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Vertigo (film)
Encyclopedia
Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock
and starring James Stewart
, Kim Novak
, and Barbara Bel Geddes
. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel
and Samuel A. Taylor
, based on the 1954 novel D'entre les morts by Boileau-Narcejac
.
It is the story of a retired police
detective
suffering from acrophobia
who is hired as a private investigator
to follow the wife of an acquaintance to uncover the mystery of her peculiar behavior.
The film received mixed reviews upon initial release, but has garnered acclaim since and is now frequently ranked among the greatest films ever made, and often cited as a classic Hitchcock film and one of the defining works of his career.
results in the death of an officer, detective John "Scottie" Ferguson retires, spending much of his time with his ex-fiancée Midge Wood. Scottie tries to gradually conquer his fear but Midge suggests another severe emotional shock might be the only cure.
An acquaintance, Gavin Elster, asks Scottie to tail his wife, Madeleine, claiming she has been possessed; Scottie reluctantly agrees. Next day Scottie follows Madeleine to a florist for 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 ended her life with suicide
. Another visit with Gavin reveals Carlotta is Madeleine's great-grandmother and who Gavin fears is possessing Madeleine. Gavin also says Madeleine has no knowledge of Carlotta. Scottie tails Madeleine to Fort Point, 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 after a phone call Madeleine quickly leaves.
The next day Scottie follows her to his house and they decide to spend the day together because Scottie fears Madeleine might commit suicide. The two travel to Muir Woods where Madeleine, embarrassed from confessing that her dreams sound mad, runs to the ocean and they 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 his weakness has rendered him incapable of preventing someone's death. Gavin does not fault Scottie but in the following weeks Scottie becomes depressed
. While treated in a sanatorium
, he becomes mute, haunted by vivid nightmares. Although Midge visits, his condition remains the same. 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. 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 she was, in fact, the woman known as "Madeleine," but she is not Gavin's wife. Judy writes a confession letter to Scottie explaining 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 Judy until she once more resembles Madeleine. Judy agrees to change on the chance they may finally find happiness together. Scottie realizes the truth when Judy wears a unique necklace that he saw in 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 reenact 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 out the window.
Judy pleads to Scottie to forgive her because she loves him. The two embrace when a nun emerges from the trapdoor and Judy steps backward falling to her death. Scottie stands perched on a narrow ledge while the nun rings the mission bell.
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
. Although François Truffaut
once suggested that D'Entre les morts was specifically written for Hitchcock by Boileau and Narcejac, Narcejac subsequently 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 had even been translated into English.
Hitchcock originally hired playwright Maxwell Anderson
to write a screenplay, but rejected his work, which was entitled Darkling I Listen. The final script was written by Samuel A. Taylor
— who was recommended to Hitchcock due to his knowledge of San Francisco — from notes by Hitchcock. Among Taylor's creations was the character of Midge. Taylor attempted to take sole credit for the screenplay, but Alec Coppel
— the other screenplay writer hired by Hitchcock — protested to the Screen Writers Guild, which determined that both writers were entitled to a credit.
When actress Vera Miles
, who was under personal contract to Hitchcock and had appeared on both his television show and in his film The Wrong Man, could not act in Vertigo owing to her pregnancy
, 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 involvment 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. After the first preview, Hitchcock was unsure whether to keep the "letter writing scene" or not. He decided to remove it. Herbert Coleman, Vertigos 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." Coleman made the necessary edits. Hitchcock's decision was supported by Joan Harrison who felt that the film had been improved. When he received news of the edits, the head of Paramount, 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.
A coda to the film was shot that showed Midge and a more-or-less healed Scottie listening to a radio report (voiced by unseen San Francisco radio announcer Dave McElhatton
) of Gavin Elster's capture in Europe. This ending was mandated by British censorship requirements (where the murderer could not be allowed to get away with his crime) and was not featured in the American cut of the film. It is included as an extra in the restored DVD release.
. It was not conducted by him, but was conducted by Muir Mathieson
and recorded in Europe, due to a musician's strike in the U.S.
In a 2004 special issue by Sight & Sound
devoted to Film Music, Martin Scorsese
described the qualities of Herrmann's famous score:
, 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. 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.
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
.
Areas that were shot on location (not recreated in a studio):
nightclub). Its performance at the box office was average, and 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". 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". However, the Los Angeles Examiner loved it, admiring the "excitement, action, romance, glamor and [the] crazy, off-beat love story". 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."
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.
In an interview with François Truffaut
, Hitchcock stated that Vertigo was one of his favorite films, with some reservations. 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 at the time.
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 just two Academy Awards
, in the technical categories Best Art Direction - Black-and-White or Color
(Hal Pereira
, Henry Bumstead, Samuel M. Comer
, Frank McKelvy) and Best Sound
(George Dutton
).
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) mentions Vertigo only in passing. Dan Aulier has suggested that the real beginning of Vertigos 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". 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. 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.
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.
The film ranked 4th and 2nd respectively in Sight and Sound 1992 and 2002 critic polls of the best films ever made. In 2005, Vertigo came in second (to Goodfellas
) in British magazine Total Film
book 100 Greatest Movies of All Time.
In his book Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer
, however, British film critic Tom Shone
argued that Vertigos critical re-evaluation has led to excessive praise, and argued for a more measured response. Faulting Sight and 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."
American Film Institute
recognition
and Alfred's daughter, Patricia Hitchcock
. Engle first visited the Vertigo shooting locations in the summer of 1958, just months after completion of the film.
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.
One bone of contention regarding the 1996 restoration was the decision to re-record the foley
sound effects from scratch (to allow Dolby-quality mixing for surround sound and stereo). Harris and Katz wanted to stay as close as possible to the original: "It was our intent to re-mix the original music tracks with dialogue culled from the old mono and new Foley and effects tracks, which were to have been created following Mr. Hitchcock's original notes. That was the intent. It is not what occurred, the studio having made the decision to re-invent the track anew." 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. The new mix has also been accused of putting too much emphasis on the score at the expense of the sound effects. 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. 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.
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.
Images
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
and starring James Stewart
James Stewart
James Stewart was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart may also refer to:-Noblemen:*James Stewart, 5th High Steward of Scotland*James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn James Stewart (1908–1997) was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart...
, Kim Novak
Kim Novak
Kim Novak is an American film and television actress. She began her career with her roles in Pushover and Phffft! but achieved greater prominence in the 1955 film Picnic...
, and Barbara Bel Geddes
Barbara Bel Geddes
Barbara Bel Geddes was an American actress, artist and children's author. She is best known for her role in the television drama series Dallas as matriarch Eleanor "Miss Ellie" Ewing. Bel Geddes also starred in the original Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the role of Maggie...
. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel
Alec Coppel
Alec Coppel was an Australian born screenwriter, novelist and playwright. He spent the majority of his career in London and Hollywood, specialising in light thrillers, mysteries and sex comedies...
and Samuel A. Taylor
Samuel A. Taylor
Samuel A. Taylor was an American playwright and screenwriter.Born Samuel Albert Tanenbaum, in a Jewish family, in Chicago, Illinois, Taylor made his Broadway debut as author of the play The Happy Time in 1950. He wrote the play Sabrina Fair in 1953 and co-wrote its film adaptation the following year...
, based on the 1954 novel D'entre les morts by Boileau-Narcejac
Boileau-Narcejac
Boileau-Narcejac is the nom de plume under which French crime fiction writers Pierre Boileau and Pierre Ayraud, aka Thomas Narcejac collaborated...
.
It is the story of a retired police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
detective
Detective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
suffering from acrophobia
Acrophobia
Acrophobia is an extreme or irrational fear of heights. It belongs to a category of specific phobias, called space and motion discomfort that share both similar etiology and options for treatment.Most people experience a degree of natural fear when exposed to heights, especially if there is little...
who is hired as a private investigator
Private investigator
A private investigator , private detective or inquiry agent, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private detectives/investigators often work for attorneys in civil cases. Many work for insurance companies to investigate suspicious claims...
to follow the wife of an acquaintance to uncover the mystery of her peculiar behavior.
The film received mixed reviews upon initial release, but has garnered acclaim since and is now frequently ranked among the greatest films ever made, and often cited as a classic Hitchcock film and one of the defining works of his career.
Plot
After an incident where his latent acrophobiaAcrophobia
Acrophobia is an extreme or irrational fear of heights. It belongs to a category of specific phobias, called space and motion discomfort that share both similar etiology and options for treatment.Most people experience a degree of natural fear when exposed to heights, especially if there is little...
results in the death of an officer, detective John "Scottie" Ferguson retires, spending much of his time with his ex-fiancée Midge Wood. Scottie tries to gradually conquer his fear but Midge suggests another severe emotional shock might be the only cure.
An acquaintance, Gavin Elster, asks Scottie to tail his wife, Madeleine, claiming she has been possessed; Scottie reluctantly agrees. Next day Scottie follows Madeleine to a florist for a bouquet of flowers; next she visits the grave of Carlotta Valdes; then she visits an art museum
California Palace of the Legion of Honor
The California Palace of the Legion of Honor is a fine art museum in San Francisco, California...
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 ended her life with suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. Another visit with Gavin reveals Carlotta is Madeleine's great-grandmother and who Gavin fears is possessing Madeleine. Gavin also says Madeleine has no knowledge of Carlotta. Scottie tails Madeleine to Fort Point, where she suddenly leaps into San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...
. Scottie rescues Madeleine and takes her to his home. The meeting is tense and leads to a strange intimacy between them but after a phone call Madeleine quickly leaves.
The next day Scottie follows her to his house and they decide to spend the day together because Scottie fears Madeleine might commit suicide. The two travel to Muir Woods where Madeleine, embarrassed from confessing that her dreams sound mad, runs to the ocean and they kiss. Upon hearing the details of her nightmare Scottie identifies the setting as Mission San Juan Bautista
Mission San Juan Bautista
Mission San Juan Bautista was founded on June 24, 1797 in what is now the San Juan Bautista Historic District of San Juan Bautista, California. Barracks for the soldiers, a nunnery, the Jose Castro House, and other buildings were constructed around a large grassy plaza in front of the church and...
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
Vertigo (medical)
Vertigo is a type of dizziness, where there is a feeling of motion when one is stationary. The symptoms are due to a dysfunction of the vestibular system in the inner ear...
and paralyzing fear, watches as Madeleine plunges to her death.
An inquest declares Madeleine's death a suicide but Scottie feels ashamed his weakness has rendered him incapable of preventing someone's death. Gavin does not fault Scottie but in the following weeks Scottie becomes depressed
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
. While treated in a sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
, he becomes mute, haunted by vivid nightmares. Although Midge visits, his condition remains the same. 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. 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 she was, in fact, the woman known as "Madeleine," but she is not Gavin's wife. Judy writes a confession letter to Scottie explaining 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 Judy until she once more resembles Madeleine. Judy agrees to change on the chance they may finally find happiness together. Scottie realizes the truth when Judy wears a unique necklace that he saw in 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 reenact 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 out the window.
Judy pleads to Scottie to forgive her because she loves him. The two embrace when a nun emerges from the trapdoor and Judy steps backward falling to her death. Scottie stands perched on a narrow ledge while the nun rings the mission bell.
Cast
- James StewartJames StewartJames Stewart was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart may also refer to:-Noblemen:*James Stewart, 5th High Steward of Scotland*James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn James Stewart (1908–1997) was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart...
as John "Scottie" Ferguson - Kim NovakKim NovakKim Novak is an American film and television actress. She began her career with her roles in Pushover and Phffft! but achieved greater prominence in the 1955 film Picnic...
as Judy Barton/Madeleine Elster - Barbara Bel GeddesBarbara Bel GeddesBarbara Bel Geddes was an American actress, artist and children's author. She is best known for her role in the television drama series Dallas as matriarch Eleanor "Miss Ellie" Ewing. Bel Geddes also starred in the original Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the role of Maggie...
as Midge Wood - Tom HelmoreTom HelmoreTom Helmore was an English film actor. He appeared in over 50 films between 1927 and 1972, including three directed by Alfred Hitchcock.He was born in London and died in Longboat Key, Florida.-Selected filmography:...
as Gavin Elster - Fred GrahamFred Graham (actor)Fred Graham was an American actor and stuntman, who performed in scores of films from the 1930s. A semi-professional baseball player, Graham appeared mainly in Westerns, doing stunts and playing opposite John Wayne among others. He also featured alongside Wayne in several films with director...
as Scottie's police partner - Raymond BaileyRaymond BaileyRaymond Thomas Bailey was an American actor on the Broadway stage, movies, and television. He is best known for his role as wealthy banker, Milburn Drysdale, in the television series The Beverly Hillbillies....
as Scottie's doctor - Henry JonesHenry Jones (actor)Henry Burk Jones was an American actor of stage, film and television.Jones was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Helen and John Francis Xavier Jones. He was the grandson of Pennsylvania Representative Henry Burk...
as the Coroner - Ellen CorbyEllen CorbyEllen Corby was an American actress. She is most widely remembered for the role of "Grandma Esther Walton" on the CBS television series The Waltons, for which she won three Emmy Awards...
as the hotel owner
Adaptation
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
is an adaptation of the French novel The Living and the Dead (D'entre les morts) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac
Boileau-Narcejac
Boileau-Narcejac is the nom de plume under which French crime fiction writers Pierre Boileau and Pierre Ayraud, aka Thomas Narcejac collaborated...
. 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
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Henri-Georges Clouzot was a French film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best remembered for his work in the thriller film genre, having directed The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, which are critically recognized to be among the greatest films from the 1950s...
as Les Diaboliques
Les Diaboliques (film)
Les Diaboliques , released as Diabolique in the United States and variously translated as The Devils or The Fiends, is a 1955 French black-and-white thriller feature film directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot and Paul Meurisse...
. Although François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
once suggested that D'Entre les morts was specifically written for Hitchcock by Boileau and Narcejac, Narcejac subsequently denied that this was their intention. However, Hitchcock's interest in their work meant that Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
commissioned a synopsis of D'Entre les morts in 1954, before it had even been translated into English.
Hitchcock originally hired playwright Maxwell Anderson
Maxwell Anderson
James Maxwell Anderson was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist and lyricist.-Early years:Anderson was born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, the second of eight children to William Lincoln "Link" Anderson, a Baptist minister, and Charlotte Perrimela Stephenson, both of Scots and Irish descent...
to write a screenplay, but rejected his work, which was entitled Darkling I Listen. The final script was written by Samuel A. Taylor
Samuel A. Taylor
Samuel A. Taylor was an American playwright and screenwriter.Born Samuel Albert Tanenbaum, in a Jewish family, in Chicago, Illinois, Taylor made his Broadway debut as author of the play The Happy Time in 1950. He wrote the play Sabrina Fair in 1953 and co-wrote its film adaptation the following year...
— who was recommended to Hitchcock due to his knowledge of San Francisco — from notes by Hitchcock. Among Taylor's creations was the character of Midge. Taylor attempted to take sole credit for the screenplay, but Alec Coppel
Alec Coppel
Alec Coppel was an Australian born screenwriter, novelist and playwright. He spent the majority of his career in London and Hollywood, specialising in light thrillers, mysteries and sex comedies...
— the other screenplay writer hired by Hitchcock — protested to the Screen Writers Guild, which determined that both writers were entitled to a credit.
When actress Vera Miles
Vera Miles
Vera Miles is an American film actress who gained popularity for starring in films such as The Searchers, The Wrong Man, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Psycho and Psycho II.-Early life:...
, who was under personal contract to Hitchcock and had appeared on both his television show and in his film The Wrong Man, could not act in Vertigo owing to her pregnancy
Pregnancy
Pregnancy refers to the fertilization and development of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, in a woman's uterus. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or triplets...
, the director declined to postpone shooting and cast Kim Novak
Kim Novak
Kim Novak is an American film and television actress. She began her career with her roles in Pushover and Phffft! but achieved greater prominence in the 1955 film Picnic...
as the female lead. Ironically, by the time Novak had tied up prior film commitments and a vacation promised by Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
, the studio that held her contract, Miles had given birth
Childbirth
Childbirth is the culmination of a human pregnancy or gestation period with the birth of one or more newborn infants from a woman's uterus...
and was available for the film. Hitchcock proceeded with Novak, nevertheless. Columbia head Harry Cohn
Harry Cohn
Harry Cohn was the American president and production director of Columbia Pictures.-Career:Cohn was born to a working-class German-Jewish family in New York City. In later years, he appears to have disparaged his heritage...
agreed to lend Novak to Vertigo if Stewart would agree to co-star with Novak in Bell, Book and Candle
Bell, Book and Candle
Bell, Book and Candle is a romantic comedy directed by Richard Quine based on the hit Broadway play by John Van Druten. It starred James Stewart and Kim Novak in their second on-screen pairing . The film, adapted by Daniel Taradash, was Stewart's last film as a romantic lead...
, a Columbia production released in December 1958.
In the book, Judy's involvment 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. After the first preview, Hitchcock was unsure whether to keep the "letter writing scene" or not. He decided to remove it. Herbert Coleman, Vertigos 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." Coleman made the necessary edits. Hitchcock's decision was supported by Joan Harrison who felt that the film had been improved. When he received news of the edits, the head of Paramount, Barney Balaban
Barney Balaban
Barney Balaban was president of Paramount Pictures from 1936 to 1964, and innovator in the cinema industry. The eldest of the seven sons of grocery store owner Israel Balaban, Barney worked as a messenger boy and a cold storage company employee until 1908, when he was persuaded, at age 21, to go...
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.
A coda to the film was shot that showed Midge and a more-or-less healed Scottie listening to a radio report (voiced by unseen San Francisco radio announcer Dave McElhatton
Dave McElhatton
Dave McElhatton was a former evening news anchor for several decades in San Francisco, California, in the United States. He was in the first class of inductees to the Bay AreaHall of Fame...
) of Gavin Elster's capture in Europe. This ending was mandated by British censorship requirements (where the murderer could not be allowed to get away with his crime) and was not featured in the American cut of the film. It is included as an extra in the restored DVD release.
Musical score
The score was written by Bernard HerrmannBernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.An Academy Award-winner , Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo...
. It was not conducted by him, but was conducted by Muir Mathieson
Muir Mathieson
James Muir Mathieson was a Scottish conductor and composer. Mathieson was almost always described as a "Musical Director" on a large number of British films.-Career:...
and recorded in Europe, due to a musician's strike in the U.S.
In a 2004 special issue by Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute .Sight & Sound was first published in 1932 and in 1934 management of the magazine was handed to the nascent BFI, which still publishes the magazine today...
devoted to Film Music, Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
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.
Filming locations
Filmed from September to December 1957, Vertigo uses location footage of the San Francisco Bay AreaSan Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
, 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. In October 1996, the restored print of Vertigo debuted at the Castro Theatre
Castro Theatre
The Castro Theatre is a popular San Francisco movie palace which became San Francisco Historic Landmark #100 in September 1976. Located at 429 Castro Street, in the Castro district, it was built in 1922 with a Spanish Colonial Baroque façade that pays homage—in its great arched central window...
in San Francisco with a live on-stage introduction by surviving cast member Kim Novak, providing the city a chance to celebrate itself.
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
Chris Marker
Chris Marker is a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are La jetée , A Grin Without a Cat , Sans Soleil and AK , an essay film on the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa...
's documentary montage Sans Soleil
Sans Soleil
Sans Soleil is a 1983 French film directed by Chris Marker. The title is from the song cycle Sunless by Modest Mussorgsky...
.
Areas that were shot on location (not recreated in a studio):
- The Mission San Juan BautistaMission San Juan BautistaMission San Juan Bautista was founded on June 24, 1797 in what is now the San Juan Bautista Historic District of San Juan Bautista, California. Barracks for the soldiers, a nunnery, the Jose Castro House, and other buildings were constructed around a large grassy plaza in front of the church and...
, 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. As a Roman Catholic cemetery, it is unlikely Carlotta would have been buried there on account of her suicide and illegitimate daughter. 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 BridgeGolden Gate BridgeThe Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean. As part of both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1, the structure links the city of San Francisco, on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, to...
. - The gallery where Carlotta's painting appears is the California Palace of the Legion of HonorCalifornia Palace of the Legion of HonorThe California Palace of the Legion of Honor is a fine art museum in San Francisco, California...
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 MonumentMuir Woods National MonumentMuir Woods National Monument is a unit of the National Park Service on the Pacific coast of southwestern Marin County, California, north of San Francisco and part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area...
is represented by Big Basin Redwoods State ParkBig Basin Redwoods State ParkBig Basin Redwoods State Park is a state park in the U.S. state of California, located in Santa Cruz County, about northwest of Santa Cruz. The park contains almost all of the Waddell Creek watershed, which was formed by the seismic uplift of its rim, and the erosion of its center by the many...
; however, the cutaway of the redwood tree showing its age is a replica of one that can still be found at Muir Woods. - The coastal region where Scottie and Madeleine first kiss is Cypress Point, a location along the 17 Mile Drive near Pebble BeachPebble Beach, CaliforniaPebble Beach is an unincorporated community in Monterey County, California. It lies at an elevation of 3 feet . Pebble Beach is a small coastal resort destination, home to the famous golf course, Pebble Beach Golf Links....
. However, the lone tree by which they kiss is a prop brought specially to the location. - The domed building past which Scottie and Judy walk is the Palace of Fine ArtsPalace of Fine ArtsThe Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District of San Francisco, California, is a monumental structure originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in order to exhibit works of art presented there. One of only a few surviving structures from the Exposition, it is the only one still...
. - Coit TowerCoit TowerCoit Tower is a tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The tower, in the city's Pioneer Park, was built in 1933 at the request of Lillie Hitchcock Coit to beautify the city of San Francisco; Coit bequeathed one-third of her estate to the city "to be expended in an...
appears in many background shots; Hitchcock once said that he included it as a phallic symbol. 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 ParkBuena Vista ParkBuena Vista Park is a park in the Haight-Ashbury and Buena Vista Heights neighborhoods of San Francisco, California, United States. It is the oldest official park in San Francisco, established in 1867 as Hill Park and renamed Buena Vista in 1894. It is bounded by Haight Street to the north, and...
. 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 PreparatorySacred Heart Cathedral PreparatorySacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, commonly known as SH, SHC, or SHCP is a Catholic school located in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California. Founded in 1852, Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory is the oldest Catholic secondary school in San Francisco...
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.
- The Empire Hotel is a real place, called the York Hotel, and now (as of January 2009) the Hotel Vertigo at 940 Sutter Street. http://www.hotelvertigosf.com 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 re-named).
- Ernie's Restaurant (847 Montgomery St.) was a real place in North BeachNorth Beach, San Francisco, CaliforniaNorth Beach is a neighborhood in the northeast of San Francisco adjacent to Chinatown, Fisherman's Wharf and Russian Hill. The neighborhood is San Francisco's Little Italy, and has historically been home to a large Italian American population. It still holds many Italian restaurants today, though...
, 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 significant difference from the movie and actual San Francisco geography is Elster's Mission District Shipping Company (the Mission being described as "Skid Row"). The Mission district is actually inland, and the designation of a Mission Bay neighborhood only occurred in the 1980's. At the time, the neighborhood would have been referred to as South of Market (SoMA). It is possible a single "mission" phone exchange included port facilities, but the location of a shipyard in the mission district is a sheer impossibility.
Contemporaneous reception
Vertigo premiered in San Francisco on May 9, 1958 at the Stage Door Theater at Mason and Geary (now the Ruby SkyeRuby Skye
Ruby Skye is a popular nightclub in San Francisco, California. The nightclub is housed in the Native Sons of the Golden West building at 420 Mason Street, built in 1890 by architect August Headman. The nightclub is housed in what was originally an auditorium/meeting hall...
nightclub). Its performance at the box office was average, and reviews were mixed. Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
said the film showed Hitchcock's "mastery", but was too long and slow for "what is basically only a psychological murder mystery". Similarly, the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
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". However, the Los Angeles Examiner loved it, admiring the "excitement, action, romance, glamor and [the] crazy, off-beat love story". As well, New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...
also gave Vertigo a positive review by explaining that "[the] secret [of the film] is so clever, even though it is devilishly far-fetched."
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.
In an interview with François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
, Hitchcock stated that Vertigo was one of his favorite films, with some reservations. 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 at the time.
Hitchcock and Stewart received awards at the San Sebastián International Film Festival
San Sebastián International Film Festival
The San Sebastián International Film Festival is an annual FIAPF A category film festival held in the Spanish city of San Sebastián .-History:The festival was founded in 1953...
, including a Silver Seashell for Best Director (tied with Mario Monicelli
Mario Monicelli
Mario Monicelli was an Italian director and screenwriter and one of the masters of the Commedia all'Italiana , three times nominated for Oscar.-Biography:...
for I soliti ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street aka Persons Unknown)
Big Deal on Madonna Street
Big Deal on Madonna Street is a 1958 Italian criminal-comedy film, directed by Mario Monicelli, and considered to be among the masterpieces of Italian cinema. Its original title translates as "the usual unknown persons", a journalistic and bureaucratic euphemism for "unidentified criminals" or...
and Best Actor (also tied, with Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past , Champion , Ace in the Hole , The Bad and the Beautiful , Lust for Life , Paths of Glory , Gunfight at the O.K...
in The Vikings
The Vikings (film)
The Vikings is an adventure film directed by Richard Fleischer in 1958 Technicolor, produced by and starring Kirk Douglas, and based on the novel The Viking by Edison Marshall, based in its turn on legendary material from the sagas of Ragnar Lodbrok and his sons. Other actors included Tony Curtis,...
). The film was nominated for just two Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
, in the technical categories Best Art Direction - Black-and-White or Color
Academy Award for Best Art Direction
The Academy Awards are the oldest awards ceremony for achievements in motion pictures. The Academy Award for Best Art Direction recognizes achievement in art direction on a film. The films below are listed with their production year, so the Oscar 2000 for best art direction went to a film from 1999...
(Hal Pereira
Hal Pereira
Hal Pereira was an American art director and production designer....
, Henry Bumstead, Samuel M. Comer
Samuel M. Comer
Sam Comer was a set decorator who worked on almost 300 films during a career spanning four decades. He won four Academy Awards and was nominated for another 22 in the category Best Art Direction...
, Frank McKelvy) and Best Sound
Academy Award for Sound
The Academy Award for Sound Mixing is an Academy Award that recognizes the finest or most euphonic sound mixing or recording, and is generally awarded to the production sound mixers and re-recording mixers of the winning film. Compare this award to the Academy Award for Sound Editing...
(George Dutton
George Dutton
George Dutton was an American sound engineer. He was nominated for five Academy Awards; three in the category Best Effects and two for Sound Recording.-Selected filmography:Best Effects* So Proudly We Hail!...
).
Re-evaluation
In the 1950s, the French Cahiers du cinémaCahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
critics began re-evaluating Hitchcock as a serious artist rather than just a populist showman. However, even François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
's important 1962 interviews with Hitchcock (not published in English until 1967) mentions Vertigo only in passing. Dan Aulier has suggested that the real beginning of Vertigos rise in adulation was the British-Canadian scholar Robin Wood
Robin Wood (critic)
Robert Paul "Robin" Wood was a Canada-based film critic and educator. He wrote books on Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Ingmar Bergman, and Arthur Penn and was a member, until 2007, of the editorial collective that publishes the magazine CineACTION!, a film theory collective founded by Wood and...
'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". 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. Similarly adulatory reviews were written for the October 1996 showing of a restored print in 70mm and DTS
Digital Theater System
DTS is a series of multichannel audio technologies owned by DTS, Inc. , an American company specializing in digital surround sound formats used for both commercial/theatrical and consumer grade applications...
sound at the Castro Theater in San Francisco.
In 1989, Vertigo was recognized as a "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" film by the United States Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
in the first year of the registry's voting.
The film ranked 4th and 2nd respectively in Sight and Sound 1992 and 2002 critic polls of the best films ever made. In 2005, Vertigo came in second (to Goodfellas
Goodfellas
Goodfellas is a 1990 American crime film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a film adaptation of the 1986 non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese...
) in British magazine Total Film
Total Film
Total Film is a British film magazine published 13 times a year by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 and offers film, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews and features...
book 100 Greatest Movies of All Time.
In his book Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer
Blockbuster (2004 book)
Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer is a 2004 non-fiction book by British film critic Tom Shone published by Simon & Shuster UK Ltd, ISBN 0-7432-6838-5....
, however, British film critic Tom Shone
Tom Shone
Tom Shone is a British film critic and writer. He was the Sunday Times film critic from 1994-9 and has written for Slate, the New Yorker, the New York Times and the London Daily Telegraph....
argued that Vertigos critical re-evaluation has led to excessive praise, and argued for a more measured response. Faulting Sight and 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."
American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
recognition
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 MoviesAFI's 100 Years... 100 MoviesThe first of the AFI 100 Years… series of cinematic milestones, AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies...
#61 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 ThrillsAFI's 100 Years... 100 ThrillsPart of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Thrills is a list of the top 100 heart-pounding movies in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute on June 12, 2001, during a CBS special hosted by Harrison Ford....
#18 - AFI's 100 Years of Film ScoresAFI's 100 Years of Film ScoresPart of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores is a list of the top 25 film scores in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute in 2005.-The List:-External links:**...
#12 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 PassionsAFI's 100 Years... 100 PassionsPart of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Passions is a list of the top 100 greatest love stories in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute on June 11, 2002, in a CBS television special hosted by American film and TV actress Candice Bergen.-The...
#18 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #9
- AFI's 10 Top 10AFI's 10 Top 10AFI's 10 Top 10 honors the ten greatest American films in ten classic film genres. Presented by the American Film Institute , the lists were unveiled on a television special broadcast by CBS on June 17, 2008....
#1 Mystery
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 ScorseseMartin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
and Alfred's daughter, Patricia Hitchcock
Patricia Hitchcock
Patricia "Pat" Hitchcock O'Connell is a British-born American actress and producer.-Early life and career:Born in London as the only child of film director Alfred Hitchcock and film editor Alma Reville, the family moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1939, as her father would quickly make his mark...
. Engle first visited the Vertigo shooting locations in the summer of 1958, just months after completion of the film.
Restoration
In 1996, the film was given a lengthy and controversial restoration by Robert A. HarrisRobert A. Harris
Robert A. Harris is a film historian and preservationist who specializes in restoring the large-format widescreen films of the 1950s. He has restored and reconstructed a number of classic films including Lawrence of Arabia , Spartacus , My Fair Lady , Vertigo Rear Window , as well as The...
and James C. Katz
James C. Katz
James C. Katz is a film historian and preservationist who has restored and reconstructed a number of classic films. Though he began his career as a film producer, he concentrated his attention on preserving existing films....
and re-released to theaters. The new print featured restored color and newly created audio, utilizing modern sound effects mixed in DTS
Digital Theater System
DTS is a series of multichannel audio technologies owned by DTS, Inc. , an American company specializing in digital surround sound formats used for both commercial/theatrical and consumer grade applications...
digital surround sound. In October 1996, the restored Vertigo premiered at the Castro Theatre
Castro Theatre
The Castro Theatre is a popular San Francisco movie palace which became San Francisco Historic Landmark #100 in September 1976. Located at 429 Castro Street, in the Castro district, it was built in 1922 with a Spanish Colonial Baroque façade that pays homage—in its great arched central window...
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
70 mm film
70mm film is a wide high-resolution film gauge, with higher resolution than standard 35mm motion picture film format. As used in camera, the film is wide. For projection, the original 65mm film is printed on film. The additional 5mm are for magnetic strips holding four of the six tracks of sound...
, a format with a similar frame size to the VistaVision
VistaVision
VistaVision is a higher resolution, widescreen variant of the 35mm motion picture film format which was created by engineers at Paramount Pictures in 1954....
system in which it was originally shot.
One bone of contention regarding the 1996 restoration was the decision to re-record the foley
Foley artist
Foley is the reproduction of everyday sounds for use in filmmaking. These reproduced sounds can be anything from the swishing of clothing and footsteps to squeaky doors and breaking glass. The best foley art is so well integrated into a film that it goes unnoticed by the audience. It helps to...
sound effects from scratch (to allow Dolby-quality mixing for surround sound and stereo). Harris and Katz wanted to stay as close as possible to the original: "It was our intent to re-mix the original music tracks with dialogue culled from the old mono and new Foley and effects tracks, which were to have been created following Mr. Hitchcock's original notes. That was the intent. It is not what occurred, the studio having made the decision to re-invent the track anew." 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. The new mix has also been accused of putting too much emphasis on the score at the expense of the sound effects. 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. 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.
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
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...
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.
See also
- Vertigo effect
- Alfred Hitchcock filmographyAlfred Hitchcock filmographyThe filmography of Alfred Hitchcock encompasses the earliest silent films on which he worked as a title designer through to his last directorial effort in 1976. Hitchcock started his illustrious career in his native Britain, and after achieving success there, he moved to Hollywood, where he made...
- Cinema of the United StatesCinema of the United StatesThe cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
- List of American films of 1958
- Films considered the greatest ever
External links
Restoration- A Very Different "Slice of Cake:" Restoring Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo
- A Swimming in the Head Detailed critique of the 1996 restoration
Images
- Vertigo: Then & Now Before and after images of San Francisco locations seen in the film
- Vertigo Screenshot Gallery at Alfred Hitchcock Fans Online