Vertigo

The Film Everyone Hated Until It Became Loved

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Release Date: 1958
Rating: 15
Running Time: 120 mins
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Actors: James Stewart, Kim Novac

The film of a dangling man suspended over the edge of life itself, desperately trying not to fall. Vertigo is a film that suspends audience's alike with disbelief in a phenomenally well orchestrated labyrinth of misdirection, deception and suspense.

We first meet our protagonist, Police Detective John 'Scottie' Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) in pursuit of a supposed criminal over a series of rooftops until he slips and clings hold of a gutter desperately trying not to fall. After witnessing, whilst hanging, a police officer try and help him and then fall to his death, we skip forward to Scottie much later, apparently surviving the incident with nothing but a cane and a corset to show of the event, but also now suffers from severe acrophobia (fear of heights) resulting in the sensation of vertigo (severe dizziness). After deciding to leave the police force, he is asked to follow and old college friend's wife Madeline (Kim Novac) who has apparently been taken over by her dead grandmother Carlotta Valdez. Scottie cautiously accepts the task, but it's not too long before Scottie begins to grow strangely enchanted by the mysterious woman on a rather unnatural scale.

It's a film that, for years, was slammed by critics and audiences alike. There's no doubt about it the film features some rather disturbing flaws and plot-holes that make audiences still to this day strangely uncomfortable. On one level, it's a film about a man tracking a possessed woman, but on another level it's a film about a man who falls in love with a woman who doesn't exist, and no matter how hard he tries, he cannot create the perfect, most idilic woman. And then there's the trouble with Scottie. There's no doubt about it the man is weird, and the problem is, he wants to go to bed with a dead woman. The film is about obsession and moreover, obsession over something that is no longer there. It's a rather bizzare and uncomfortable topic for Hitchcock to go down, particularly given the time it was made. Nowadays there's such a diverse mix of films out there, we are more use to such topics. But looking at this from a 1950's perspective, it's no wonder the film was no big success. I think casting Jimmy Stewart to play such a role was a good call due to there being something so innately likeable about him and that is the key reason we actually choose to stick with him. If another actor had been casted, the reaction to Scottie could have been a very different one. Looking back at 'Rear Window' (1954), it's another touchy film that explores the topic of voyeurism (pleasure from looking), and in that sense, it is again very weird protagonist, who is again played by Jimmy Steward, most likely because he was so well loved audiences over look how weird and perverted his character actually is.

'Vertigo' is a film about pleasure from looking. It's a film about a detective trying to uncover the truth about a woman's unnatural behaviour and falling in love along the way. But it has so many more layers to it that that. Its an untangelable ball of string that you will never be able to completely untie because there is no one true reading of this film. A simple way of putting it, it's a film about a film, so much so that if we think about Scottie, there's so much more to him than we first think, and he has a personality not too far away from Alfred Hitchcock himself, and this without a doubt is no accident. It took years before anyone really began to explore the secrets and mysterious hidden away in 'Vertigo', but once they were found, a whole stream began to follow.

It's almost as though Hitchcock is actually teasing us. He puts them but we ignore them and why? The film is incredibly slow paced, so much so that some do begin to get bored and switch off for a while, we're so focussed on one mystery we forget about another, and if we look at the film, we can just about follow it but we're positioned to be like Scottie and untangle the mystery with him. The film has to be viewed a good few times before it's apparent that we're being teased. The film features so many plot-holes but we just simply ignore them when we're watching and it's only after that we begin to think about them, and that's why it's so clever. The biggest question of all being, how did Scottie ever get down from the gutter? When we're watching it, we don't even think about him, the camera moves on and we place trust in the fact that he must've gotten down safely, or did he?

There's no real right or wrong take of 'Vertigo', and that's probably by design. The best reading of a film arguably is the one where you decide for yourself. Films are so broad and personal that it comes down to our own interpretation in the end, because everyone takes something different from it. My reading is, Scottie never got down, the film represents the final thoughts of a dangling man trying to accept his fate. The fact he falls in love with Madeline represents falling into his own doom. (That arguably says a lot about Hitchcock given his own relationships in life if this was his intention). It takes the film and the dream fr Scottie to learn that death is unavoidable will never come at 'the right time'.

The film went from hated, to loved, to arguably the best film ever made. It says a lot about how people read films and respond to them. A film first seen as awful may one day be amazing. Though maybe not a film that everyone will truly appreciate, which is very understandable when looking at the film on the whole, it says an awful lot about cinema and the techniques that at first brush over us but are plainly obvious.

How would I sum up 'Vertigo'? I wouldn't, because for me, it cannot be done, my own opinion is constantly changing and for that, it's an incredible achievement for an incredible director.

10/10