09/30/10 - Vertigo

Vertigo (1958, 129 minutes)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052357/

After taking a shower I come back to watch Vertigo. The day has technically moved over so the second half of this double feature actually falls on the last day of September. Vertigo is frequently praised as Hitchcock's best so I was really excited about seeing this.

The film revolves around a complicated relationship between John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart), a retired police officer; Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), a college friend; and Madeline Elster (Kim Novak) his wife. Things turn out much more bizarre than this might sound though as the movie twists and turns to its conclusion.

First off, this movie is entirely different than the Psycho from a few hours earlier. Vertigo is not a horror movie like Psycho but more the stereotypical thriller with a big reveal at the end. It seems to be known for its plot but not so much so that I knew the plot going in so I liked that. However, all these things considered I didn't like the film near as much. I get the impression that Vertigo is a movie that improves on each subsequent viewing (and reading a bit after my watch people seemed to agree) but as for now I'm not completely sold.

My biggest complaint with Vertigo is actually the plot. I felt pulled along by the plot. I never felt like things were going in a natural way with the characters behaving realistically (a point for which I praised Psycho). Instead I felt like the movie was forcing many aspects and pulling me along for the ride - sometimes reluctantly. It wasn't a good feeling. Overall, I felt like I could've paused the film for an extended period of time and come back to it in the morning or something and not missed out all that much. Compare this to Psycho where I was on the edge of my seat for pretty much every second.

I'll take a time-out here to address something: it's not fair to compare Vertigo completely against Psycho. Basically for the reason I said to start: they're different genres. However, I can compare overall movie experiences and little things done by Hitchcock in each.

Moving on, I did like a lot of stuff that Vertigo did. Most notable is the weird zoom technique used to show the vertigo of Scottie. It's somewhat unsettling but it works really well. It's what was used (a little oddly) later in Jaws and worked there as well. I don't really know if it had been done before but I'm under the impression it hadn't. Next, the acting is again top-notch. I don't know why actresses now can't be both quality actresses and beautiful. Again, Novak works exceedingly well for her role. She has a much more seductive look to her than either Kelly or Leigh did in Rear Window or Psycho and that's perfectly fitting for the character she plays. Stewart again delivers a stunning performance. This "everyman quality" of his that I constantly heard mentioned shows through again as everything he does is quite relatable. Sure, not everybody can get lucky and get someone so beautiful to fall in love with them like he does here, but it's just how he says little lines and moves around that make him so normal. He comes across as a real person which only further makes us root for him to succeed.

One minor thing that doesn't really fit in with any other comments about Vertigo is the comedy in it. Okay, so it's not overflowing with jokes or anything, but I felt that frequently at the beginning of the movie that a scene would end with some quip that somewhat felt out of place. These usually were delivered by Scottie as he walked out of a room or his friend as the camera instead focused on her as he left. It's not that the jokes fell flat or anything - they seemed kind of natural for the characters - it's just that they were an awkward way to end the scene. It wasn't anything major though.

Really for me, Vertigo comes down to its iffy plot though. The reveal is big and I didn't really see it coming so it caught me by surprise. For the most part I was taken aback during some scenes before it because I found Scottie's behavior a little too corny. This might seem to contradict what I just said above with him coming off so real and believable but I use corny in more the whimsical and confused way as opposed to any unbelievable connotation that could be associated to the word. It really just goes back to what I said earlier: I feel pulled along as I watch Vertigo. Things twist and wind as they get more complicated but it reaches a point where nothing really clicked for me and I guess at this point I lost interest. I think the second act has bad pacing (after Madeline's death but before the reveal that Madeline and Judy are the same person) and stretches a bit too much as it opposes too much what the film was doing with the first bit.

Then again, I could say this was the intent all along. I'm not a Hitchcock buff as this was only my third film of his. Do I know any of his characteristics yet? No, except that he's in all his movies for one scene. Do I recognize that his films are wonderfully put together? Without a doubt. But I don't feel like I fully "get" Vertigo yet and that all can't be blamed on me. Some films almost demand a second watch and this is easily one of them.

Overall, I gave this film a 7/10. When I watch it again with more understanding of how everything works, it will almost surely go up I reckon. But until then, I have to give it a score based on what I think now. Vertigo is deep and complicated, but it's also a little off-kilter in my opinion. It doesn't hit me with the suspense and thriller mix I was hoping for, but maybe for this Hitchcock, my expectations were just too high.