Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

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swo17
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Re: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

#26 Post by swo17 » Thu Dec 03, 2020 4:05 am

Matt wrote:
Thu Dec 03, 2020 1:15 am
I refuse to believe I’m the only person who wants this and/or it doesn’t already exist somewhere, but has anyone ever done a cut of Vertigo that excises all the dialogue?
Guy Maddin sort of did just that with The Green Fog, only using clips from other movies

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dustybooks
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Re: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

#27 Post by dustybooks » Thu Jul 08, 2021 4:18 pm

I just finished reading Boileau & Narcejac's D'Entre les Morts, upon which Vertigo was based. It was a fascinating experience in exploring how Hitchcock and Samuel Taylor enhanced and improved on the text. Virtually every change they made was a good one, although the book also has some unique characteristics that make it well worth reading independently of making these comparisons.
SpoilerShow
The basic parameters of the plot are the same; all names are different save Madeleine's, and the book is divided into two halves, first with the protagonist Roger Flavières -- a lawyer, but with the same back story of leaving the police force after the accident depicted in the first moments of the film -- following Madeleine as requested by an old friend. The novel's set in Paris during and after WWII and deals a lot with themes of the impact of the war on everyday life, but the book's "sense of place" is quite similar to the film's -- the way that Hitchcock treated San Francisco seems pretty clearly to be inspired by Flavières' relationship to his surroundings. The second half rejoins him after Madeleine's death, after the war; in addition to suffering from obvious residual trauma, Flavières has also become an alcoholic and this informs his actions through the rest of the book. He spots a woman who looks exactly like Madeleine in a cinema newsreel and tracks her down, then begins an abusive relationship with her in which he daily berates her over his belief that she is -- he thinks supernaturally -- Madeleine returned from the dead. The device of the letter explaining the real events midway through the film is absent in the book, and so Flavières' responses play out in real time even more as symptoms of madness. Several scenes play out here identically to the film version, including the infamous dress shop sequence which is nearly verbatim (which, as an aside, really makes me want to retroactively clonk a few armchair-psychoanalyst film scholars on the head). The famous gray dress specifically is described at length in the book.

Hitchcock's film is much more lyrical than the novel, although the latter certainly does have a few tremendously eloquent passages in the translation I read (the one available for the Amazon Kindle). As a book it's surprisingly similar to Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train, sharing the underlying conceit that both novels have to carefully articulate a lot of character nuances that Robert Walker and James Stewart respectively brought to the screen in much more minimalist and open-ended fashion. That said, the book leaves absolutely no doubt that Flavières -- and thus Scottie -- is meant to be seen as unhinged, and in the novel's case he is such from the outset, already showing signs of severe mental health issues, which manifest in both his empty and immediate worship of Madeleine (it's implied he's had very few relationships with women prior to this), and in a generalized misanthropy directed toward seemingly most occupants of Paris -- before he gets wrapped up in the romantic portions of the story.

The novel ends much less ceremoniously than the film -- the scheming friend who set the events into motion is long dead, and upon Renee's confession Roger, whose self-control has gradually dissipated all through the book, strangles her as he delivers a monologue similar to the one Stewart gives in the bell tower. The return to that setting was one of the biggest improvements made by Hitchcock and Taylor to the story, which closes out in a nondescript hotel room. The biggest, however, is the invention of Midge, who doesn't exist in the book; I find it interesting that a film more and more commonly accused of an underlying misogyny added a three-dimensional female character to its source text (which, relevantly, also specifically directs the reader's attention to the pain that's being inflicted on Renee).
(I also posted this in a Letterboxd comment; please censure me if that's a breach of protocol.)

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

#28 Post by Stefan Andersson » Sat Nov 06, 2021 6:21 pm

"Haunted by Vertigo", new essay collection on Vertigo:
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.c ... in-ed.html

Relevant quote, examples of content:
"The Murnau influence in Hitchcock's cinema is a familiar theme for everybody who has read books about the master of suspense, but (Janet) Bergstrom in her chapter pursues the matter further than anybody before, based on primary sources, archival documents and rarely quoted interviews and illustrations. Bergstrom's piece is also extremely illuminating on Weimar cinema. For the first time I truly understand the revolutionary meaning of Murnau's perspectival shooting and forced perspective and the impact he made in Hollywood. Hitchcock happened to be at the Neubabelsberg studio to witness first hand Murnau creating his magic, and the experience made a lifelong impression on him. This article is a film historical detective story.

Charles Barr conducts a parallel feat with Vertigo's French influences, analyzing the whole story of the Clouzot / Hitchcock connections, also the full legacy of Boileau and Narcejac in detective fiction and the cinema. His piece goes also deep in the question of Hitchcock's reception as a major artist: belittled in his native Britain, and revered in cinephilic France. Some of the parallels are amusing: Le Corbeau by Clouzot / The Birds by Hitchcock, the humoristic warnings "soyez pas diaboliques" in Les Diaboliques, and "no one, not even the manager's brother, is allowed into the theatre after the start of each performance of Psycho". An intriguing passage is devoted to the screenwriter Alec Coppel, who in 1949 wrote a film directed by Edward Dmytryk called Obsession, which may have been an inspiration for Boileau, Narcejac, Clouzot and Hitchcock."


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Never Cursed
Such is life on board the Redoutable
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Re: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

#30 Post by Never Cursed » Fri Dec 24, 2021 4:23 am

The funniest part of the development of this shovelware project (which began all the way back in 2018) was the proud announcement by the developers that they had licensed all the critical material for the game - Hitchcock's name and likeness, as well as the word "Vertigo." I can only presume this happened because his estate/descendants needed cash, right?

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swo17
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Re: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

#31 Post by swo17 » Fri Dec 24, 2021 7:15 am

Sigh, this is not the video game adaptation Alfred Hitchcock intended

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

#32 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Dec 24, 2021 8:00 am

Here's what I'm guessing happened: a shovelware company set out to make a rip off of Alan Wake, a reasonably respected supernatural mystery video game from 2010 that, coincidentally, had a remaster put out a couple months ago. At some point, someone at the company noticed the rights to Vertigo and Hitchcock's name were up for sale in some manner and had the bright idea to buy them and plaster the names all over the game to sucker in buyers who won't be aware they're getting a cheap knock off of an older pastiche with some false marketing slapped across it.

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Never Cursed
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Re: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

#33 Post by Never Cursed » Fri Dec 24, 2021 12:35 pm

Agreed, except this looks a bit more like a Life is Strange ripoff to me

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

#34 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Dec 24, 2021 12:52 pm

swo17 wrote:
Fri Dec 24, 2021 7:15 am
Sigh, this is not the video game adaptation Alfred Hitchcock intended
Revertigism

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Mr Sausage
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Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

#35 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Dec 24, 2021 1:21 pm

Never Cursed wrote:
Fri Dec 24, 2021 12:35 pm
Agreed, except this looks a bit more like a Life is Strange ripoff to me
Not enough angsty outsider teen girls.

On the other hand, small town, writer as main character, missing wife who no one else seems to think exists, gaps in reality, evil entity, suggestion that the lead is crazy. Throw in a Stephen King reference or two and you've got Alan Wake.

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colinr0380
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Re: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

#36 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Dec 24, 2021 3:00 pm

I've played one of Pendulo Studios previous games Yesterday, and it was a very bizarre point and click adventure game, with the abused nerd in the prologue becoming the supervillain Satan worshipper by the climax. No Beatles in sight, although that one did come out a few years before the Danny Boyle film.

This seems like exactly the kind of game I would expect Pendulo Studios to make if they had the opportunity. That doesn't mean it will necessarily be good though.

Here's a quote from Pendulo Studios' Wikipedia article:
The game will follow the story of Ed Miller, a man who enters therapy to cope with the mysterious after-effects of a car crash. It is planned to contain three playable protagonists. Monchan noted that "Vertigo is not our only frame of reference" for the story, also citing Hitchcock's Spellbound, Rebecca and Psycho as influences, among others.
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pistolwink
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Re: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

#37 Post by pistolwink » Sat Dec 25, 2021 8:26 pm

What would Chris Marker think?

dcsmith
Joined: Sun Aug 24, 2014 11:57 pm

Re: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

#38 Post by dcsmith » Sun Dec 26, 2021 8:37 pm

I've recorded a short audio essay about my thoughts on Vertigo,
You can listen to it here https://www.livinginthefuture.rocks/e/a ... t-vertigo/

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