Vertigo (1958, Paramount)

Vertigo (1958, Paramount) Analysis & Review form

11/7/2016

Describe your assessment/opinion for each category below Do NOT write generalized statements without examples from film or examples without statements clarifying them

1). Screenplay/Storyline:

A police officer, Scottie, falls down from a very tall ledge after a chase and develops a case of vertigo. He retires due to this problem but is hired by an old friend to do investigative work on his wife Madeline. She is having black outs where she loses time and becomes another person in between. During his investigation he falls in love with Madeline. She commits suicide by throwing herself off a tall tower. Scottie’s vertigo stopped him from saving her. Scottie has a mental breakdown that takes a year to recover. When he does he is still haunted and looks for Madeline in all their old places. He finds Judy who looks like her and begins to transform her look into Madeline to fill his empty need for her. The twist is that Judy really was playing Madeline. Scottie’s friend set him up knowing he had vertigo and would not be able to save Madeline. Madeline never died; the real wife was thrown off the tower so that her husband could inherit her money. Eventually Scottie finds out about the set up. He takes Judy back to the tower and forcibly gets her to the top and lets her know that he knows the scam. He takes her up to the top of the tower to see if he can make it up this time. Through an accident Judy falls off the tower and dies.

2). Hitchcock‘s Direction/Style (use of editing/montage, composition of shots, camera angles)

The composition of the kissing scene between Judy as Madeline#2 and Scottie takes a Hitchcock pattern from other films but reverses it. In Notorious and North by Northwest there are long uncut rotating kisses where the camera stays steady and the actors rotate down a hallway. In the set-up of this shot it is in reverse. It is still a long uncut rotating kiss, but the actors are standing still and the camera is rotating in a perfect circle around them. The camera keeps going faster and faster giving a feeling of vertigo.

3). Performances and Characterization:

James Stewart/John Ferguson (Scottie)

It’s impressive that James Stewart played such a humbling role and played it very well. It is a role that needs an average looking man who is older than middle age to be set up as a fool. It’s not a James Bond character at all. I think James Stewart aged well, but he is not like he was in Rear Window where the most beautiful women would want him. He is susceptible to being set up and seduced as an average retired man. They make his look more average by giving him dull brown outfits most of the time. He did a good job as a mentally disturbed man throughout the movie in various different scenarios. Watching him in these states was the major plot in the movie and he did an excellent job.

Kim Novak/Madeleine #1 Elster, Judy Barton and Madeline #2 This is one of the most complicated characters I have seen be played. Kim Novak was able to mold herself into three distinct personalities. The character of Madeline Elster requires her to be a millionaire’s sophisticated wife. As this character she holds herself as an elegant woman who is seductive in very subtle way. This character sounded like she almost had an English accent.

The Judy Barton character is a scrappy woman who works retail and probably works pay check to pay check. She lives in a small one room hotel and wears make up that is a little over done. Her clothes make her sexy in an overt way. Her sweater tops are extra tight and unbuttoned. Her language is crass, revealing to a man that she knows his type as she has been picked up before.

Madeline #2 is full of angst and a guilty conscience. She is miserable most of the time as she is getting remolded into Madeline #1. She knows how to play this part and knows why he wants her to become that, but she protests and anguishes that he does not love her. She finally submits and lets herself die in a sense and become the person he wants.

Kim did a wonderful job distinguishing and changing her facial expressions and manner for each part.

Barbara Bel Geddes /Midge Wood

Midge is a sensible career girl that is intelligent but average looking. She is best friend material but not sexually alluring. Scottie treats his motherly best friend . Barbara is well cast as this character as a woman who accepts her role but is not happy about it. She acts well as both happy fun friend and heartbroken ex-girlfriend.

4). Cinematography and color analysis:

1) The falling down in a spiral, Scottie's vertigo feeling, is shown cinematographically through the film in many scenes. His police officer friend lands in the shape of a twisted spiral. There is a zoom done on two matching hairstyles. One is the spiral in the bun of Carlotta’s hair in her painting which matches the bun swirl in Madeline’s hair. The little flowers in Madeline’s bouquet spin in Scottie’s insanity dream. Carlotta’s necklace had four swirly ovals. The cross section of the grand sequoia trunk has swirls. The bell tower staircase is a square swirl when seen down.

2) There was a different way of filming the feeling of vertigo was in an up and down manner. The shot would show Scottie’s face looking down with fear in his face. Then we are seen the straight down view. Then we feel the vertigo with the simultaneous camera zoom in and track-back “that makes the vast drop telescope out before our eyes” (Wood 79). This happens when he is on the initial gutter hanging, then when he is on step ladder at Judy’s house and also when he is looking down the staircase as he stops to look down.

3) Hitchcock maximized the contrast of black and white colors in his black and white films. In this color VistaVision film, Hitchcock maximized the use of primary colors with brilliant red, blue and green.

4) Color symbolism I could not figure out on my own but I found an article by Jim Emerson on Roger Ebert’s memorial website. He says in an article titled Verdant Vertigo: Dreaming in Technicolor; “Say ‘Vertigo’ and I see green” Emerson writes. His article is so in-depth that it describes almost every instance of color per scene I picked some of his top ideas to review.

Green is associated with Madeleine. Here are some some examples: deep-green stole, Madeleine's car, the green lawn in front of the Palace of the Legion of Honor, the florist shop, the garden graveyard, the green-blue waters which she jumps into and the sequoias. Emerson calls it ‘Edenic bliss’ of his infatuation with Madeleine.

He describes Ernie’s restaurant as blood red, “a place in which a bloody romantic obsession is born” (Emerson). There is a reappearance of red in the red robe that she shows up in after waking up at Scotties it “reminds us of the decor of Ernie's restaurant” (Emerson). Red is also a cautionary color or a color meaning stop.

There is a “nightmarish, deep-indigo” in the beginning of the movie when Scottie’s police officer friend flips over the roof. Emerson says the blue is associated with Scottie’s guilt. The sky is also this color at the very end of the film after Judy falls from the tower. James Stewarts’ eyes are piercing blue “pained eyes”.

Here is an excellent summary of the colors and the dream sequence by Jim Emerson:

“In Scottie's dream, Hitchcock splashes the screen with saturated colors that represent the conflicting psychological forces at war within Scottie, bombarding him (and us) with bursts of pure color and emotion: blue (guilt), red (caution, danger), green (Madeleine, romance, illusion), purple (Judy), yellow/pink (Midge) -- the explosion of colors reminding us of the florist's shop and the still-life flower arrangement in a painting to the left of Carlotta's portrait” (Emerson).

5). Film Score/Sound and/or Visual Effects:

1) There are scenes that are emphasized by a hazy foggy look on the screen. One is when Madeline is in the Mission cemetery a place of mystery. The ground and the flowers look hazy. In another scene with Madeline #2 steps out of the bathroom completely transformed, she is also in a hazy green filtered light.

2) There are scenes imposed on other scenes. One is when Judy is writing a letter to Scottie about the set-up. As she writes the scene as it really happened in the bell tower, the images are imposed over the writing images.

3) The composer of the soundtrack is Bernard Herrmann. The music companions all the dramatic scenes very well.

4) When Madeline #1 and Scottie are in front of the ocean, there is a dramatic clash of waves sound effect when they kiss.

5) Midge plays classical music twice from her record player to Scottie. Once he is irritated and she turned it off. The second time she becomes irritated when she realizes that she could not reach through his catatonia and revive him.

6). Hitchcockian Themes and Motifs:

1) There is a strong psychological theme. This is the most overt psychological plot from the very beginning. James Stewart’s character goes through a large range of psychological problems to the extent of being catatonic in a psychiatric hospital. Judy has to create a psychologically deranged woman and then pretend to not have any recollection of the past as she goes mad knowing what is happening.

2) Madeline #1 is a cool blonde. She is beautiful and can seduce a man by having her worship her and choose him if she wants.

3) The detective chooses love over duty. Just as in Blackmail and Sabotage, the detective courts the woman he is supposed to watch and falls in love despite being on assignment.

4) There are varied social classes interacting. Scottie is a working class man who interacts with his millionaire friend. The friend’s office is nicer than Scottie’s apartment. He goes to visit him for an update at his gentleman’s club. Madeline #1 is a millionaire’s wife and she interacts with Scottie who is working class. Judy acts as two people first as an elegant sophisticate and then as a cheap retail gal.

5) The disillusion and complications of love is a theme used. Midge is an unrequited love relationship with her ex-fiance and sees him almost every day. Scottie begins an affair with his friend’s wife. Judy and Scott have a complicated love relationship as he doesn’t love her but an image of who she pretended to be.

6) There is a mother/son type of relationship. Midge, although attracted to Scottie is motherly towards him. She is protective and caretaking. She watches him take baby steps up a ladder to practice ridding his vertigo and is there to catch him in her arms when he falls. Regardless of how he feels of her, similar to a parent, her motherly love is unconditional. In the hospital she says “Mother’s here”. She knows him so well she knows when he is in love and not with her.

7) Scottie is a man wrongly accused. He was set up to be a detective to follow Madeline #1 around and then witness her suicide. A court had to decide whether he was responsible for not advising her husband that she was suicidal.

8) Carlotta Valdes was a MacGuffin. It started the plot but then drifted away until the necklace was reintroduced into the plot.

7). Influences evoked from or inspired (film/literature/art/political/social):

The original book that the film is a based upon is a French book named D'entre les morts (From Among the Dead) by Thomas Narcejac and Pierre Boileau.

Famous graphic designer Saul Bass created the opening title sequence.

Famous costume designer Edith Head, designed another wonderful wardrobe as she did for Grace Kelley in Rear Window. She created a sophisticated city society woman in the clothes she made for Madeline Elster.

The dream sequence into madness was designed by Abstract Expressionist John Ferren.

8). Overall impressions of film (positive/negative) and additional comments:

It occurred to me that the film plays with life and death within the same characters. The film begins with a Scottie, a live person holding on and thinking about his death. Madeline fantasizes about a dead person while she is a fantasy person wanting to die. Judy is a live person who is created into a dead fantasy. In the end Judy as a fantasy person is dead as Judy.

In the deconstruction of Judy and the creation of two Madeline’s I thought of Hitchcock as a director or films in general that require a person to strip back their own personality and then be built up in the director’s image. This is what two men emulated; they stripped Judy down and built her to be what they wanted.

Every time I watch this film I always laugh to myself about the parking in San Francisco. It really is a suspension of belief need that one can park anywhere right in front. Madeline parks her car in a pedestrian walkway at the Legion of Honor. Visiting Mission Dolores they both park right in front of the mission this is very improbable especially today. There are three parking spots in the courtyard of the Brocklebank luxury apartments and Madeline’s car is one of them. They both are able to park in front of the McKittrick Hotel or Scottie’s apartment. What a wonderful world it would be if this were possible.

Works Cited

Wood, Robin. Hitchcock's Films. Place of publication not identified, 1965. Print.

Emerson, Jim. Verdant Vertigo: Dreaming in Technicolor, 2012. Internet resource. Date of access 11/5/2016. click here

Images and Trailer from Vertigo (1958, Paramount)

Vertigo (1958, Paramount) Official Film Trailer Click Here for Vertigo Trailer

Video On How Alfred Hitchcock Blocks a Scene. Click Here

Rear Window (1954, Paramount)

Rear Window (1954, Paramount)

FILMS OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK Analysis & Review form

10/31/2016

Describe your assessment/opinion for each category below Do NOT write generalized statements without examples from film or examples without statements clarifying them

1). Screenplay/Storyline:

A documentary photographer is injured on the job and is in his NY apartment recuperating for six weeks. He is visited by his girlfriend and his health care worker. To pass the time, he observes the tenants in the other buildings as they carry on with their lives. Over the course of a few days he believes that he has seen a murder. His girlfriend and health worker become interested in solving the case with him as his police friend does not believe it. His girlfriend goes into the suspect’s apartment to find a wedding ring as evidence. She is caught and the police take her away. She signals her boyfriend pointing out the ring on her finger. The suspect looks down and then over to the photographer, figuring out that he is behind the snooping. The suspect comes over when the photographer is alone and tries to kill him by throwing him out the window but is saved by the police and the suspect is caught.

2). Hitchcock‘s Direction/Style (use of editing/montage, composition of shots, camera angles)

The camera angles are shot from the point of view of the photographer’s gaze looking into the tenants in the apartment complex in front of him. The editing goes back and forth from what he sees to his facial expressions. A lot of times there is no dialogue we just see what his faces expresses.

There is an exception to the movie being shot from his POV. It is when the little dog is killed and there are close ups from many angles of the tenants as they react to the owner screaming.

3). Performances and Characterization:

Grace Kelley is convincing as a high society fashion expert. Her manner is flirtatious but not overly. She is beautiful and a good actress. She started out playing a stuffy society girl and domineering in her beliefs of their coupledom and she becomes a more open minded and understanding of her mate and his lifestyle.

James Stewart is able to convey wonderful facial expressions. His facial expressions drive most of the movie as the camera keeps switching back to his face. He is a good actor and plays an uninterested boyfriend to an enamored one.

Thelma Ritter adds fun comedic elements. She was a good choice for her comedic timing. They cast the right age for being a reasonable mom-ish person to Jeffries. She also has a bit of a New Yorker accent which adds to her working class persona.

4). Cinematography:

A clever use of integrating close ups into the scenes is that we see most close ups when Jeffries uses binoculars or his zoom photography lenses.

The lighting of the film many times is done with the light coming from the lamps as Lisa moves around changing the dark room into light before the full lighting comes on.

We also see the use of lights in the apartments across the way to show beginning and endings of scenes. A great use of light is the view of the murderer in many scenes just by the light of cigarette in the dark.

There is also a clever use of a shadow from the window frame. He is able to to step back from the light to hide himself or the people in his apartment by going into the shaded area.

5). Film Score/Sound and/or Visual Effects:

The creation of a musical score throughout the film fits in with the building of the score the relationships and storyline. It works very well with the love story of Jeffries and Lisa. There is a struggle to create the music as they struggle to define their relationship. Once the composition has a breakthrough in its completion, Lisa and Jeffries also have a breakthrough in their relationship. The musician not only completes his music but his happiness is also complete as he begins a relationship.

Grace Kelley has special lighting on her face that makes her eyes sparkle and makes her look extra glamorous.

6). Hitchcockian Themes and Motifs:

Stella is a mother figure to Jeffries. He is able to confide in her about Lisa and his spying on the neighbors. She talks to him realistically and disapprovingly in a kind way. She scolds him about sleeping in his chair and peeking on the neighbors.

There are many birds in the beginning shots of the film. There is a small canary and then lots of pigeons on the rooftop. It is possible that he used this as he usually does as a sense of foreboding over a pleasant little neighborhood.

There is a psychological motif. There is a view into the psyche of the tenants and what drives their behavior. Ms. lonely heart is aging and is depressed about being single and pretends to have a boyfriend at her meals, then goes into desperate measures to get a man. A man struggles with his creative abilities to compose music. A couple begins a marriage and we see a bit of its development. Each window is a window into the minds of the tenants.

There is moral grayness in the fundamental set up of the film. Jeffries is spying on the neighbors and invading their privacy, even a female neighbor who dances around in her underwear.

Varied social classes interacting is a theme Hitchcock uses. The documentary photographer is a well-known in his field. Lisa is a wealthy society girl wearing thousand dollar outfits. The cop and the masseuse are blue color workers. The tenants are mainly middle class, but the composer has a more stunning apartment and wealthier guests.

The disillusions, disappoints, and complications of love and marriage is a theme used. We see newlyweds begin their relationship in bliss and then end up arguing about the husband quitting his job. There is a frustrating marriage that ends up in murder. Jeffries and Lisa are in love but have incompatible life styles. They struggle through the story on their relationship.

7). Influences evoked from or inspired (film/literature/art/political/social):

The movie is based on a story by Cornell Woolrich.

I also see the paintings of Edward Hopper in the film: Night Windows (1928); Room in New York (1932); Room in Brooklyn (1932); Office in a Small City (1953); and Nighthawks (1942). We are all voyeurs into windows or in apartments in these paintings.

8). Overall impressions of film (positive/negative) and additional comments:

I love city life and the interesting characters that one can find there unlike most of American suburbs. The characters in this film are interesting city-types and artists in Greenwich Village. The protagonist is given a fascinating career as an international documentary film photographer. His apartment shows this interesting career with a collection of photos and paraphernalia of different travels. There are masks, a Japanese chest, a Chinese chest and interesting photos of the world.

Lisa is beautiful with a glamorous society life with lunches and cocktail parties. In her character we view the high life and excitement that one can have in Manhattan. I could never do it, but it’s nice to think about possibly being able to jump into that life for a few days.

As in other films that Hitchcock does, there is usually a put down to a woman which I don’t like. In this case there is a police officer that denies the theories of Lisa because he doesn’t believe in women intuition. That is a demeaning comment. He has wasted time in the past over following misdirection from women’s intuition.

Video Links from/about Rear Window (1954, Paramount)

Rear Window Trailer .Click here for trailer

Rear Window Timelapse .Click here for Video

Rear Window Analysis Opening and Closing Sequence.Click here for Video

How Alfred Hitchcock Controls the Audience | Rear Window Dissection .Click here for Video