(Dir. Alfred Hitchcock 1958)
PG, but the ending is weird as heck, I felt very uncomfortable towards the end. Early warning, I am going to be very spoilery in this post. I really want to talk about the plot of this movie because I ave a lot of feelings about the story itself. Plus this movie has been out for nearly sixty years so if you haven't seen it by now I don't know what to tell you. Vertigo tells the story of a retired detective, Scottie, who suffers intense vertigo after a traumatizing case in which he nearly falls to his death. Scottie breaks out of his retirement when he is hired by an old friend, Gavin Elster, to investigate his wife, Madeleine. Elster believes that Madeleine has been possessed by a spirit because she often spaces out and kinda sleepwalks all over the city and has no knowledge of these events afterwards. Elster tells Scottie that Madeleine's mother had confided to him that Madeleine's grandmother suffered a similar affliction which caused her to go crazy and commit suicide. Scottie's job is basically to follow Madeleine around and make sure she doesn't die. Long story short Madeleine and Scottie fall in love, but he fails to stop her committing suicide because she runs up a bell tower and jumps and because of his vertigo he cannot make it up the stairs to stop her. Scottie is even further traumatized by Madeleine's death, but one day as he is wandering the city he runs into a woman who looks startlingly like Madeleine, Judy. He asks Judy out to dinner. It is then revealed to the viewer that Judy was actually the woman that Scottie knew as Madeleine. Elster wanted to be rid of his wife, but instead of divorcing her like a normal person he decided to hatch an elaborate plan to murder her. Since Elster's wife lived out in the country and wasn't often seen in the city, it was easy to hire a look-a-like to act as her and establish that Madeleine had suicidal tendencies. When Judy (aka fake Madeleine) ran up the bell tower, Elster was waiting at the top with an already deceased Madeleine and throws her body off, making it seem as though she committed suicide. Judy writes all this in a letter to Scottie and is packing to leave. This is where I think the movie should have ended. Instead of ending at this point, Judy tears up the letter and goes to dinner with Scottie and starts dating hime because while she was busy in this whole murder plot she fell in love with him. At this point Scottie does not know about the plot. This is where the movie becomes very uncomfortable. Scottie begins to force Judy to dress like Madeleine, then color her hair, etc. until Judy looks just like Madeleine. Judy is obviously very distressed by this. Then he forces her to go to the scene of Madeleine's death where Judy confesses, it seems like everything may work out between the two of them, but then Judy accidentally falls to her death. Then the movie ends. I hate this, the plot was so good until everything after the letter bit. The rest I feel is so unnecessary. The letter provides enough closure and, I feel, is a satisfying ending. The plot is revealed to Scottie and all the questions the viewer has are answered. If this were done earlier in Hitchcock's career I feel like this is where he would have ended it. So, in addition to the creepiness towards the end of the movie, the age difference between all the guys and their love interests was kinda creepy too. I love Jimmy Stewart, he is an amazing actor, but at this point you can definitely tell he's old. It's just a little icky seeing all the romance scenes between him and his love interests. In addition to them being generally unhealthy the age difference adds an extra layer of discomfort for me. Age difference between male leads and their love interests is a much larger issue in Hollywood though that I do not feel like getting into right now. Even without the ickiness, I feel the movie's story would've benefitted from a younger actor playing Scottie. If Scottie had to quit being a detective in his prime because of his vertigo, I think it would have made him a much more tragic and sympathetic character. In the actual movie it's just like, yeah sucks you had to retire, but you were probably close to it anyway. I know this review seems very negative, but I actually really liked the movie up until what happened after the letter scene. It felt weird watching a Hitchcock film in color, because all the others I've seen are in black and white, but his use of color was phenomenal. I really appreciate thought out color palettes in films, it's part of why I love Wes Anderson films so much. The palette in this movie is beautiful and I find it all the more amazing that Hitchcock was able to achieve this use of color when it was still a relatively new thing in the film world.
1 Comment
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Aubrey KirchhoffI'm just screaming into the void and somehow getting graded on it. Archives
April 2018
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