So, here’s some thoughts on Vertigo – the movie which was annointed the finest movie of all time in that most recent sigh and sound poll. I’ll drop this here: it’s weird.
So, just quickly here’s the entire story – spoilers ahead – a detective who retired from the force after he is discovered to have vertigo is tasked with following the young wife of an old college mate. She acts in a strange manner and it seems as though she’s being possessed by the ghost of her grandmother – a woman who commit suicide many years before. Like all good private detectives, he falls in love with his friend’s wife whom he is supposed to be tailing. At a Spanish mission, she jumps off the steeple, and because of his vertigo, he’s not able to climb up to save her. Her death means that the husband gets all of her estate (ship-building, in case you ask) and the detective goes into a weird catatonic state after an inquiry deems him not responsible for the death.
He comes out of it when he meets a woman who looks a little like the wife, and after a very strange, manipulative relationship, it turns out that this woman was playing the wife – the husband had paid this young woman to act crazy, to trick the detecitve into thinking her mad, before the real wife was flung off the steeple. In a deranged fit, while the young woman is (for some reason) ready to run away with him – they RETURN to the steeple, seemingly in order for the detective to rid himself of his vertigo and confirm the truth about the death. The young woman, frightened by a nun, jump/falls off the steeple while the detective looks on.
That’s the story, it seems a little strange, but it’s much more than that.
Anyway, here are some thoughts:
There are special effects used throughout which add a certain charm. There’s a fair bit of green screen effects, especially when characters are driving, and the special effect of someone falling to their death is used a few times. It’s not convincing, but it’s pretty cool. Later on, Jimmy Stewart (he’s the detective) to show his state of high anxiety, goes into a technicolour dreamscape which reminded me of that bit in Dumbo with the bubbles and pink elephants. Charming, sure.
Anyway, as a private eye, Jimmy isn’t great. He barely keeps his distance while tailing his mark. In the worryingly empty San Francisco he would definitely be discovered if there wasn’t a plan in place to keep him following her. When the woman he’s watching jumps in the water, he a) feels her tits while he is saving her, and b) takes her home and strips her instead of calling the police or ambulance. To top it all off, he falls in love with this woman, a woman he believes is an old friend’s wife, before she dies under his watch. It’s a pretty crappy private dick job from old Jimmy.
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| Fun fact: in 1958, a boob-grab like this could lead to pregnancy. |
When, later on, he finds the actress who was playing the wife, they embark on a very strange relationship. It reads as maniupulative and potentially abusive today, and probably did in 1958, too. He stalks her so that he finds where she lives, and his mad eyes and uncompromosing demeanour never let’s us see why she has fallen in love with him.
For the record, it’s the same actress, but because of the clothes, I couldn’t tell it was the same woman. It’s Kim Novak, who is still alive as of the time of writing, which is nice, and something I can’t help but keep an eye out for now. Anyway, this young woman was posing as the wife, and after the death of the real wife, she’s able to go back to her regular life, which seems to involve walking around showing off her slim waist. It doesn’t seem that she’s been paid very much for this difficult and dangerous action which would have taken months of planning, as she’s still living in the same hotel she ever was.
Jimmy Stewart falls in love with this new woman. He forces this much younger woman to dress and look exactly like the dead wife through clothes fittings and hair dyeing. It’s weird. He is in a clothes shop with a non-consenting woman, forcing her to wear clothes, and the shopkeeper just says ‘there’s a man who knows what he wants’ – it’s kind of funny, but it definitely plays weirdly today.
It’s not helped by the fact that Jimmy Stewart is in his very late 40s while he chases after a woman who is, we’re told, 26 – his other love interest, a woman called Midge is described as being Jimmy’s age, but she looks like his daughter. I watched this movie yesterday, but I’m still not sure how her story ended – was the last thing she said in the movie telling the psychiatrist that Jimmy is still in love with the wife? That’s not a very satisfying storyline.
The movie is from 1958, and there are a few funny incidences, too. We’re meant to believe that the husband broke the wife’s neck, carried her up several flights, then threw her off a bell tower without anyone seeing, despite at the very end, a speedy old nun is able to overhear mere voices. Also, is there only one restaurant in all of SF for them to eat at?
There are a few other things too, they notably turn down cigarettes from a town gossip, and Jimmy says ‘it’s a little early in the day’ for him to have a drink when meeting with his old friend. However soon afterwards, the wife, in a state of shock, is given brandy, arranges to meet with with him later, and he says, yes but in a couple of hours: “Make it noon.” How early are they drinking then? He also describes brandy as tasting like venison… which… it doesn’t.
Perhaps the most Hitchcock-ian element of the entire movie, and the most telling reflection of the time it was made, is the strange attitude the whole thing takes to mental illness. We’re told at the beginning that Jimmy’s vertigo is only curable by another trauma overtaking it (which explains why they go up the bell tower again at the end – note that it’s not a convincing reason). After the death of the wife, he goes into a catatonic state which is seemingly curable by Mozart. This strange attitude to psychotherapy is similar to other Hitchcock movies, such as Spellbound, and that strange bit at the very end of Psycho which makes nonsense of the rest of the movie. I’m sure that Hitchcock had some concerns with the branch of medicine at the time, but I’m too lazy to look it up further. At very least, it’s an interesting snapshot intop the thinking of the time, for sure.
At the end of this is a very weird choice for the best movie ever made. Arguments could be made that it’s not in the top, oh, 15, of its own director’s best movies. The plot is really weird. At the end of all of this, this is a very strange movie, it’s interesting, sure, the music is good and... you know, it’s well shot, but you’re left thinking ‘why is this considered the greatest movie of all time?’ in a way you don’t with many others. Put it this way..not many ‘great’ movies end with ‘the main woman dies when a nun spooks her and she falls the same was as the woman she was posing as did.’
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