I watched Vertigo last night. Sometimes I make the mistake of writing Kim Novak off as just another typical blonde bombshell. That movie always reminds me not to underestimate her talent. She’s fantastic.
After the terrifying beginning, we get to the scene between Stewart and Barbara Bel Geddes, who plays Midge (I love that character.) She’s designing a new brassiere (he asks: “What’s this doohickey?” She says, “It’s a brassiere! You know about those things, you’re a big boy now.”), he lies on the couch, talking with his old friend as she works. The scene is quite long, in comparison to most movie scenes. It has a couple of purposes: exposition certainly. In the scene, we learn about his vertigo, and how he has had to quit his job because of it. But it’s also a rather meandering scene, and I love it for that reason. We get to know Midge, and we get to know Scottie, and we get to see a glimpse of their relationship. The actors are playing multiple levels at the same time. Midge has feelings for Scottie, but they’re old friends, and so she acts the part of platonic girlfriend with good cheer. But you can sense something else going on. Scottie treats his upcoming retirement sort of matter-of-factly, but you can also sense the underlying terror of his vertigo. And also the baffled confusion: How has this happened to me? How have I come to this point? Great opening scene.
You don’t need shrieking violins to make something suspenseful. You don’t even need to have the characters be in imminent danger. That first scene in Vertigo is a classic example. It’s just two old friends sitting around talking, but by the end of it, all of the tensions have been set up. You feel that … underneath the banter … something is wrong. And yet, in a way, that wrong-ness is not apparent to the characters themselves yet. They’re insistent that they’re doing okay, and life is normal. Hence – suspense. You watch and you feel you have an insight into them that they do not have yet.
And I just want to say something about the set dressing. The first time he sees Kim Novak – at the restaurant Ernie’s – and we see her in that incredible profile, with her white-blonde hair in a scarily compact bun – the background is this red velvet wallpaper. Cloying, claustrophobic, old-fashioned. The walls are like blankets, almost – that old-fashioned Victorian type of cluttered decoration.
Beautiful. A beautiful choice for that particular scene. Kim Novak’s haunted cool-blonde exterior against the plushy crushing red-velvet wallpaper all around her.
I can’t think of a single Hitchcock movie that didn’t have a platinum blonde in it. Was there one? Love Vertigo.
Suspicion and Notorious were sans cool-blondes. Joan Fontaine and Ingrid Bergman were brunettes. But those were earlier films … maybe once he hit the 1950s, he got into the whole cool-blonde thing.
Kim Novak is great … I have no idea why I just think of her, at times, as a blonde clotheshorse. That is a completely incorrect impression.
Must have liked the way they looked in color (Kim Novak, Grace Kelly, Tippi Hedrin, Eva Marie Saint). Not a bad assortment.
That’s a good point – I bet it did have to do with color, and how the blonde hair looked against various backgrounds.
Totally with you on that opening scene, Sheila.. I didn’t watch it last night – yurt and all – but Jimmy Stewart plays the scene with a real sense of apprehension about what is to come, and that’s echoed, and amplified, by the concern that Barbara Bel Geddes shows for him in her performance.. really great (tension-building) scene.
peteb:
I love, too, the scene – where she miscalculates, and shows him the portrait she did of herself as Carlotta – do you remember that one?
He is basically so shook up by what he sees, that he backs away from her, says something like, “That’s not funny…” and flees her apartment.
Barbara Bel Geddes, left alone, completely falls apart … but in such a real way. She basically pulls at her own hair, hitting her own head, saying, “You’re so STUPID, you’re so STUPID” …It’s heartbreaking. remember it?
I’m going to have to watch it again soon, Sheila.. my over-riding memory of that scene are the glances from Stewart and Geddes, undercutting the dialogue.. the eyes have it.
Vertigo is one of my top-5 all-time favourite movies – it was the first time I ever saw Kim Novak, and have always thought she was brilliant (and fabulous). But I’ve always been in love with Midge.
Midge is, indeed, lovable. Who doesn’t want to have a friend/girlfriend/lover/supporter – whatever you call it – like her?
The funny thing is, that the “cool blonde” thing happened when Hitchcock cast Grace Kelly. She was his first, and original, Cool Blonde. He then went on to try and find her for the rest of his career. He had a huge and sometimes unhealthy love for her. On the set of “Rear Window” Jimmy Stewart says he spent more time watching Hitch light Grace than anything else.
Kelly broke his heart by leaving the business and marrying a Prince.
I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Vertigo because my parents had dinner at Ernie’s on their honeymoon, right around the time that the movie was being filmed. And for anyone who loves San Francisco, it is an absolute treat to watch Stewart driving around the city, walking through stores on Maiden Lane that are no longer there, and seeing the skyline as it should have always been.
Alex – I remember reading that, I think in one of the many Cary Grant biographies I have lying about my house. Cary Grant remained great friends with Grace Kelly to the very end, and Hitchcock pretty much never forgave her for giving up acting.
So Jeff … my comment about the “set dresser” then was incorrect? Ernie’s is an actual place? Not a movie set? Does it still exist?
How cool!!
That red wallpaper rocks.
I lived in San Fran for a while, and I also loved re-visiting that landscape, to see how much it has changed.
I believe Madeleine Carroll of 39 Steps fame was the prototype, not Grace Kelly. Not sure where I read that, though. 39 Steps came before To Catch a Thief and Rear Window.
To me, Vertigo is Hitchcock at the very pinnacle of his career. It’s deeper than North by Northwest and much scarier than Phsycho (imho anyway). I love every minute of the movie and when I still lived at home my Dad would walk into the room while I was watching it and ask, “How can you watch that over and over again?”
Several years ago someone sponsored a Hitchcock birthday celebration in Orlando where they showed his films all over the area and I got to see Vertigo and Phsycho on the same night. The part that really surprised me was how effective the opening credit sequence is when your field of view is completely filled by those spiraling patterns while the dolly/zoom shot looking down the bell tower is spectacular.
Sheila, Ernie’s was indeed an actual place, and for many years was considered the best restaurant in the city. It lasted until the early 1990s (maybe the mid-1980s) when it finally closed in the face of intense competition (and by then the “old San Francisco style” restaurant was a bit out of date).
The other great Ernie’s story is that the Rolling Stones had a late dinner there in 1981 and Mick Jagger left a $1000 tip, which led to a Herb Caen column blasting the fact that waiters didn’t have to pay taxes on their tips, which led to a change in state law allowing tips to be taxed. I remember it so well because I was a waiter at the time.
Actually, I just found a website stating that for the film, Hitchcock re-created Ernie’s original upstairs Ambrosia room in the studio, “complete with its regal red wallpaper.” So you were right, but it was a real place!
I saw “Vertigo” when I was in college and I was like a ten year old, “I would have had him hook up with Midge.” Jeezus. Just one reason why I’m not Hitchcock.
The movie is filled with countless moments of Hitch, Stewart, and Novak brilliance.
If I had to pick one among those many, it woud be Stewart’s grief over losing Madeleine as it’s played out in the sequence where he “transforms” (via the dress, the hair style) Judy back into his beloved Madeleine, just before learning the truth. Who among us has not seen a lost love in someone we encounter!
As if those scenes aren’t enough, then we’re immediately hit with Scotty’s emotional transformation upon learning that he’s been had. Stewart’s range in this sequence alone is Oscar-worthy.
As someone who’s acrophobia has had an adverse effect on my ability to do my job, I’ve been meaning to see this film for a while. I reckon the time has come. The DVD is now reserved at the library. Thank you.
Don’t know if Grace Kelly was the first, but apparently after he found her Hitch said he would’ve put her in every movie he ever made. He tried to make Vera Miles into his next Grace Kelly after Kelly gave up acting, but that quickly ended. “Vertigo” is called his most personal film, and there’s a definite similarity between Hitch’s treatment of his leading ladies and Scottie’s treatment of Judy.
There are so many fantastic visuals in that movie. The scene where Stewart is holding Judy after transforming into Madeleine with the camera rotating around them as the scene changes, Madeleine jumping in to the Bay, the classic “vertigo” camera trick, the final shot of Stewart at the top of the bell tower looking (for lack of a better word) pathetic… Then there’s the whole opening sequence, that had to have influenced the makers of “The Matrix”.
And now I’m listening to the score by Bernard Herrmann.
OK, and now go watch High Anxiety, Mel Brooks’ parody of (and tribute to) Hitchcock.