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Vertigo (film)

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Vertigo
Original poster by Saul Bass
Directed byAlfred Hitchcock
Screenplay byAlec Coppel
Samuel A. Taylor
Produced byAlfred Hitchcock
StarringJames Stewart
Kim Novak
Barbara Bel Geddes
CinematographyRobert Burks
Edited byGeorge Tomasini
Music byBernard Herrmann
Distributed byParamount Pictures
(Original)
Universal Pictures
(Current)
Release date
  • May 9, 1958 (1958-05-09)
Running time
128 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$2,479,000
Box office$14,000,000 (United States)[1]

Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1954 novel D'entre les morts by Boileau-Narcejac. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor.

The film stars James Stewart as former police detective John "Scottie" Ferguson, who has been forced into early retirement due to disabilities (vertigo and clinical depression) incurred in the line of duty. Scottie is hired as a private investigator to follow a woman, Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak) who is behaving peculiarly.

The film was shot on location in San Francisco, California, and at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. It popularized the dolly zoom, an in-camera effect that distorts perspective to create disorientation, to convey Scottie's acrophobia. As a result of its use here, the effect is often referred to as "the Vertigo effect".

The film received mixed reviews upon initial release, but has garnered acclaim since and is now often cited as a classic Hitchcock film and one of the defining works of his career. Attracting significant scholarly criticism, it replaced Citizen Kane as the best film of all time in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll[2] and has appeared repeatedly in best film polls by the American Film Institute.[3] In 1996, Vertigo underwent a major restoration to create a new 70mm print and DTS soundtrack.

Plot

After a rooftop chase in which his latent acrophobia results in the death of a police officer, San Francisco detective John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart) retires, spending much of his time with his ex-fiancée Midge Wood (Barbara Bel Geddes). Scottie tries to gradually conquer his fear but Midge suggests another severe emotional shock may be the only cure.

An acquaintance, Gavin Elster, asks Scottie to tail his wife, Madeleine, claiming she has been possessed; Scottie reluctantly agrees. The next day Scottie follows Madeleine to a florist where she secures a bouquet of flowers; next, she visits the grave of Carlotta Valdes; then she visits an art museum where she sits watching Portrait of Carlotta, a painting of a woman resembling her. Lastly, she enters the McKittrick Hotel, but when Scottie investigates, she is missing and the clerk insists she has not been there.

Midge takes Scottie to a local history expert, who informs them Carlotta Valdes tragically committed suicide. Another visit with Gavin reveals Carlotta is Madeleine's great-grandmother, whom Gavin fears is possessing Madeleine. Gavin also says Madeleine has no knowledge of Carlotta. Scottie tails Madeleine to Fort Point (just beneath the Golden Gate Bridge), where she suddenly leaps into San Francisco Bay. Scottie rescues Madeleine and takes her to his home. The meeting is tense and leads to a strange intimacy between them, but Madeleine quickly slips out when Scottie receives a phone call.

The next day Scottie follows Madeleine to his own house, where she is hand-delivering a thank-you note to him for rescuing her, and they decide to spend the day together because Scottie fears Madeleine might attempt suicide again. The two travel to Muir Woods and then Cypress Point along 17-Mile Drive near Pebble Beach, where Madeleine, embarrassed from confessing that her dreams sound mad, runs to the ocean. Scottie chases after her and they embrace and kiss. Upon hearing the details of her nightmare, Scottie identifies the setting as Mission San Juan Bautista and takes Madeleine there, where they proclaim their love for each other. Madeleine suddenly runs into the church and up the bell tower. Scottie, halted on the steps by vertigo and paralyzing fear, watches as Madeleine plunges to her death.

An inquest declares Madeleine's death a suicide, but Scottie feels ashamed that his weakness rendered him incapable of preventing someone's death. Gavin does not fault Scottie, but in the following weeks Scottie becomes depressed. While undergoing treatment in a sanatorium, he becomes mute, haunted by vivid nightmares. Although Midge visits, his condition remains unchanged. After release, Scottie haunts the places that Madeleine visited, often imagining that he sees her. One day, he spots a woman who reminds him of Madeleine, despite the woman's less elegant dress and heavier makeup. Scottie follows the woman to her hotel room, where she identifies herself as Judy Barton from Kansas. Though initially suspicious and defensive, Judy eventually agrees to join Scottie for dinner.

After Scottie leaves, Judy has a flashback revealing that she was, in fact, the woman known as "Madeleine", but she is not Gavin's wife. Judy prepares to leave and writes a confession letter to Scottie explaining that she was an accomplice to the real Madeleine Elster's murder by Gavin, and how Gavin had taken advantage of Scottie's acrophobia. She rips up the letter and decides to continue the charade because of her love for Scottie.

Scottie remains obsessed by his memory of "Madeleine" and their similarities. He transforms an initially unwilling Judy until she once more resembles Madeleine. Judy agrees to change on the chance that they may finally find happiness together. But Scottie realizes the truth when Judy wears a unique necklace that he remembered from the portrait of Carlotta Valdes. Instead of dinner, Scottie insists on taking Judy to the Mission San Juan Bautista.

There, he reveals that he wants to re-enact the event that led to his madness, admitting that he now knows Madeleine and Judy are the same. Scottie forces her up the bell tower and angrily presses Judy to admit her deceit. Scottie reaches the top, conquering his acrophobia at last. Judy confesses that Gavin had hired her to pose as a possessed Madeleine; Gavin faked the suicide by tossing the body of his already-murdered wife from the bell tower.

Judy begs Scottie to forgive her because she loves him. The two embrace when a nun, in shadow, emerges from the trapdoor; startled, Judy steps backward and falls to her death. Scottie stands on the narrow ledge while the nun rings the mission bell.

Cast

Production

Development

Kim Novak and James Stewart

The screenplay is an adaptation of the French novel The Living and the Dead (D'entre les morts) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Hitchcock had previously tried to buy the rights to the same authors' previous novel, Celle qui n'était plus, but he failed, and it was made instead by Henri-Georges Clouzot as Les Diaboliques.[4] Although François Truffaut once suggested that D'Entre les morts was specifically written for Hitchcock by Boileau and Narcejac,[5] Narcejac subsequently denied that this was their intention.[6] However, Hitchcock's interest in their work meant that Paramount Pictures commissioned a synopsis of D'Entre les morts in 1954, before it had even been translated into English.[7]

Hitchcock originally hired playwright Maxwell Anderson to write a screenplay, but rejected his work, which was entitled Darkling, I Listen (a quotation from Keats's Ode to a Nightingale). A second version, written by Alec Coppel, again dissatisfied the director.[8] The final script was written by Samuel A. Taylor — who was recommended to Hitchcock due to his knowledge of San Francisco —[7] from notes by Hitchcock. Among Taylor's creations was the character of Midge.[9] Taylor attempted to take sole credit for the screenplay, but Coppel protested to the Screen Writers Guild, which determined that both writers were entitled to a credit.[10]

Kim Novak as Madeleine

Vera Miles, who was under personal contract to Hitchcock and had appeared on both his television show and in his film The Wrong Man, was originally scheduled to play Madeline. She modelled for an early version of the painting which features in the film.[8] Following delays, including Hitchcock becoming ill with gallbladder problems, Miles became pregnant so had to withdraw from the role.[8] The director declined to postpone shooting and cast Kim Novak as the female lead. Ironically, by the time Novak had tied up prior film commitments and a vacation promised by Columbia Pictures, the studio that held her contract, Miles had given birth and was available for the film. Hitchcock proceeded with Novak, nevertheless. Columbia head Harry Cohn agreed to lend Novak to Vertigo if Stewart would agree to co-star with Novak in Bell, Book and Candle, a Columbia production released in December 1958.

In the book, Judy's involvement in Madeleine's death was not revealed until the denoument. At the script stage, Hitchcock suggested revealing the secret two-thirds of the way through the film so that the audience would understand Judy's mental dilemma.[11] After the first preview, Hitchcock was unsure whether to keep the "letter writing scene" or not. He decided to remove it. Herbert Coleman, Vertigo's associate producer and a frequent collaborator with Hitchcock, felt the removal was a mistake. However, Hitchcock said "Release it just like that." James Stewart agreed with Hitchcock and said to Coleman: "Herbie, you shouldn't get so upset with Hitch. The picture's not that important." Hitchcock's decision was supported by Joan Harrison, another member of his circle, who felt that the film had been improved. Coleman reluctantly made the necessary edits. When he received news of this, Paramount head Barney Balaban was very vocal about the edits and ordered Hitchcock to "Put the picture back the way it was." As a result, the "letter writing scene" remained in the final film.[12]

Filming

Vertigo was filmed from September to December 1957.[13] Principal photography began on location in San Francisco in September 1957 under the working title From Among the Dead.[8] In the driving scenes shot in the city, the main characters' cars are almost always pictured heading down the city's steeply inclined streets.[13]

The scene in which Madeleine falls from the tower was filmed at Mission San Juan Bautista

The scene in which Madeleine falls from the tower was filmed at Mission San Juan Bautista, a Spanish mission in San Juan Bautista, California. Associate producer Herbert Coleman's daughter Judy Lanini suggested the mission to Hitchcock as a filming location. A steeple, added sometime after the mission's original construction and secularization, had been demolished following a fire, so Hitchcock added a bell tower using scale models, matte paintings, and trick photography at the Paramount studio in Los Angeles.[8] The original tower was much smaller and less dramatic than the film's version. The tower's staircase was later assembled inside a studio.

Following 16 days of location shooting, the production moved to Paramount's studios in Hollywood for two months of filming.[8] Hitchcock preferred to film in studios as he was able to control the environment. Once sufficient location footage had been obtained, interior sets were designed and constructed in the studio.[8]

Hitchcock popularized the dolly zoom in this film, leading to the technique's sobriquet, amongst several others, "the Vertigo effect". This "dolly-out/zoom-in" method involves camera physically moving away from a subject whilst simultaneously zooming in[14] (a similar effect can be achieved in reverse), so that the subject retains its size in the frame, but the background's perspective changes.[15][16] Hitchcock used the effect to look down the tower shaft to emphasise its height and Scottie's disorientation.[17] Following difficulties filming the shot on a full-sized set, a model of the tower shaft was constructed, and the dolly zoom was filmed horizontally.[8]

Hitchcock and costume designer Edith Head used color to heighten emotion.[8] Grey was chosen for Madeline's suit because it is not usually a blonde's colour, so was psychologically jarring.[8] In contrast, Novak's character wore a white coat when she visited Scottie's apartment, which Head and Hitchcock considered more natural for a blonde to wear.[8]

Alternate ending

A coda to the film was shot that showed Midge listening to a radio report describing the pursuit of Gavin Elster across Europe. When Scottie enters, she switches the radio off. They share a drink and look out of the window in silence. Contrary to reports that this scene was filmed to meet foreign censorship needs,[18] this tag ending had originally been demanded by Geoffrey Shurlock of the U.S. Production Code Administration, who had noted: "It will, of course, be most important that the indication that Elster will be brought back for trial is sufficiently emphasized." Hitchcock finally succeeded in fending off most of Shurlock's demands (which included toning down erotic allusions) and had the tag ending dropped.[7] It is included as an extra on the Laserdisc and the 2008 DVD release, but therein lies an in-joke, for the film's restorers Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz can clearly be heard as the announcers on the radio during the 90 seconds tag.[citation needed]

Various internet sources state that this longer version was actually shown in British cinemas,[citation needed] where Vertigo was passed by the British Board of Film Classification with a running time of 132 minutes.[19]

Music and titles

Main article: Vertigo (film score)

The score was written by Bernard Herrmann. It was not conducted by him, but was conducted by Muir Mathieson and recorded in Europe, due to a musicians' strike in the U.S.[20]

In a 2004 special issue of the British Film Institute's (BFI) magazine Sight & Sound, director Martin Scorsese described the qualities of Herrmann's famous score:

Hitchcock's film is about obsession, which means that it's about circling back to the same moment, again and again ... And the music is also built around spirals and circles, fulfilment and despair. Herrmann really understood what Hitchcock was going for — he wanted to penetrate to the heart of obsession.[20]

Graphic designer Saul Bass extracted Hitchcock's spiral motif as an image that appears during the film to convey, what the documentary Obsessed with Vertigo labels, "Vertigo's psychological vortex". The images features in the title sequence and on the poster.[8]

Filming locations

Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak), in Scottie's apartment.

Filmed from September to December 1957, Vertigo uses location footage of the San Francisco Bay Area, with its steep hills and tall, arching bridges. In the driving scenes shot in the city, the main characters' cars are almost always pictured heading down the city's steeply inclined streets.[13] In October 1996, the restored print of Vertigo debuted at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco with a live on-stage introduction by surviving cast member Kim Novak, providing the city a chance to celebrate itself.[21] Visiting the San Francisco film locations has something of a cult following as well as modest tourist appeal. Such a tour is featured in a subsection of Chris Marker's documentary montage Sans Soleil.

In March 1997, the cultural French magazine Les Inrockuptibles published a special issue titled Vertigo's about the film locations in San Francisco, Dans le décor, which lists and describes all actual locations.[22]

Areas that were shot on location (not recreated in a studio):[21]

  • Scottie's apartment (900 Lombard Street) is one block downhill from the "crookedest street in the world". Although the door has been repainted, the entrance is easily recognizable save for a few small changes to the patio. The doorbell and the mailbox, which Madeleine uses to deliver a note to Scottie, are exactly the same as they were in the film.
  • The Mission San Juan Bautista, where Madeleine falls from the tower, is a real place, but the tower had to be matted in with a painting using studio effects; Hitchcock had first visited the mission before the tower was torn down due to dry rot, and was reportedly displeased to find it missing when he returned to film his scenes. The original tower was much smaller and less dramatic than the film's version.
  • The Carlotta Valdes headstone featured in the film (created by the props department) was left at Mission Dolores. Eventually, the headstone was removed as the mission considered it disrespectful to the dead to house a tourist attraction grave for a fictional person. All other cemeteries in San Francisco were evicted from city limits in 1912, so the screenwriters had no other option but to locate the grave at Mission Dolores.
  • Madeleine jumps into the sea at Fort Point, underneath the Golden Gate Bridge.
  • The gallery where Carlotta's painting appears is the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. The Carlotta Valdes portrait was lost after being removed from the gallery, but many of the other paintings in the background of the portrait scenes are still on view.
  • Muir Woods National Monument is represented by Big Basin Redwoods State Park; however, the cutaway of the redwood tree showing its age is a replica of one that can still be found at Muir Woods. [clarification needed]
  • The coastal region where Scottie and Madeleine first kiss is Cypress Point, a location along the 17 Mile Drive near Pebble Beach. However, the lone tree by which they kiss is a prop brought specially to the location.[23]
  • The domed building past which Scottie and Judy walk is the Palace of Fine Arts.
  • Coit Tower appears in many background shots; Hitchcock once said that he included it as a phallic symbol.[24] Also prominent in the background is the tower of the San Francisco Ferry Building.
  • The exterior of the sanatorium where Scottie is treated was a real sanatorium, St. Joseph's Hospital, located at 355 Buena Vista East, across from Buena Vista Park. The complex has been converted into condominiums and the building, built in 1928, is on the National Register of Historic Places.
  • Gavin and Madeleine's apartment building is "The Brocklebank" at 1000 Mason Street on Nob Hill, which still looks essentially the same. It is across the street from the Fairmont Hotel, where Hitchcock usually stayed when he visited and where many of the cast and crew stayed during filming. Shots of the surrounding neighborhood feature the Flood Mansion and Grace Cathedral. Barely visible is the Mark Hopkins hotel, mentioned in an early scene in the movie.
  • The "McKittrick Hotel" was a privately owned Victorian mansion from the 1880s at Gough and Eddy Streets. It was torn down in 1959 and is now an athletic practice field for Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory School. The St. Paulus Lutheran Church, seen across from the mansion, was destroyed in a fire years later.
  • Podesta Baldocchi is the flower shop Madeleine visits as she is being followed by Scottie. The shop's location at the time of filming was 224 Grant Avenue. The Podesta Baldocchi flower shop now does business from a location at 410 Harriet Street.[25]
  • The Empire Hotel is a real place, called the York Hotel, and now (as of January 2009) the Hotel Vertigo at 940 Sutter Street. Judy's room was created, but the green neon of the "Hotel Empire" sign outside is based on the actual hotel's sign (it was replaced when the hotel was renamed).
  • Ernie's Restaurant (847 Montgomery St.) was a real place in North Beach, not far from Scottie's apartment. It is no longer operating.
  • One short scene shows Union Square at dawn, with old-fashioned "semaphore" traffic lights. Pop Leibl's bookstore, the Argosy, was not a real location, but one recreated on the Paramount lot in imitation of the real-life Argonaut Book Store, which still exists near Sutter and Jones.
  • One confusing difference from the movie and current San Francisco neighborhood designation is Elster's Mission District Shipping Company (the Mission being described as "Skid Row"). The Mission district of today is actually inland, and the designation of a Mission Bay neighborhood only occurred in the 1980s; today, the area including Mission Bay is referred to as South of Market (SoMA) At the time the designation Inner Mission or "South of the Slot" applied to the waterfront including its working piers located to the south of Market Street, encompassing today's Mission Bay and South Beach. In the 1950's the area south of Market was indeed skid row which is why it was torn down by redevelopment in the 1960s clearing the way for all the new shiny high-rises of today.

Reception

Contemporaneous reception

Vertigo premiered in San Francisco on May 9, 1958 at the Stage Door Theater at Mason and Geary (now the Ruby Skye nightclub).[26] While Vertigo did actually break even upon its original release,[27][28] earning $2.8 million in gross rental in the United States alone against its $2,479,000 cost,[29] it earned significantly less than other Hitchcock productions.[26] Reviews were mixed. Variety said the film showed Hitchcock's "mastery", but was too long and slow for "what is basically only a psychological murder mystery".[30] Similarly, the Los Angeles Times admired the scenery, but found the plot "too long" and felt it "bogs down" in "a maze of detail"; scholar Dan Aulier says that this review "sounded the tone that most popular critics would take with the film".[31] However, the Los Angeles Examiner loved it, admiring the "excitement, action, romance, glamor and [the] crazy, off-beat love story".[32] As well, New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther also gave Vertigo a positive review by explaining that "[the] secret [of the film] is so clever, even though it is devilishly far-fetched."[33]

Additional reasons for the mixed response initially were that Hitchcock fans were not pleased with his departure from the romantic-thriller territory of earlier films and that the mystery was solved with one-third of the film left to go.[34]

In an interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock stated that Vertigo was one of his favorite films, with some reservations.[35] Hitchcock blamed the film's failure on Stewart, at age 50, looking too old to play a convincing love interest for Kim Novak, who at 25 was half his age.[36]

Hitchcock and Stewart received awards at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, including a Silver Seashell for Best Director (tied with Mario Monicelli for I soliti ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street aka Persons Unknown) and Best Actor (also tied, with Kirk Douglas in The Vikings). The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, in the technical categories[37] Best Art Direction - Black-and-White or Color (Hal Pereira, Henry Bumstead, Samuel M. Comer, Frank McKelvy) and Best Sound (George Dutton).[38]

Re-evaluation

Judy at Scottie's apartment

In the 1950s, the French Cahiers du cinéma critics began re-evaluating Hitchcock as a serious artist rather than just a populist showman. However, even François Truffaut's important 1962 interviews with Hitchcock (not published in English until 1967) mention Vertigo only in passing. Dan Aulier has suggested that the real beginning of Vertigo's rise in adulation was the British-Canadian scholar Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films (1968), which calls the film "Hitchcock's masterpiece to date and one of the four or five most profound and beautiful films the cinema has yet given us".[39] Adding to its mystique was the fact that Vertigo was one of five films owned by Hitchcock which was removed from circulation in 1973. When Vertigo was re-released in theaters in October 1983, and then on home video in October 1984, it achieved an impressive commercial success and laudatory reviews.[40] Similarly adulatory reviews were written for the October 1996 showing of a restored print in 70mm and DTS sound at the Castro Theater in San Francisco.[41]

In 1989, Vertigo was recognized as a "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" film by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in the first year of the registry's voting. Currently on Rotten Tomatoes it has a "certified fresh" rating of 98%.

Among international film critics, the film has experienced a similar re-evaluation. Every ten years since 1952, the British Film Institute's film magazine Sight & Sound has asked the world’s leading film critics to compile a list of the 10 best films of all time. Not until 1982 did Vertigo enter the list, and then in 7th place.[42] By 1992 it had advanced to 4th place,[43] by 2002 to 2nd.[44] Vertigo was voted in first place in Sight & Sound's 2012 poll, displacing Orson Welles' Citizen Kane from the position it had occupied since 1962.[2][45] Commenting upon the 2012 results, the magazine's editor Nick James said that Vertigo was "the ultimate critics' film. It is a dream-like film about people who are not sure who they are but who are busy reconstructing themselves and each other to fit a kind of cinema ideal of the ideal soul-mate."[2]

In his 2004 book Blockbuster, however, British film critic Tom Shone suggested that Vertigo's critical re-evaluation has led to excessive praise, and argued for a more measured response. Faulting Sight & Sound for "perennially" putting the film on the list of best-ever films, he wrote that "Hitchcock is a director who delights in getting his plot mechanisms buffed up to a nice humming shine, and so the Sight and Sound team praise the one film of his in which this is not the case – it's all loose ends and lopsided angles, its plumbing out on display for the critic to pick over at his leisure."[46]

In 2005, Vertigo came in second (to Goodfellas) in British magazine Total Film's book 100 Greatest Movies of All Time.[47]

American Film Institute recognition

The San Francisco locations have become celebrated amongst the film's fans, with organised tours across the area.[49] In March 1997, the cultural French magazine Les Inrockuptibles published a special issue titled Vertigo's about the film locations in San Francisco, Dans le décor, which lists and describes all actual locations.[50] In October 1996, the restored print of Vertigo debuted at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco with a live on-stage introduction by Kim Novak, providing the city a chance to celebrate itself.[21]

Critics have interpreted it variously as “a tale of male aggression and visual control; as a map of female Oedipal trajectory; as a deconstruction of the male construction of femininity and of masculinity itself; as a stripping bare of the mechanisms of directorial, Hollywood studio and colonial oppression; and as a place where textual meanings play out in an infinite regress of self-reflexivity.”[51]

Home media

In 1996, director Harrison Engle produced a documentary about the making of Hitchcock's classic, Obsessed with Vertigo. Narrated by Roddy McDowell, the film played on American Movie Classics, and has since been included with DVD versions of Vertigo. Surviving members of the cast and crew participated, along with noted filmmaker Martin Scorsese and Alfred's daughter, Patricia Hitchcock.[8] Engle first visited the Vertigo shooting locations in the summer of 1958, just months after completion of the film.

Vertigo was first released on DVD in March 1998, and on Blu-ray in October 2012 as part of Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection. Some of the home video releases also carry the original mono audio track.

Restoration

James Stewart as Johnny "Scottie" Ferguson

In 1996, the film was given a lengthy and controversial restoration by Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz and re-released to theaters. The new print featured restored color and newly created audio, utilizing modern sound effects mixed in DTS digital surround sound. In October 1996, the restored Vertigo premiered at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, with Kim Novak and Patricia Hitchcock in person. At this screening, the film was exhibited for the first time in DTS and 70mm, a format with a similar frame size to the VistaVision system in which it was originally shot.

When restoring the sound, Harris and Katz wanted to stay as close as possible to the original, and had access to the original music recordings that had been stored in the vaults at Paramount. However, as the project demanded a new 6-channel DTS stereo soundtrack, it was necessary to re-record some sound effects using the foley process.[8] The soundtrack was remixed at the Alfred Hitchcock Theatre at Universal Studios. Aware that the film had a considerable following, the restoration team knew that they were under particular pressure to restore the film as accurately as possible. To achieve this, they used Hitchcock's original dubbing notes for guidance of how the director wanted the film to sound in 1958.[8] Harris and Katz sometimes added extra sound effects to camouflage defects in the old soundtrack ("hisses, pops, and bangs"); in particular they added extra seagull cries and a foghorn to the scene at Cypress Point.[52] The new mix has also been accused of putting too much emphasis on the score at the expense of the sound effects.[53] The 2005 Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection DVD contains the original mono track as an option.

Significant color correction was necessary because of the fading of original negatives. In some cases a new negative was created from the silver separation masters, but in many instances this was impossible because of differential separation shrinkage, and because the 1958 separations were poorly made. Separations used three individual films: one for each of the primary colors. In the case of Vertigo, these had shrunk in different and erratic proportions, making re-alignment impossible.[8] As such, significant amounts of computer assisted coloration were necessary. Although the results are not noticeable on viewing the film, some elements were as many as eight generations away from the original negative, in particular the entire "Judy's Apartment" sequence, which is perhaps the most pivotal sequence in the entire film (on a large screen this sequence appears to be a 16mm duplicate of the original).

When such large portions of re-creation become necessary, then the danger of artistic license by the restorers becomes an issue, and the restorers received some criticism for their re-creation of colors that allegedly did not honor the director and cinematographer's intentions. The restoration team argued that they did research on the colors used in the original locations, cars, wardrobe, and skin tones. One breakthrough moment came when the Ford Motor Company supplied a well-preserved green paint sample for a car used in the film. As the use of the color green in the film has artistic importance, matching a shade of green was a stroke of luck for restoration and provided a reference shade from which to work.[54]

Derivative works

High Anxiety, a 1977 film by Mel Brooks, is a parody of suspense films directed by Alfred Hitchcock, but leans on Vertigo in particular. The film was dedicated to Hitchcock, who sent Brooks a case containing six magnums of 1961 Château Haut-Brion wine, to show his appreciation.[55]

Obsession, a 1976 film by Brian De Palma, is heavily influenced by Vertigo. Additionally, Body Double, a 1984 De Palma film, co-opts plot elements from Vertigo, as well as from Hitchcock's 1954 film Rear Window.

The Vertigo Murders, a 2000 novel by J. Madison Davis, is a detective story with Hitchcock as a character, set during the filming of Vertigo. To Kill For, a 2008 play by Lucy Gray, is a biographical fantasy in which Hitchcock and his wife interact with the characters from Vertigo. The Testament of Judith Barton, a 2012 novel by Wendy Powers and Robin McLeod, tells the back-story of Kim Novak's character.

The video for Faith No More's song "Last Cup of Sorrow" uses Vertigo as a template, squeezing the movie's highlights into the length of a rock song, using the band as the cast of this mini remake. Harvey Danger's song "Carlotta Valdez," from the album Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?, summarizes the plot of the film.

See also

References

  1. ^ Block & Wilson 2010, p. 400.
  2. ^ a b c "Vertigo is named 'greatest film of all time'". BBC News. 2 August 2012. Retrieved 2012-08-18.
  3. ^ "AFI's 10 Top 10". American Film Institute. Retrieved 2012-02-21.
  4. ^ "Thomas Narcejac, 89, Author of Crime Novels". The New York Times. 1998-07-05. Retrieved 2007-12-01.
  5. ^ Truffaut 1985
  6. ^ Jones 2002
  7. ^ a b c Auiler 1999, p. 30
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p "Obsessed with Vertigo", directed by Harrison Engle, documentary included on many DVD releases
  9. ^ Auiler 1999, p. 51
  10. ^ Auiler 1999, pp. 61–2
  11. ^ McGilligan 2003, pp. 547–548
  12. ^ McGilligan 2003, pp. 563–564
  13. ^ a b c Auiler 2000, p. 185
  14. ^ Some sources say that Vertigo uses dolly-in/zoom-out. The Obsessed with Vertigo DVD documentary says that the shot was achieved by "zooming forward and tracking backward simulataneously".
  15. ^ Klein 2005, pp. 33–5
  16. ^ Mamer 2008, p. 25
  17. ^ Sipos 2010, pp. 120–1
  18. ^ Vertigo 2-Disc Special Edition DVD, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 2008.
  19. ^ Vertigo on the BBFC website.
  20. ^ a b Scorsese, Martin (2004). "The Best Music in Film: Martin Scorsese". Sight & Sound. BFI. Archived from the original on July 11, 2010. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  21. ^ a b c Kraft & Leventhal 2002
  22. ^ Various (1997). "Vertigo's". Les Inrockuptibles. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  23. ^ Aulier 1999, p. 90
  24. ^ Kraft & Leventhal 2002, p. 122
  25. ^ Podesta Baldocchi, World's Oldest Family Owned Florist - Since 1871.
  26. ^ a b Auiler 2000, p. 174
  27. ^ Monaco 2010, p. 153
  28. ^ Lev 2006, pp. 203–4
  29. ^ Canning, Bob (2010), {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) In: Block & Wilson 2010.
  30. ^ Variety Staff (June 14, 1958). "Vertigo (review)". Variety.
  31. ^ Auiler 2000, pp. 170–1
  32. ^ Auiler 2000, p. 172
  33. ^ Crowther, Bosley (May 29, 1958). "Movie Review - Vertigo - Vertigo,' Hitchcock's Latest; Melodrama Arrives at the Capitol". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2010-08-04.
  34. ^ Sterritt, David (June 13, 2008). "At 50, Hitchcock's Timeless 'Vertigo' Still Offers a Dizzying Array of Gifts". The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  35. ^ Truffaut 1985, p. 187
  36. ^ Eliot 2006, p. 322
  37. ^ "NY Times: Vertigo". NY Times. Retrieved 2008-12-23.
  38. ^ "The 31st Academy Awards (1959) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-08-21.
  39. ^ Auiler 2000, p. 177
  40. ^ Auiler 2000, pp. 190–1
  41. ^ Auiler 2000, p. 191
  42. ^ "BFI's Sight & Sound Critics' poll 1982". BFI. Retrieved 2012-08-04.
  43. ^ "BFI's Sight & Sound Critics' poll 1992". BFI. Retrieved 2012-08-04.
  44. ^ "BFI's Sight & Sound Critics' poll 2002". BFI. Retrieved 2012-08-04.
  45. ^ "BFI's Sight & Sound Critics' poll 2012". BFI. Retrieved 2012-08-04.
  46. ^ Shone 2004
  47. ^ "Who is the greatest?". Total Film. 2005-10-24. Retrieved 2010-08-04.
  48. ^ "AFI's 10 Top 10". American Film Institute. 2008-06-17. Retrieved 2008-06-18.
  49. ^ Such a tour is featured in a subsection of Chris Marker's documentary montage Sans Soleil.
  50. ^ Various (1997). "Vertigo's". Les Inrockuptibles. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  51. ^ White, Susan (1999). "Vertigo and Problems of Knowledge in Feminist Film Theory". In Allen, Richard; Ishii-Gonzales, Sam (eds.). Alfred Hitchcock: Centenary Essays. London: BFI. p. 279. ISBN 9780851707358. cited in Barr, Charles (2002). Vertigo. London: BFI. p. 19. ISBN 9780851709185.
  52. ^ Katz, cited in Auiler 2000, p. 198
  53. ^ "Vertigo". Universal Pictures International.
  54. ^ Auiler 2000, pp. 190–193
  55. ^ Parish 2008, p. 221

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