Vertigo is a 1958 American psychological thriller film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The story is based on the 1952 novel D'entre les morts ( From Among the Dead ) by Boileau-Narcejac. This scenario was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor.
Film star James Stewart as former police detective John "Scottie" Ferguson. Scottie was forced to retire early because the incident in his duties caused him to develop acrophobia (extreme fear of altitude) and vertigo (a feeling of improper rotational movement). Scottie was hired by an acquaintance, Gavin Elster, as a private detective to follow Gavin Madeleine's (Kim Novak) wife, who was acting strangely.
The film was taken on location in San Francisco, California, and at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. This is the first film to use zoom dolly, an in-camera effect that changes perspective to create disorientation, to convey Scottie acrophobia. As a result of its use in this film, the effect is often referred to as the "Vertigo effect".
Vertigo received mixed reviews in early releases, but is now commonly referred to as the classic Hitchcock movie and one of the decisive pieces of his career. Drawing significant scientific criticism, he replaced Citizen Kane (1941) as the best film ever made at the British Film Institute 2012 Sight & amp; Sound polling critics. In 1996, the film underwent a major restoration to create a new 70-mm soundtrack and DTS soundtrack. It has appeared repeatedly in the poll of best films by the American Film Institute, including the 2007 ranking as the ninth American film of all time.
Video Vertigo (film)
Plot
After a chase on the roof, where his fear of altitude and vertigo caused the death of a policeman, San Francisco detective John "Scottie" Ferguson retired. Scottie tried to conquer his fears, but his friend and former fiancé Midge Wood said that severe emotional shocks might be the only remedy.
An acquaintance from college, Gavin Elster, asks Scottie to follow his wife, Madeleine, claiming that he is in some kind of danger. Scottie reluctantly agreed, and followed Madeleine to the flower shop where she bought a wreath, to the Mission San Francisco de Asós and the tomb of one of Carlotta Valdes (1831-1857), and to the Legion of Honor art museum where she stared at Carlotta Portrait . He sees him entering the McKittrick Hotel, but on investigation he does not seem to be there.
A local historian explains that Carlotta Valdes committed suicide: he was the mistress of a rich married man and gave birth to his son; the boy who had no children arrested the child and threw Carlotta aside. Gavin reveals that Carlotta (whom he fears has Madeleine) is Madeleine's great-grandmother, though Madeleine has no knowledge of this, and does not remember the places she visited. Scottie trailed Madeleine to Fort Point and, as she jumped into the bay, she rescued her.
The next day Scottie followed Madeleine; they meet and spend the day together. They travel to Muir Woods and Cypress Point on 17-Mile Drive, where Madeleine runs toward the ocean. Scottie grabbed it and they hugged. Madeleine recounts a nightmare and Scottie identifies her setting as Mission San Juan Bautista, Carlotta's childhood home. He drove it there and they express their love for each other. Madeleine suddenly ran to church and climbed the bell tower. Scottie, stopping on the steps by his acrophobia, saw Madeleine plunge into his death.
Death is expressed as a suicide. Gavin was not Scottie's fault, but Scottie broke down, became clinically depressed and was in a sanatorium, almost catatonic. After his release, Scottie often visited the places Madeleine visited, often imagining that he saw it. One day, he notices a woman who reminds her of Madeleine, despite her different looks. Scottie followed him and he identified himself as Judy Barton, from Salina, Kansas.
A flashback reveals that Judy was a man known to Scottie as "Madeleine Elster"; he imitated Gavin's wife as part of a murder plan. Judy wrote to Scottie to explain her involvement: Gavin had deliberately used acrophobia Scottie to replace the body of his recently dead wife in a "suicide leap". But Judy tore up the letter and went on with it, because she loved Scottie.
They start meeting each other, but Scottie remains obsessed with "Madeleine", and asks Judy to change her clothes and hair so that she resembles Madeleine. After Judy obeyed, hoping that they could finally find happiness together, she noticed him wearing the necklace depicted in Carlotta's paintings, and realized the truth, and that Judy was Elster's lover, before being discarded like Carlotta. Scottie insisted on steering Judy to the Mission.
There, he tells him that he must reinstate the events that caused his madness, admitting he now understands that "Madeleine" and Judy are the same people. Scottie forced him into the bell tower and made him confess to his lie. Scottie reached the top, eventually conquering his acrophobia. Judy admits that Gavin pays her to impersonate Madeleine "owned"; Gavin faked suicide by throwing his wife's body off the bell tower.
Judy begged Scottie to forgive her, because she loved him. She hugged him, but a shadowy figure rose from the tower trap door, startling Judy, who stepped back and fell to her death. Scottie, grieving again, stood on the ledge, while the figure, a nun who investigated the voice, rang the mission bell.
Maps Vertigo (film)
Cast
- James Stewart as John "Scottie" Ferguson
- Kim Novak as Judy Barton ("Madeleine Elster")
- Barbara Bel Geddes as Marjorie "Midge" Wood
- Tom Helmore as Gavin Elster
- Henry Jones as a coroner
- Raymond Bailey as a Scottie doctor
- Ellen Corby as Hotel McKittrick manager
- Konstantin Shayne as the owner of Pop Leibel bookstore
- Lee Patrick as mistaken car owner for Madeleine
Not getting acknowledged
- Margaret Brayton as Ransohoff's saleslady
- Paul Bryar as Captain Hansen (accompanying Scottie to coronary examination)
- Dave McElhatton as a radio announcer (ending alternative)
- Fred Graham as a Scottie police partner (falling off the roof)
- Nina Shipman as the wrong girl for Madeleine in the museum
- Sara Taft as a nun at the closing scene
Alfred Hitchcock made his customary cameo appearance walking down the street in a gray suit and carrying a trumpet glove.
Themes
Charles Barr in his monograph dedicated to the study of Vertigo states that the main theme of the film is a psychological obsession, especially concentrating on Scottie for being obsessed with women in his life. As Barr said in his book, "The story of a man who developed a romantic obsession with the image of a mysterious woman has often been seen, by his colleagues and by critics and biographers, as one involving Hitchcock in a very profound way, and has generated a comparable appeal to many audiences.After first seeing him as a teenager in 1958, Donald Spoto has returned for 26 more spectacles when he wrote The Art of Alfred Hitchcock in 1976. In a the 1996 magazine article Geoffrey O'Brien cites other cases of 'permanent attraction' with Vertigo, and then casually reveals that he himself, from the age of 15, has seen him on at least three tens of times'. "
Critics have interpreted Vertigo differently as "a story of male aggression and visual control, as a map of the path of Oedipus women, as a deconstruction of male construction of femininity and masculinity itself, as stripping naked the directing mechanism, the studio Hollywood and colonial oppression, and as a place where textual meaning plays in the infinite setbacks of self-reflection. "James F. Maxfield's critics argue that Vertigo can be interpreted as a variant of Ambrose Bierce's short story" Genesis at the Bridge Owls "(1890), and that the main narrative of the film is actually imagined. by Scottie, whom we saw leaving hanging in a building at the end of an open roof chase.
Production
Development
The scenario of Vertigo is an adaptation of the French novel D'entre les morts ( From the Dead ) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Hitchcock had tried to buy the rights to the previous novel by the same author, Celle qui n'ÃÆ' Â © tait plus , but he failed, and it was made instead by Henri-Georges Clouzot as Les Diaboliques . Although FranÃÆ'§ois Truffaut once declared that D'entre les morts were specifically written for Hitchcock by Boileau and Narcejac, Narcejac later denied that this was their intention. However, Hitchcock's interest in their work meant that Paramount Pictures commissioned a synopsis of D'entre les morts in 1954, before it was even translated into English.
In the book, Judy's involvement in Madeleine's death is not revealed until the end. At the script stage, Hitchcock advises to reveal the secrets of two-thirds of the film's course, so that the audience will understand Judy's mental dilemma. After the first preview, Hitchcock is not sure whether to keep the "writing letter letter" or not. He decided to remove it. Herbert Coleman, Vertigo liaison and frequent collaborator with Hitchcock, felt that the abolition was a mistake. However, Hitchcock said, "Just let it go." James Stewart, acting as a mediator, said to Coleman, "Herbie, you should not be so annoyed with Hitch, it's not that important." Hitchcock's decision was supported by Joan Harrison, another member of her circle, who felt that the movie had been fixed. Coleman reluctantly made the necessary edits. When he received news of this, Paramount's head, Barney Balaban, was very vocal about editing and ordered Hitchcock to "Put the picture back as it was." As a result, "writing writing scenes" remained in the last movie.
Write
There are 3 screenwriters involved in writing Vertigo . Hitchcock originally hired playwright Maxwell Anderson to write the screenplay, but rejected his work, entitled Darkling, I Listen, quotes from Keats's Ode to a Nightingale. According to Charles Barr in his monograph dedicated to Vertigo , "Anderson is the oldest (on 68) [of the 3 authors involved], the most famous for the stage work and the least committed to cinema , although he has shared script credits for Hitchcock's previous film The Wrong Man.He worked to adapt the novel during Hitchcock's absence abroad, and filed a treatment in September 1956. "
The second version, written by Alec Coppel, again made the director dissatisfied. The last manuscript was written by Samuel A. Taylor - recommended to Hitchcock because of his knowledge of San Francisco - from a note by Hitchcock. Among Taylor's creations is Midge's character. Taylor tried to take a single credit for the scenario, but Coppel protested the Screen Writers Guild, which determined that both authors were entitled to credit and left Anderson out of film-writing credits.
Casting
Vera Miles, who is under a private contract for Hitchcock and has appeared on both his television shows and in his movie The Wrong Man, was originally scheduled to play Madeleine. He was modeled for an early version of the painting featured in the film. After a delay, including Hitchcock becoming sick from a gallbladder problem, Miles became pregnant and had to retreat from the role. The director refused to postpone the shoot and chose Kim Novak as the female lead. By the time Novak had tied up the commitment of the previous film and the holiday promised by Columbia Pictures, the studio that held the contract, Miles had given birth and was available for the film. Hitchcock went on with Novak, however. Columbia chief Harry Cohn agreed to lend Novak to Vertigo if Stewart agreed to become Novak's star on Bell, Book and Candle, Columbia's production, released in December 1958.
Filming
Primary photography in the first place
Vertigo was filmed from September to December 1957. The main photography began at a location in San Francisco in September 1957 under the title of the work of From Among the Dead (a literal translation of D ' entre les morts ). The film uses extensive recording locations in the San Francisco Bay Area, with its steep hills and high and curved bridges. In the city's driving scenes, the main character cars are almost always depicted toward the city's steep city street. In October 1996, the restored Vertigo print made its debut at the Castro Theater in San Francisco with live introduction on stage by surviving cast member Kim Novak giving the city a chance to celebrate it on its own. Visiting a San Francisco film location has something that follows a sect as well as a simple tourist attraction. A tour like this is featured in the Chris Marker documentary sub-section Sans Soleil .
After 16 days of shooting locations, production was transferred to Paramount studios in Hollywood for two months of filming. Hitchcock prefers movies in the studio because he is able to control the environment. After recording the sufficient location has been obtained, the interior set is designed and built in the studio.
Hitchcock popularized the zoom dolly in this film, which led to the engineering nickname, among others, the "Vertigo effect". This "dolly-out/zoom-in" method involves the camera physically moving from the subject while simultaneously zooming in (the same effect can be achieved in reverse), so the subject maintains its size in the frame, but the background perspective changes. Hitchcock uses the effect to look down the spindle of the tower to emphasize Scottie's height and disorientation. After the difficulty of shooting a shot on the full-sized set, the shaft shaft model is built, and the zoom dolly is filmed horizontally. The "special order" (Scottie nightmare sequence) was designed by artist John Ferren, who also created the Carlotta paintings used in the film.
The rotating pattern in title order was performed by John Whitney, who used a mechanical computer called the M5 rifle director, AKA the Kerrison Predictor, used during World War II to direct anti-aircraft guns on moving targets. It is possible to produce an animated version of the shape (known as the Lissajous curve) based on a graph of parametric equations by mathematician Jules Lissajous. In March 1997, the French cultural magazine Les Inrockuptibles published a special edition titled Vertigo of a movie location in San Francisco, Dans le dÃÆ'Â © cor , which register and explain all the actual locations.
Costume design
Hitchcock and costume designer Edith Head uses colors to enhance emotions. Gray was chosen for Madeleine's suit because normally it was not a blond color, so it was psychologically blaring. Instead, the Novak character wore a white coat when he visited Scottie's apartment, which was regarded by Head and Hitchcock as more natural to be worn by a blonde.
Alternate termination
A coda for the film was taken that showed Midge in her apartment, listening to a radio report (voiced by San Francisco TV reporter Dave McElhatton) depicting Gavin Elster's pursuit across Europe. Midge turned off the radio when Scottie entered the room. They then shared a drink and looked out the window silently. Contrary to reports that the scene was filmed to meet the needs of foreign censors, the tag ending was originally sued by Geoffrey Shurlock of the US Production Code Administration, who has noted: "This will, of course, be the most important that an indication that Elster will be brought back to stand trial is sufficiently stressed. "
Hitchcock eventually succeeded in parrying most of Shurlock's demands (which included undermining the erotic innuendo) and having an alternate ending dropped. The tape was invented in Los Angeles in May 1993, and was added as an alternative to the release of laserdisc, and later on DVD and Blu-ray releases.
Music
Score written by Bernard Herrmann. It was done by Muir Mathieson and recorded in Europe because there was a musician strike in the US.
In the 2004 special edition of the British Film Institute (BFI) magazine Sight & amp; Voice , director Martin Scorsese describes the quality of Herrmann's famous score:
The Hitchcock movie is about an obsession, which means about turning back to the same moment, over and over again... And music is also built around spirals and circles, contentment and despair. Herrmann really understood what Hitchcock would do - he wanted to penetrate into the heart of obsession.
Graphic design
Graphic designer Saul Bass used spiral motifs in both title and movie posters, emphasizing what the documentary obsessed with Vertigo , " Vertigo ' s psychological vortex ".
Release
Vertigo aired in San Francisco on May 9, 1958, at the Stage Door Theater in Mason and Geary (now Ruby Skye nightclub). While Vertigo did break even on its original release, it generated $ 2.8 million in gross rent in the United States alone against a $ 2,479,000 fee, earned far less than any other Hitchcock production.
Release cinematic recovery
In October 1983, Back Window and Vertigo were the first two movies to be re-released by Hitchcock after his death. The two films and three others - The Man Who Knew Too Much <1956), The Trouble with Harry (1955), and Rope (1948) ) - has been kept out of distribution by Hitchcock since 1968. Cleaning and restoration is done on every film when a new 35mm mold is struck.
In 1996, the film was given a long and controversial restoration by Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz and re-released to theaters. New prints feature restored colors and newly created audio, using modern sound effects mixed in DTS digital surround sound. In October 1996, the restored Vertigo was shown at Castro Theater in San Francisco, with Kim Novak and Patricia Hitchcock live. At this screening, the film is showcased for the first time in DTS and 70mm, a frame-size format similar to the VistaVision system in which it was originally shot. When restoring the sound, Harris and Katz want to stay as close as possible to the original, and have access to the original music recordings that have been stored in the safe at Paramount. However, because the project demands a new DTS 6-channel stereo soundtrack, it is necessary to re-record some sound effects using the Foley process. The soundtrack was remixed at Alfred Hitchcock Theater at Universal Studios. Realizing that the film has many followers, the restoration team knows that they are under special pressure to return the film as accurately as possible. To achieve this, they used the Hitchcock dub note for guidance on how the director wanted the film to be heard in 1958. Harris and Katz sometimes added additional sound effects to disguise defects on old soundtracks ("hiss, pops and bangs"); in particular they added extra screams of gulls and foghorns to the scene at Cypress Point. The new mix is ​​also accused of over-emphasizing the score at the expense of sound effects.
Home media
In 1996, director Harrison Engle produced a documentary film about the classic making of Hitchcock, Obsessed with Vertigo . Spoken by Roddy McDowell, the film is screened on American Movie Classics, and has since been included with the DVD version of Vertigo . The surviving members and players participated, along with renowned filmmaker Martin Scorsese and Alfred's daughter, Patricia Hitchcock. Engle first visited the Vertigo shooting location in the summer of 1958, just months after the movie was over.
Vertigo was first released on DVD in March 1998. It was then released on Blu-ray in October 2012 as part of Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection , in June 2013 as part of Alfred Hitchcock: The Essentials Collection , and finally in May 2014 as a stand-alone Blu-ray edition. Some home video releases also carry the original mono audio tracks.
2005 Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection The DVD contains the original mono track as an option. Significant color correction is required due to the negative fading of the negative Technicolor. In some cases, a new negative is created from the master of silver separation, but in many ways this is not possible because of the separation of the differential divisions, and because the 1958 separation is made poorly. Separation uses three individual films: one for each primary color. In the case of Vertigo , it has shrunk in different and erratic proportions, making reconciliation impossible. Thus, a significant amount of computer assistance is required. Although the results are not visible on the movie view, some elements are eight generations away from the original negatives, especially the whole set of "Judy Apartment", which may be the most important sequence in the entire film. When a large part of re-creation becomes necessary, the dangers of artistic license by the restorers are a problem, and the artisans again receive some criticism for the re-creation of colors that allegedly disrespect the director's and cinematographer's intentions. The restoration team argues that they are doing research on colors used in original locations, cars, wardrobes, and skin tones. One breakthrough moment came when Ford Motor Company provided a well preserved green paint sample for the car used in the film. Since the use of green in the film has an artistic interest, matching green is a fortune for restoration and provides a reference shade.
In October 2014, a new 4K restoration was presented at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. This version gave credit to Harris and Katz at the end of the movie, and thanked him for providing some unknown stereo soundtracks. This version, however, eliminates some of the "excessive" Foley sounds added to the 1996 restoration.
Reception
Contemporary reception
The initial acceptance stated in the movie review for Vertigo is mixed. Variety says the film shows Hitchcock's "mastery", but it's too long and slow for "what is basically just a psychological murder mystery". Similarly, the Los Angeles Times admires the scene, but finds the plot "too long" and feels it's "bogs down" in the "labyrinth of detail"; scholar Dan Auiler said that this review "sounded the most popular tone that critics would have done with the film". However, the Los Angeles Examiner loves it, admiring "excitement, action, romance, glamor, and crazy, off-beat love stories." New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther also gave Vertigo a positive review by explaining that "[secret] [the movie] was so clever, though it was very far.
The contemporary response in Britain is summarized by Charles Barr in his monograph on Vertigo which states: "In England, the reception is if something a little less friendly than the 28 reviews of newspapers and magazines I have seen, six is, with booking, profitable, nine very mixed, and 13 almost completely negative.General for all these reviews is a lack of sympathy with the basic structure and encouragement of the image.Even people who are more friendly choose for the elements of praise that looks, from today's point of view , into a marginal virtue and incidental pleasure - the 'vitality' of supporting performances (Dilys Powell in The Sunday Times), the shrewdness used to sequence the car (Isobel Quibley at The Spectator ) ".
An additional reason for his initial mixed response was that Hitchcock fans were not happy with his departure from the area of ​​the romantic thriller-previous movie and that the mystery was solved with a third of the remaining films to go. Orson Welles did not like the movie, telling his friend, director Henry Jaglom, that the movie was "worse" than Back Window , another movie that Welles did not like. In an interview with FranÃÆ'§ois Truffaut, Hitchcock stated that Vertigo is one of his favorite movies, with several objections. Hitchcock blames film failure on 49-year-old Stewart who looks too old to play a convincing love interest for 24-year-old Kim Novak. At the time of the film's release on May 9, 1958, Novak had changed February 25 before, and Stewart would change 50 about 11 days later, on May 20, 1958.
Hitchcock and Stewart received awards at the San SebastiÃÆ'¡n International Film Festival, including Silver Seashell for Best Director (tied with Mario Monicelli for Big Deal at Madonna Street) (aka Unknown Person) >) and Best Actor (also tied, with Kirk Douglas at The Viking ). The film is nominated for two Academy Awards, in the category of Best Art Direction - Black-White or Color (Pereira, Henry Bumstead, Samuel M. Comer, Frank McKelvy) and Best Sound (George Dutton).
Re-evaluate
In the 21st century and started with 2002 Sight & amp; Votes poll, Vertigo is ranked behind Citizen Kane (1941) as the best movie ever made; ten years later, in the same magazine, it was chosen by critics as the best film ever made. Already in the 1960s, the French critic Cahiers du cinà ©  © ma began to re-evaluate Hitchcock as a serious artist and not just a populist performer. However, even the 1966 François Truffaut important book in an interview with Hitchcock (not published in English until 1967) provides only a few pages for Vertigo . And Auiler has suggested that the real beginning of Vertigo increased in praise is British-Canadian scholar Robin Wood Hitchcock's Films (1968), who cites the movie "Hitchcock's masterpiece to date and one of the four or five most profound and beautiful films that cinema has not given us yet."
Adding to the mystique is the fact that Vertigo is one of five Hitchcock films removed from circulation in 1973. When Vertigo was re-released in theaters in October 1983, home video in October 1984, the film achieved impressive commercial success and praised reviews. Similarly, a court review written for October 1996 showed a restored print on 70mm and DTS voices at the Castro Theater in San Francisco.
In 1989, Vertigo was recognized as a "significant cultural, historical and aesthetic film" by the United States Congress Library and selected for preservation at the National Film Registry in the first year of the registry voting.
Among international film critics, the film undergoes a similar re-evaluation. Every ten years since 1952, film magazine British Film Institute Sight & amp; Sound has asked the world's leading film critics to compile a list of the top 10 movies of all time. Not until 1982 did Vertigo enter the list, and then in place of the 7th. In 1992 it has advanced to 4th place, in 2002 to the 2nd. Vertigo was selected in first place in Sight & amp; Sound ' s polling 2012 of the greatest movies of all time, both in the crime genre and in general, displacing Orson Welles' Citizen Kane from that position has occupied since 1962. Commenting on the 2012 results, the editor of Nick James magazine says that Vertigo is "the main critic film." It is a movie like a dream about people who are not sure who they are but who are busy reconstructing themselves and to each other to fit the ideal film type of the ideal soul mate. "In recent years, critics have noted that casting James Stewart as an obsessed and obsessive character ultimately enhances the inaccuracy and effectiveness of this film as tension, since Stewart was previously known as a hot role actor.
A small number of critics have expressed differing opinions. In his 2004 book Blockbuster, British film critic Tom Shone suggested that critical re-evaluations have caused excessive praise, and argue for a more measurable response. Fault Sight & amp; Sound to "constantly" put the movie on the best list of movies ever, he wrote, "Hitchcock is a director who likes to make his plot mechanism rubbed up to a good glow, and so Sight and Sound > The team praised one of his films which is not the case - everything is loose and angled, the channel is on the screen to be criticized by critics in his spare time. "In 2007, poet and critic Dan Schneider criticized the end of Vertigo. i> as melodramatic and argues that a close examination of the movie plot reveals a lot of invalidity, such as Elster that allows someone who knows his murder plot to stay alive and so may reveal the plan, or the police officer at the scene does not check the tower for evidence.
In 2005, Vertigo came second (for Goodfellas ) in the British magazine Total Film book 100 Biggest Movies of All Time . In 2008, a poll of readers, actors and critics Empire named it the 40th largest film ever made.
Recognition of the American Film Institute
- 100 Years AFI... 100 Movies # 61
- AFI 100 Years... 100 Thrills # 18
- 100 Years AFI Film Score # 12
- AFI 100 Years... 100 Passion # 18
- AFI 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) # 9
- AFI 10 Mystery 10 # 1 Top
The San Francisco location has become famous among movie buffs, with organized tours throughout the area. In March 1997, the French cultural magazine Les Inrockuptibles published a special edition of the Vertigo location in San Francisco, Dans le dÃÆ' Â © cor , which lists and explains all the actual locations. In October 1996, a restored print from Vertigo debuted at the Castro Theater in San Francisco with live introduction on stage by Kim Novak, providing an opportunity for the city to celebrate itself.
Recovery
- Piece of Cake "Very Different:" Recovering Alfred Hitchcock Vertigo
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments