Vertigo [Blu-ray]

It's the greatest movie of all time, at least I think so in certain moods. Tonight we saw this one at the Castro in 70 MM and it looked pretty convincing, almost as though it might have been made yesterday. But it's long, I had forgotten how long! Maybe because the movie breaks off into two more or less equal parts, it's like watching a double feature, a movie that carries its own sequel in its tail. This evening I decided to give myself up to the Bernard Herrmann music--since it's so insistent you listen to it I decided to put my other senses on dull and just go for that total immersion.... The way that Barbara Bel Geddes recommends that James Stewart immerse himself in Mozart ("Mozart is the boy for you," she says, rather infantilizing Mozart if such a thing were actually possible, but that sort of remark reminds me of why Scotty doesn't really appreciate Midge's good qualities, because she's so much like a mother!)--in other words, I let the Herrmann score wash all over me like the high tide that splashes behind the lovers in the climactic kiss scene in Vertigo. So what happened? I started wondering, that one theme is so dominant and seductive in the score, was it ever made into a pop tune with lyrics, sung by Nat King Cole or Julie London or someone? Help me out there, soundtrack geeks! It's gorgeous indeed, and yet I remember when I was a kid seeing Vertigo for the first time, I didn't like the music, it felt dissonant and distracting. There's that one section of music when Scottie follows Madeline Elster into the Mission Dolores and he turns a corner and finds himself in the graveyard where the music goes sort of "religious" in a really rote way that just wasn't working for me, it made me giggle to myself like, didn't anybody else in the theater get the joke? The Castro crowd was certainly giggling when Midge tells Scottie, "Oh you want the kind of guy who knows about the gay old times in San Francisco back when everything was gay!" But when this mock religious bell tinkle music began I heard nothing from the audience, just awe perhaps. SPOILER ALERT. Now for my own challenges with the movie. I was struck by Ellen Corby here as perhaps never before, the hotel manager who wipes her rubber plant leaves with olive oil. How is it that Madeline is in her room, above their heads, and yet Corby swears that she never came today, points to the key dangling from the hook? We have seen her with our own eyes, and it looks like she's undressing, and yet when Corby calls down the stairs, "Mister Detective, do you want to take a look yourself?" Scottie manages to run up the stairs like a trouper and no, she's not there. But why? Corby must be lying, perhaps she is in on the plot but if so, why the mystification here? Why doesn't she just say, "Yes, she's upstairs," and Scottie can wait for her to leave? I wonder if there wasn't some extra plot line being developed here that eventually for cut back from the finished film, in which dematerialization itself would have been used by the criminal cohort? But for those who think that Gavin Elster will get off scot-free at the end because Scottie has no living witness for the substitution plot at the heart of the film, I foresee a crazy Scottie going back to the McKittrick and rubbing Ellen Corby with olive oil until she too confesses her involvement (whatever it is), and voila, Elster led off in handcuffs and Corby sobbing and dripping with emollient. And also, has anyone thought much about Midge as a possible accomplice to the murder? I thought about it during the Argosy Bookshop scene, where Midge first assures Scottie, oh, Pop Leibel the bookseller, sure, he's a great friend of mine! But when they go to the store, Pop seems only vaguely aware of Midge at best. he calls her Ma'am or Miss as though he's never met her before. When Midge goes back into the store and taps Pop's knee, affectionately saying,"Aw thanks Pop!" a little ping went off in my head and I thought, "She's lying!" It seemed she was lying all through the movie, and once you see it, you can't miss it for the rest of the movie, she just seems guilty of everything! Maybe some of it can be blamed on a certain blatant quality of the exposition, "Midge, we were engaged for three weeks, weren't we? Or am I remembering wrong?" Her pencil snaps, her eyes narrow, female rage threatens to boil over the lens but she's already part of the plot or so I gather. I wish Midge could write out a letter to Scottie apologizing for framing him, the way that Judy Barton does, such a handy device for telling us what went on while we were just grooving with the brooding music and wondering why San Francisco has so many white people in it! There's that one beautiful, tall Asian woman sitting in a corner at Ernie's--just representing, I guess. And maybe a Spanish man or two among the jury panel at San Juan Bautista during the inquest into Madeline's death. However, the Chinese presence in San Francisco is also "represented" by Jimmy Stewart telling Kim Novak about the "Chinese saying" that if you save someone's life, you are forever after responsible for them. My student Leo, from China, says that in the real China that is not an actual belief anyone he knows has ever heard of. Meanwhile the Spanish and Mexican feeling in Vertigo is quite palpable. How about James Stewart's nightmare? We see him and Gavin Elster triangulating over a beautiful woman dressed as Carlotta in the painting, and we see, it's not Kim Novak at all, it's the original of the painting. Is the actress supposed to be playing the actual Madeline who by this time has been killed? And Scottie's subconscious is somehow pointing this up to him so that he wakes up sweating? What is the name of that actress I wonder? "Regal" isn't the word for her. Is she Vera Miles? No, I think she's too old to be Vera Miles. (Kind informants have told me that this actress, whose eyes can be seen close up in the opening title sequence, with spirals coming out of them, is called Joanne Genthon, who never made another picture!) So, I don't have time to read all 493 other reviews of Vertigo to see if others have established the guilt of Barbara Bel Geddes, but I did see that one reviewer (at least one) has applied the Alison Bechdel test to Vertigo and seen it fail, since the two female leads seem never to be in the same frame (though we do see Midge driving by Scottie's apartment at the exact same moment that Madeline steps out of his door, and Midge starts muttering behind the wheel and drives away, apparently upset). But perhaps not upset at all, since she has engineered the whole thing? Maybe there's a reason in the plot and not so much in the psychosexual atmosphere, why Judy must not see Midge at this point in time--or at any point, since doing so would make Elster's and Midge's plot collapse in of itself? Does the key to the mystery lie back in Salina, Kansas? I think so. If someone gave me one hundred dollars, I'd find out the truth and tell the world. Vertigo is also a film in which women show men representations of more than one woman (as though to hint at a "monstrous regiment of women" that might one day bring down the oligarchy)--we have Midge of course gleefully jamming her own face into her version of the Legion of Honor portrait of Carlotta (as though to say, "I did it") and we also have Judy showing Scottie her proofs of identity--her dad in one old photo, and she and her mother in another. Check out that photo of Judy and her mother, what are we really looking at? Was Judy to have been kept away from Midge because she might recognize the face of her own mother? I know it sounds preposterous, but really, when Scottie asks Midge if she remembers Gavin Elster from when they were all in college together before the war, and she shakes her head "no," maintaining her quizzical smile--frankly I don't believe her! The screenwriters link her to Elster, then encourage you to forget about their college days together. Scottie and Elster seem about a million years older than Midge, but if she was in school with them, is she also supposed to be fiftyish--in other words, plenty old enough to be Judy's mother. And in that case, is it too far removed to name Scottie as Judy's father, perhaps conceived during the famous 3 week engagement?!?! I don't think so. Watch Vertigo again with my theory in mind and watch the jigsaw puzzle click together. Let me add my interpretation of Pop Liebel's "Carlotta story" as a clue. As we hear, the 19th century Carlotta had a child and then the child was taken from her and she was driven to living off the streets and going mad and painfully asking passerby, "Where is my little girl?" Maybe that is the link between "Midge" and "Judy." That hidden link, but maybe Judy is now living in San Francisco because her real mother (Midge) has gotten her there as part of her secret plan to destroy Jimmy Stewart? I have now watched and rewatched the so called alternate ending to Vertigo, an extra to the DVD (and also readily available on You-Tube). What do you think? For me it is proof positive of Midge's guilt, as she hears the radio announcer report that Gavin Elster has been captured and prosecuted in Europe, and her face grows bleak as she realizes, in my mind, that Gavin will turn state's evidence on her on whatever the equivalent term is in the courts of Italy. She will never get her Scottie, who stands a broken man next to her even if she's cleaned out nearly every trace of herself as an artist. And how about the announcer's report on the three Berkeley students arrested for trying to smuggle a cow up a staircase? Three Berkeley students (Gavin, Midge, Scottie). Staircase? Well, we know what that is. "Cow"? At Columbia that's what Harry Cohn called Kim Novak when he was mad at her or trying to taunt her. An allegory for the secrets of Vertigo?

One of the best movies ever a old classic probably Hitchcock's best.

Arguably one of the best films of the 50s/60s. Quintassential Hitchock. Soundtrack is phenomenal Bernard Hermann. My highest recommendation. Some of Hitchcock`s finest work.

There is a shot early in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo that takes place in a restaurant called Ernie's. In the scene before, Scottie (Jimmy Stewart in perhaps the best performance of his career), a retired police detective, has been asked by his friend Gavin Elster to follow his wife Madeline (Kim Novak). Gavin believes that a dead spirit is possessing his wife, and he wants Scottie for the job, and he in turn only reluctantly agrees. That evening at the restaurant, as he is sitting at the bar, Scottie watches as the Elsters walk by, and we see Madeline for the very first time. Through some extraordinarily well-placed lighting on Novak, we get the sense that she is saint-like. And her beauty immediately transfixes Scottie. There is no objection to the fact that Hitchcock made several masterpieces in his day, but Vertigo, a movie about romantic obsession and unparalleled fear, is perhaps his greatest film. Its feeling of being surreal is unlike anything I've seen in any film, and the performances by its two lead actors immensely support that feeling. The film will perhaps become very recognized as being the only film to rank above Orson Welles' Citizen Kane in the latest Sight and Sound poll by the British Film Institute; and this particular poll ranks not just the best American films, but the best films of all time ranging from all over the world. Citizen Kane had held the top spot from 1962-2002, and in the last poll before 2012, Vertigo ranked second. There is a debate as to whether Hitchcock's film grew in popularity among the critics or if it has to do with the fact that more critics were polled last year. Does either side win out? Perhaps, but both play a major role in the overthrow of Welles. A Hitchcock regular, Stewart is absolutely superb in this role, mostly due to his good natured and caring personification. But he certainly exemplifies what it means to be so obsessed romantically that it literally drives one into madness. The most famous example in the film comes when Scottie is dreaming, specifically of the events he has witnessed. He dreams of Carlotta Valdes, her empty grave, her necklace, and her actually being there at the courtroom, standing between Scottie and Gavin. The colors used to express Scottie's obsessions and fears are used brilliantly, and when he wakes up in a sweat, we know that we are dealing with not only a great performance, but also one of the best in all of cinema. What is great about Vertigo is that it not only deals with Scottie's romantic obsession, but also with Madeline's obsessions; early in the film when Scottie follows her, we see Madeline standing in a graveyard, looking over the grave of a woman named Carlotta Valdes, who was dead by the age of 25; and as coincidence has it, Madeline is 25. (Ironically, Novak was 25 when the film was first released in 1958). Next, she visits an art museum and studies a painting entitled Portrait of Carlotta, which is occupied by a woman who shares a heavy resemblance. Her checked name at a hotel is Carlotta Valdes, and Gavin tells Scottie some time later that Valdes is Madeline's great-grandmother who tragically committed suicide, but she has no knowledge of this; and until the first scene at the church and again until the film's climactic moment, we ask ourselves as to why Madeline is obsessed with Carlotta Valdes. One of the scenes towards the end of the film is particularly remarkable (in addition to an already remarkable film): Scottie sees Madeline's image in Judy, and so he has her wear Madeline's clothes, her exact makeup, and her exact hairstyle. This is as far as romantic obsession can get, and there will probably never be a better example in all of film. Scottie is obsessed with Madeline's beauty when he first sees her in the restaurant, and he is obsessed still when he dresses Judy up like his lost love. One critic thought in 1958 that Novak was just a little bit more than competent. I guess he didn't realize the beauty of what it means to act, because her performance is one of the most towering in all of cinema. As Madeline, she is able to convey mysterious and even erotic emotions that seduce Scottie. As Judy, she is an average, everyday woman who has played the part exceptionally, and now it's time to move on. How she can move from one persona to the other and have it still be the same exact person without any doubt whatsoever is simply stunning. As a whole, it is one of the most complicated pieces of work by any actress in the history of film. In the whole grand scheme of things, the villain is of course Gavin. There are few things more evil than to take advantage of someone's disability (especially when that someone is a good friend) and then stab them in the back. But we must ask again: why? He claims early in the film that he married his way into his position of power, but is that the only reason he married Madeline? He is given very little screen time and is played out like an innocent friend, but as we know (unless of course you've never had the fortune of ever seeing the film), he could very well be one of Hitchcock's most intelligent and despicable villains. At the heart of the film however is the score by Bernard Herrmann. From the opening title music with that beautiful D augmented arpeggio to the very finale of the film, Herrmann may well have turned one of the great films of the 1950s into one of the single best motion pictures ever made. It is an astoundingly beautiful score, perhaps one of the two or three best the composer ever wrote. The ending of the film is unbelievably iconic and powerful. As Scottie drags Judy up the stairs of the church, he breaks into nervous sweats and tells her how it happened, but then as they climb further up, two things happen: the first is that he manages to convince her to tell the truth; the other is that he is finally able to overcome his fear of heights, which, despite his obsession and hinted lust, became his breaking point earlier in the film. As we see in the opening of the film, his acrophobia led to the death of a police officer, which leads him to retire from his work. Scottie won't let it happen a third time. There are debates as to whether or not Vertigo is Hitchcock's greatest film. It seems to be the consensus, as it was the only one of the director's ever to rank in the top ten of any Sight and Sound poll. But that is superfluous; by looking at some of his most well regarded work (North by Northwest, Rear Window, Notorious, or Psycho), none of them are as fascinating or as complicated as this tour de force. In Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock reaches his most flawless.

Expectacular película que por fin está en mis manos .

It's been called one of the greatest films ever made. Younger audiences may not get it, but it's a truly classic film, and if you've never seen it before there's a great twist. Enjoy great film making.

John Ferguson dit Scottie, est policier. Alors qu'il poursuit un malfrat sur les toits avec son collègue, il glisse et se trouve suspendu dans le vide. Souffrant d'acrophobie (peur phobique de la hauteur), il est tétanisé et ne peut prendre la main que lui tend son collègue. Ce dernier fait alors une chute mortelle. Traumatisé, Scottie quitte la police. Un jour, une ancienne connaissance qui s'inquiète de l'état psychique de sa femme Madeleine, l'engage pour la suivre et savoir à quoi elle passe ses journées. Scottie va découvrir un cas étrange d'assimilation à un personnage du passé et tomber amoureux de Madeleine. Tout le monde a probablement déjà vu "Vertigo" au moins une fois. Est-ce le meilleur Hitchcock ? Pour moi, la réponse est oui...et non (mode normand IN). Oui, car au-delà de l'emprise du formel à laquelle il cède parfois volontiers dans ses films jusqu'à en faire un élément primordial (même si ici, le langage cinématographique est exceptionnel), il y a dans "Vertigo", des personnages avec des caractères bien marqués, qui attirent une véritable empathie. Cette fois, la sensibilité émerge de l'objet filmé et l'étude psychologique des personnages prend au fond le pas sur l'intrigue elle-même que de toute façon, Hitchcock dévoile bien avant la fin tandis que le tout baigne dans une incroyable dimension onirique. Grâce soit rendue aux principaux acteurs. Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) est émouvante dans son personnage de femme se consumant d'un amour non partagé, feignant quand même d'en plaisanter (tout en adoptant une position psychanalytiquement ambiguë en appelant Scottie" mon petit enfant ' !). Scottie (James Stewart) est touchant (et agaçant aussi) dans son enfermement amoureux qui le rend égoïste. Madeleine / Judy (Kim Novak) enfin, est d'une fragilité attendrissante, tiraillée entre ses personnalités, incapable de résister aux caprices obsessionnels de Scottie et à sa fragilité. Oui, car tout ce qui rend Hitchcock unique, se retrouve dans ce film. Ses thématiques préférées : la paranoïa, les faux-semblants (ne pas oublier que le générique est centré sur l'oeil), la disparition, la tentation du crime parfait en utilisant un innocent, le sexe qui est partout tout en n'étant nulle part (ah, Novak nue dans le lit de Scottie...).... Ses trouvailles cinématographiques : - le fameux "Dolly zoom ' -zoom avant et travelling arrière dans la cage d'escalier du clocher ; - les jeux de filtres : le faux brouillard dans le cimetière, le halo qui entoure Judy au moment où elle ressort de la salle de bains " déguisée ' en Madeleine et surtout (je ne m'étais jamais rendu compte de ça, grâce soit rendue au Blu-ray), le fond rouge du mur du restaurant qui "s'illumine" au moment où le visage de Madeleine se tourne de trois quarts en direction de Scottie. - Des scènes exceptionnelles : le malaise de Madeleine dans la forêt de séquoias, la poursuite initiale du voleur qui ouvre le film, le cauchemar de Scottie avant sa dépression, Madeleine dans sa robe blanche devant l'appartement de Scottie, tandis qu'au loin se dresse la coit tower, Madeleine et Scottie qui s'embrassent pour la 1ère fois avec la vague qui rugit derrière eux, sans oublier évidemment, les scènes de chute : celle de Scottie dans son rêve, celle de Madeleine dans son imagination et celle de Madeleine racontée par Judy... Si on ajoute à ça, la merveilleuse musique de Bernard Hermann, le générique en spirale de Saul Bass (qui a un peu vieilli mais qui devait être extraordinaire à l'époque), le décor des rues de San Francisco et des (rares) scènes d'humour comme celle où Midge répond à Scottie étonné par un prototype de soutien-gorge, qu'à son âge, il a déjà du en voir... Bref, un très grand film. Mais le meilleur, non. Non, car la scène finale est quand même trop frustrante. Le dénouement apparaît incroyablement précipité (oups !), comme si Hitchcock avait voulu s'en débarrasser et que pour lui aussi au fond, le meilleur moment c'est quand on monte l'escalier. La technique. Côté images, c'est une réussite sans que ce soit exceptionnel. On conserve le grain cinéma tout en bénéficiant d'excellents contrastes. Le bémol vient paradoxalement des initiatives Hitchcock avec ses filtres. Avec sa haute définition, le Blu-ray rend ces trucages assez perturbants dans certains cas (scène du cimetière, cauchemar de Scottie, sortie de salle de bains...). Côté son, c'est aussi très bien. La VO est en DTS-HD MA 5.1 (il y a une VF DTS mono 2.0, pas testée). La musique d'Hermann est présente quand il faut : ça claque, ça tourbillonne. Les voix sont claires et n'obligent pas à tendre l'oreille. Les bonus sont souvent intéressants. J'ai bien aimé celui de 30 mn intitulé l' obsession autour de 'Vertigo ' avec l'intervention de James Katz et Robert Harris qui présentent (sommairement) les étapes de la restauration, les interviews de Barbara Bel Geddes, de Kim Novak (je croyais qu'elle était morte !), d'un des scénaristes.... L'info que j'ai trouvée la plus surprenante : Hitchcock ne mettait jamais l'œil derrière une caméra pour diriger. Le bonus de 55mn intitulé " Partenaires de crime' m'a paru un peu long par rapport aux informations qu'on y trouvait. Autre module intéressant de 15mn : " Hitchcock/Truffaut '. Ce sont des images du film avec un son audio par dessus, tiré des fameux entretiens. Etc. Un film à découvrir ou redécouvrir qui dévoile un peu plus à chaque fois.

I was told by a friend that I have to watch Vertigo. He was right. This was one of the best movies I've ever seen. It's a cinematic thrill ride. It's everything you could want in a movie. And better yet, you wouldn't believe that a film made in 1958 has such good image and sound quality, thanks to a 1996 restoration project. It's a must watch. The version I got was the bluray with a mostly blue and white cover. While it has all the special features and many language and subtitle options, the menus are a bit hard to navigate as it mostly uses symbols instead of words. You might be better off getting the version with the mostly black and red cover. But either way, you have to watch this movie. It's the best, I love it!

Arrived in excellent condition and in time and works perfectly, Great Movie!