Vertigo Redux

[Ed Gordon]

According to the hundreds of film critics polled by the British magazine Sight & Sound, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is the second-best movie ever made... When Sight & Sound polled critics a decade ago, they picked Vertigo as the movie of all time. In both cases it ranked ahead of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, and other masterpieces like The Godfather, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Tokyo Story.

So... who wants to see a remake? Apparently Paramount does, as they are currently developing a new version of Vertigo that they hope will star none other than Robert Downey Jr. in the role originally played by Jimmy Stewart. In Hitchcock’s film, Stewart plays a police detective afflicted with a fear of heights; forced into an early retirement. He accepts a job following an acquaintance’s wife, who has been acting strangely. That leads him into a case full of twists, obsessions, and tragedies.

Whether the remake will be a tragedy or not remains to be seen, but Paramount is working on it. Deadline reports that Steven Knight — who is already in the news this week as the new writer of the upcoming Star Wars movie — is working on the screenplay, based on the original script by Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor.

Hitchcock’s movies have in some cases been remade before — even by Hitchcock, who directed a new version of The Man Who Knew Too Much 22 years after the original film he’d also made. Of course, some of the remakes of Hitchcock films have become downright notorious. (Hitchcock puns!) Gus Van Sant’s 1998 shot-for-shot remake of Psycho has gone down in history as one of the strangest experiments in all of Hollywood cinema. How the new Vertigo will turn out is anyone’s guess.

Credit: screencrush.com

They can play Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho along with the new Vertigo as a double FUBAR.

[Osi Osgood]

They never learn ... they just never learn.

[Larry Arpin]

If you've seen The Fuller Brush Man starring Red Skelton from 1948 you've seen The Fuller Brush Girl starring Lucille Ball from 1950. Same plot with the EXACT same reveal of the bad guy. Deja vue. This will go on forever.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Aside from me, is there anyone else on the Forum that doesn't like Vertigo? It's my least favorite Hitchcock film and that includes Family Plot & Marnie!

[Graham Ritchie]

I found when watching my blu-ray a while back, it made me a bit dizzy

[Mike Newell]

Aside from me, is there anyone else on the Forum that doesn't like Vertigo? It's my least favorite Hitchcock film and that includes Family Plot & Marnie!

I wasn’t fussed about Vertigo the first time I saw it and wondered what all the fuss was about. Maybe this is the reason Hitchcock withdrew them for years until after his death. Bernard Herrmann’s score won we over a bit but it is cheap back projection and our Jimmy’s wooden performance that are the main gripes. I would say Rope is my least favourite Hitchcock. Despite being short it is hard to get through.

[Mike Newell]

Credit: screencrush.com

They can play Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho along with the new Vertigo as a double FUBAR.

I actually think Vertigo could be remade and could be improved. All remakes are not bad.

[Brian Fretwell]

At lest with Psycho they had the (bad) excuse that they wanted it in colour.

[Mike Newell]

At lest with Psycho they had the (bad) excuse that they wanted it in colour.

I went to see that in the cinema when it was released and apart from it being a frame by frame remake of the original have no memory of it at all.

[Osi Osgood]

Hey! I've got an idea! Why don't they make some new 35mm prints, for those theaters that still project film, and just release new digital files for the others, of the classic, for all of those folks who have never had the pleasure of seeing the original classic in the theaters, and save an enormous amount of money and make even more profit on w classic? Why am I the only one thinking like? Of course with the remake, Shorty can get a job in the film, there's a plus! I never liked the rear projection in this film either. The other thing is that, quite frankly, it is a very slow moving film, but this remake fever always ends up with the remake being looked upon unfavorably. Could you imagine them remaking Star Wars? Let's see, Princess Leia will now be a man, Han Solo will be transgendered, Chewie will be an asmatic chiuaua, and Darth Vader will be a misunderstood emo kid.

[Mike Newell]

Hey! I've got an idea! Why don't they make some new 35mm prints, for those theaters that still project film, and just release new digital files for the others, of the classic, for all of those folks who have never had the pleasure of seeing the original classic in the theaters, and save an enormous amount of money and make even more profit on w classic? Why am I the only one thinking like? Of course with the remake, Shorty can get a job in the film, there's a plus! I never liked the rear projection in this film either. The other thing is that, quite frankly, it is a very slow moving film, but this remake fever always ends up with the remake being looked upon unfavorably. Could you imagine them remaking Star Wars? Let's see, Princess Leia will now be a man, Han Solo will be transgendered, Chewie will be an asmatic chiuaua, and Darth Vader will be a misunderstood emo kid.

Give them time Osi. If there is money involved you can guarantee a remake or sequel . Sure they make more money from Star Wars merchandise cheap crap.

[Ed Gordon]

Aside from me, is there anyone else on the Forum that doesn't like Vertigo? It's my least favorite Hitchcock film and that includes Family Plot & Marnie!

You are not alone Doug. It was a box office failure when it was released in 1958. I would venture to guess that the majority of our forum's members never saw it on first run (including me). Like Wizard of Oz, it took years to find an audience.

Here is a link to IMDB that shows the user reviews by user rating in reverse order. You will see pages of user reviews by those that vehemently hated the movie. Actually, you can do this with any movie, and you will see that no movie ever produced was universally loved. Personally I enjoyed it, but like any film, if you take a critical look you will find flaws.

Here is a review done on it's 60th anniversary:

Vertigo is re-released this week to mark the film's 60th anniversary. Although now regarded as a masterpiece, it has taken a long time for the 1958 picture to reach appropriately vertiginous heights.

Once every decade, Sight & Sound magazine polls critics and film practitioners to determine the greatest films of all time. In 2012, Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo hit the top spot, dislodging Orson Welles's Citizen Kane from its 50-year reign as the best film ever made.

Writing in the same magazine in 1959, Penelope Houston noted that the plot of Vertigo was "of egg-shell thinness" and "reminiscent of things Hitchcock has done before, and generally done with more verve". Various contemporaneous critics found nice things to say. Just about.

Bosley Crowther at the New York Times enjoyed the film's big reveal, even though it was "devilishly far-fetched". Writing in The Sunday Times, Dilys Powell praised the "vitality" of the supporting performances. The Los Angeles Times praised the scenery.

The mixed reviews almost certainly hurt Vertigo at the box office and the film was widely regarded as a failure. Hitchcock pointed an accusatory finger at Jimmy Stewart. At 50-years-old, Stewart was, according to the director, too old to convincingly play then-25-year-old Kim Novak's love interest.

More likely, audiences didn't like seeing Jimmy Stewart in such a dark place, having cheered him on in Rear Window (1954) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).

Stewart’s character Scottie is definitely problematic. Scottie is an injured cop who is hired by a friend to follow his aloof wife, Madeleine. Scottie becomes obsessed with her, but his extreme agoraphobia prevents him from rescuing her when she jumps to her death. He ends up in a sanatorium in a near-catatonic state. Upon release, he notices a woman who reminds him of Madeleine. She introduces herself as Judy from Kansas and Scottie creepily sets about remodelling her in Madeleine’s image.

In a series of 1962 interviews between Hitchcock and Truffaut, the British director spoke about the sequence wherein Scottie dresses Judy as her dead predecessor as “a form of necrophilia”.

Today, at a time when we’re accustomed to such concepts as gaslighting and stalking, Scottie looks more deranged than ever, a psychological state amplified by Saul Bass’s discombobulating credits and the camera technique devised by an uncredited second-unit cameraman, Irwin Roberts, and now named for the film, which requires zooming forward while pulling the camera backward.

As with most of the movieverse’s canon, there’s an intriguing counterfactual history. Vera Miles was Hitchcock’s first choice to play Madeleine/Judy, but had to drop out when she became pregnant. Novak was unhappy with the colour of the iconic grey suit that costume designer Edith Head had originally made for Miles. Head talked her around with swathes of different grey fabrics.

The film went through multiple name changes, including A Matter of Fact, The Mad Carlotta, Darkling I Listen, Face in the Shadow and Possessed by a Stranger. The original 1954 source novel D'Entre les Morts (Among the Dead) by French crime-writing team Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac – who also wrote the novel Les Diaboliques and penned the screenplay for Georges Franju's classic horror movie Eyes Without a Face – was set in Paris not San Francisco.

Bernard Herrmann didn’t conduct his own score due to a musician’s guild strike. The Production Code Administration were appalled by the film’s illicit sexual content, including a conversation between Scottie and his sensible ex-girlfriend Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) about her bra.

They initially demanded an alternate ending, emphasising the capture of the film’s villain. Happily, Hitchcock talked them down, although the other coda did surface in 1983 and was later added as an extra on BluRay and DVD editions.

Source: (https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/f...time-1.3561982)

[Ed Gordon]

I found when watching my blu-ray a while back, it made me a bit dizzy

It made me dizzy too! My first viewing was with over-head projector I had rigged up with a small B&W television. When the policeman fell off the roof, I felt I was right behind him! The opening credits by Saul Bass and Bernard Herrmann's score certainly sets you up to be dizzy.

I have since upgraded my video projector to 4K and found the UHD Bluray on Ebay.

[Ed Gordon]

Hey! I've got an idea! Why don't they make some new 35mm prints, for those theaters that still project film, and just release new digital files for the others, of the classic, for all of those folks who have never had the pleasure of seeing the original classic in the theaters, and save an enormous amount of money and make even more profit on w classic? ...

That makes too much sense Osi, it will never happen! I am always amazed by comments from the younger generations about how those old movies look so new. They have only seen the classics on B&W TV, and never realized we have had High Definition on 35mm film for more that a century...

[Osi Osgood]

Henry Fonda went thru the same fall out when he starred in "Once Upon A Time in the West", where he played a child killing villian. They couldn't imagine Henry doing such a thing. I was surprised to hear of Hitchcock's objections to Jimmy Stewart's age, when Hitchcock specifically wanted him for the role and sounds more like the director blaming his own cast for his own mistakes or potential ineptitude. Don't get me wrong. When Hitchcock was spit on, no one could touch him, ( The Birds, Pscycho), but honestly, I found many of his films to be rather boring.