No. I’d never seen Vertigo. At least never all of it, or from the beginning. And I’ve still not seen Psycho. I think everyone has seen it but me but the basic plot: Jimmy Stewart is John “Scottie” Ferguson (not sure how you get Scottie from John but whatever) a detective with vertigo (San Fran couldn’t be a good place to have that with all of the hills) who is commissioned by an old college friend to follow his wife, Madeline (Kim Novak as the typical Hitchcock icy blonde). It seems she’s acting a little odd and the husband wants to know what’s going on. Madeline goes all over San Francisco with Scottie in pursuit in her apparent obsession with her dead great-grandmother, Carlotta Valdes. She doesn’t talk until about an hour in (hard to tell thanks to the commercials) but Scottie becomes more than a bit obsessed with her as she gets stranger and stranger. Meanwhile, Midge, who has been friends with Scottie since college and harbors a serious unrequited crush, sort-of hovers in the background as he pursues the mad woman but she disappears as Scottie really needs saving.
I am not a fan of the psychedelic color-changing dream sequence in the middle of the movie—just seems a bit overwrought and contrived. I thought the whole movie a bit tedious in that it seemed longer than the suspense could maintain (that could also be a symptom of the commercial breaks rather than the movie itself but it still seemed much longer than its two hour run time). This could have also been broken a bit because of the simple “cultural knowledge” of the movie’s plot. I sort of knew what happened—just not quite the details of it all. And he loves her but doesn’t know her at all and I find that incredibly frustrating and disconcerting every time it pops up in a movie. I’d like a little more character development to show why this otherwise seemingly rational man has fallen for a wacko, albeit a pretty wacko but a wacko nonetheless who more or less makes him an even bigger wacko than she is. It’s quite a warped Pygmalion story (well, not that Pygmalion isn’t already warped). And what about the nun makes her jump? Odd. This one isn’t terrible but there are movies I like much better from this director and from these actors.
I do love the shots of “driving” in old movies. I mean who really needs to move the steering wheel that much at that slow a pace? Also, this movie makes me want to watch Bell, Book, and Candle another Stewart/Novak movie (from the same year as Vertigo) in which she’s a witch who wants to get him away from his fiancée just for meanness but ends up falling for him . . . . another movie that’s not in the book. Let’s start a list of movies that should be on the list.
And now the commercials on AMC have switched to the “after hours” products . . . . “ExtenZe” (“it made me . . . he he he. . . a hell of a lot bigger”), “get connected to local hotties tonight” (because gorgeous models are just lolling around in their skimpiest lingerie waiting to get your phone call), “text flirt” (you even get a “free icebreaker”) . . . . . interspersed with ads for antacids and insurance . . . . . and followed by sleep aid ads around 3:30am . . . . that could be a fun analytical project. Oh well, off to bed to have what I’m sure will be interesting dreams after two Hitchcock films and more cheesecake than I should have eaten.
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