’s a
Wonderful Life, Stewart wanted to broaden the roles he would take. He had his first Hitchcock film, Rope (1948), loosely based on a famous
murder case. And beginning in 1950 with Winchester 73, Stewart did a series of
westerns where he was hard-nosed and world weary. So by the time Vertigo came along in the late 50s,
Stewart had broadened the roles and his appeal as an actor.
With Vertigo,
Stewart was going to have to take all of that one step further. In this instance he had to straddle the line
between light and dark. We had to relate
to him in some way, because he needed to be Hitchcock’s every-man who was sucked
into the darkness. But this was
different. He not only needed to be
sucked into the darkness, but it needed to change him. He could love and lose, but then he needed to
be brought right over the edge, and the audience needed to walk there with
him. The audience needed to sense his
profound loss and the transforming effect that it would have on his character,
such that when Jimmy meets Judy and begins to transform her, there needs to be
the sense of understanding, and yet revulsion all at the same time. It is this descent into madness that
Hitchcock would fully explore two years later in his classic horror
masterpiece, Psycho. Stewart’s sensitive portrayal of Jimmy brings
us just that, from connection to disconnect right until the very last frame.
The other essential role in the film is
played by Kim Novak. Novak had begun her
career earlier in the 50s, successfully playing opposite some older men while
only being 21 when she started. Her
breakout role would come in 1955’s Picnic,
opposite William Holden. As Madge Owens,
Novak would play an innocent woman who would be taken in by the charms of a
drifter. She exuded both and innocence
and a sexuality that would be prominently featured in Vertigo. As a result of the
success of Picnic, Hitchcock and Stewart felt like she would be a big draw for
the film. There are rumors that first
Hitchcock wanted Grace Kelly, who we had worked with to great success earlier
in To Catch a Thief and Rear Window. Ultimately they cast Vera Miles in the role
but film delays, and possibly not feeling like she was right for the role, made
it so they needed to recast. They chose
Novak and the rest is history.
Novak brilliantly navigates the dual roles
that she plays. In Madeleine Elster she
plays the young wife of the older ship owner, who we could believe that Jimmy’s
character could fall for. While friends
with the husband, it is obviously a friendship from an earlier time. And the wife seems to exist to Mr. Elster
more as property and less as intimate partners.
She excellent plays the wife caught up in the whirlwind of the ghost who
would drive her to the edge, yet a woman of sophistication and charm. She would then have to take on the role as
Judy, the carefree shop girl who would be dragged into the darker machinations
of Jimmy’s mental illness. She is
obviously in love, and obviously conflicted and in pain by it all. She is innocence and charm, with a touch of
manipulation buried within.
While there are several character actors of
note, there is nothing that drives a Hitchcock film more than Hitchcock
himself. And while this may be on
display in the script, I think that it is better seen in the visuals, and in
the choice in shot selection. Robert
Berks was the cinematographer of the movie and definitely followed the dictates
of a classic Hitchcock piece. The one
addition to this movie I believe is in the softening of the tones in all of the
movie. Everything seems to exist in an
otherworldly dream state. Once the
character of Jimmy has been reduced to an acrophobic, things descend into a
dreamlike quality. The sumptuous beautiful
settings in San Francisco, the dreamy Sequoia forest with all of the huge trees,
and the haunting nightmare of the mission are shot in all in soft focus such
that one can question whether or not the whole escape was into a nightmare of
his own personal making. It is done to
beautiful effect.
But the piece itself, as previously
described, exemplifies everything Hitchcock.
From the MacGuffin to the everyman, the audience is drawn into the
story, just as Hitchcock would place himself in the middle of every one of his
stories in some shot. But the camera
angles and individual shot selection is where one cannot escape his
mastery. From his use of wide angle lens
to create visual asymmetry to his over the shoulder shots that give a distorted
viewpoint to his amazing 360 degree kiss where we are sucked into both the
transformation of Judy in Madeleine and nightmarishly drawn into Jimmy’s
distorted psyche. Vertigo displays Hitchcock’s masterful ability to tell a
story. And every moment is a sumptuous
delight.
Why do I love Vertigo? I love it because
it is a masterpiece of filmmaking. I
love the visuals; and despite being disturbed by the story, I am equally moved
by the portrayal of the characters drawn into this dark situation. And whether we are treated to an angel or
death at the end of the story, we are in for a treat all along the way. Is the ending happy? Is it sad?
Is it triumphant? Who is to say? But it’s worth the watch, again and
again. You can pick out something new
every time you watch it. This is what
makes Vertigo such a great movie and
why it rounds out my top 5.
What should be the order of my top 5? Who is to say? It changes from day to day. But I keep landing on these films and wanting
to revisit them like they are old friends.
If you haven’t seen any of them, or the conversation makes you feel like
you need to take another look, please do.
Hope you enjoyed the top 5 list and please comment. After every film, or comment on the series of
five films as a whole. List your top 5
and join the discussion.
Vertigo – This film is perfectly Toasty
Five Stars
Up next . . . unless I get some new votes
for the movie I will be reviewing, Kubo.
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