The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2014: Vertigo (1958), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Falling For You", by Weezer

     In the world of filmmaking, there are few people as influential in the field as Alfred Hitchcock. Not only in terms of constructing narratives and cinematography, but also in raising the status of the director within the film industry. Aside from maybe Orson Welles, who acted as well as directed, Alfred Hitchcock was one of the first directors to become famous as a figure in pop culture outside of his films. Nowadays of course ‘auteur’ directors are commonplace, in fact they’re probably the standard, but Hitchcock basically made himself a brand name in the days when most people thought the director was just someone who told a guy where to point the camera. There’s a reason that Hitchcockian is considered a legitimate adjective in regards to film, along with Lynchian and Whedonesque. Also, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch and Joss Whedon are all film directors who have had their own television shows. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

     Hitchcock had a string of well-regarded films during his heyday, many of them thrillers or mysteries, which fit into my personal criteria for a Halloween movie. I could have gone with The Birds, the prototypical ‘animal attack’ movie, or Psycho, the prototypical slasher movie, but I decided to take a detour and try out Vertigo. Mainly it was because I often see it being placed alongside Citizen Kane as the best film ever made and I wanted to see if the hype surrounding it was legitimate, but also because a while back I had seen the film Rope, which like Vertigo was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starred Jimmy Stewart in a major role. I thought Rope was fucking excellent (there’s actually a write-up of it on my oft-neglected film blog you could check out), so a chance to see the two men working together on a new project was worth checking out. Well, it hasn’t been new for about 50 years, but you get the idea.

     I don’t want to write too much about the events in the film, since I have the tendency to overwrite, and I might be treading familiar territory anyway, but I believe that Vertigo is a film about obsession. I’m sure you could say that about many Hitchcock movies and the thriller genre, but it’s definitely a major theme in this particular film. Scotty Ferguson (Stewart), our protagonist, begins life as an aloof bachelor, but eventually falls in love with Madeline the wife of his friend, who seems to fall prey to long bouts of dissociative fugue states. When Madeline dies unexpectedly, the passion that would have once been seen as a commendable trait soon gives way to toxic, all-encompassing obsession. Which only compounds upon itself when Scotty comes across, Judy, who bears a striking resemblance to his once deceased Madeline. How far will Scotty go to relive his romance with Madeline? You’ll have to watch it and find out.

     Whether Vertigo is the best film of all time, or whether it’s the better than Citizen Kane I can’t honestly say. I’ve seen both, I’ve liked both, and whether or not you like one movie over the other has always felt like a subjective argument to me anyway. What I will say though is that the acting is great, the music is spot-on and the scenes of 1950’s San Francisco are downright stunning. It’s a film that you could enjoy any time of year, but it’s dark themes earn a spot on my Halloween list.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Rear Window (1954), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Lisa - Intermezzo", by The City of Prague Philharmonic

       It’s strange to consider just how few of Hitchcock’s film I’ve seen over the years. Even if I like to designate a lot of films as review material, which if you’ve seen my posting schedule really limits my intake, but this is Hitchcock we’re talking about here. A man who has become synonymous with the words ‘motion picture’. Film students study him religiously, other filmmakers rip him off shamelessly, his is a legacy that few others can even hope to match. Everything is telling me I should have seen at least half his filmography by now, and yet I’ve only seen four at this point. Gives me a lot to look forward to I suppose, but until then I’m struck with this gnawing sense of inadequacy. More so than usual, I mean.

Anyway.

Based on a 1942 short story by Cornell Woolrich by the name of “It Had to Be Murder”, Rear Window centers around a location (a room facing out towards the back of a New York City apartment complex) and a man (L.B. Jeffries, played by the illustrious James Stewart). Jeffries was a photographer, a damn good at that, until an encounter with a rather surly race car earned him a cast on his leg and an unplanned vacation. With nothing on the radio and reality TV still 4 decades away, the former man of action is left with far too much time on his time. Visits from his nurse Stella and his fiance Lisa Carol Fremont alleviate some of the boredom, even if he thinks Lisa is too dainty for his kind of lifestyle, but his main hobby is looking out his window into the lives of his various eclectic neighbors. In one window is Ms. Torso the buxom blonde ballet dancer, in another The Pianist, in yet another the salesman and his invalid wife, and so on. A rich tableau of the human experience, a glimpse into their personal lives, all from the comfort of his apartment. And he didn’t even have to pay for it! 

On the last week on his convalescence however, Jeffries’ innocent voyeurism turns upon something strange. The salesman’s invalid wife has up and disappeared, and the salesman is engaging in some… questionable activities. Late night trips, long distance phone calls, wrapping up knives and saws in newspaper, things which could lead to some macabre conclusions. Which is exactly what Jeffries does, becoming absolutely convinced that the salesman (Lars Thorwald, played by Raymond Burr) murdered his wife and is trying to hide the evidence, even convincing Lisa and Stella of it. Trouble is, how exactly do you prove anything happened when all you’ve got are a couple of suspicious scenes from a window? Moreover, how far is Jeffries willing to go to prove that he’s right? Pretty damn far, as it turns out.

While I’m not an expert on Hitchcock’s work by any means, what I do like about his films is how very simple they appear on the surface. Within the first few seconds of the film starting you understand exactly where you’re at in the world of L.B. Jeffries, and the same goes for Stella and Lisa during their introductions. You know who they are, what their motivation is, and what their relationship is to the other characters. Not just our main cast either, the entire film is built on this premise of constructing narratives based on the small amount of information we’re given. It’s as if Jeffries is situated across from a wall in which multiple theaters are each playing its own (mostly) silent film, each with its own protagonists dealing their own trials & tribulations. Possibly a metaphor for life, but I don’t want to put words in anybody’s mouth.

Hitchcock was, as his business cards would attest, the master of suspense, and Rear Window is no exception to that. Unlike Rope, the Hitchcock movie that I always love to trot out during comparisons, this is not snowballing anticipation of inevitability. This is a slow burn, almost mundane to a degree, until suddenly you realize that your footing isn’t quite as strong as it used to be, and that’s when Hitchcock springs his trap. The fact that there’s little in the way of a score, preferring instead the sounds of the city and muffled piano, only serves to heighten the sense of paranoia growing in your gut as Hitchcock nudges you right next to Jeffries. I don’t know if I was necessarily on the edge of my seat, since Rear Window is probably the most reused Hitchcock concept in pop culture next to the shower scene from Psycho, but seeing the original does have an appeal that imitators lack.

Acting is at generally the high standard you expect from a Hitchcock film, which is pretty impressive considering this is a movie where most of the people on screen are practically mimes and that it’s only the second time our leads have worked with him before (James Stewart with Rope back in 1948, and Grace Kelly with Dial M for Murder released earlier in ‘54). James Stewart as L.B. Jeffries is deceptively (natch) charismatic, seeming for all the world like an obsessive crank, but his enthusiasm is so infectious that you can’t help but identify with him. Grace Kelly, as one might expect from her famously brief film career, is a unique talent, seemingly embodying everything that makes up the perfect fiance: Beauty, elegance, wit, devotion, dynamism, the whole shebang. Every time she’s on screen she draws the attention to herself, and her radiance is often heightened by the dingy brownish squalor of Jeffries’ apartment. I’m not 100% sold on the chemistry between the two, I think James comes across as a bit of a cold fish in the more passionate moments, but that may just be me. By the end you’re invested in these characters anyway, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter.

Rear Window is one of the quintessential Hitchcock films, one that captures the essence of what made him such a influential filmmaker, and as such easily snags the recommendation. Simple but never simplistic, easily digestible but never bland, it’s so damn easy to just watch Hitchcock’s films that I can’t think of any reason why you wouldn’t. Give Rear Window a try, hell throw on three or four of his movies, and you’re bound to have a great Halloween. Just remember to be cautious around windows, you never know who might be watching.

Rope (1948), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

In this entry, I say the word Hitchcock much more than is necessary or proper.

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Body In the Trunk", by N.O.R.E. feat. Nas

     The cold hard fact: Alfred Hitchcock was big. One could even say he was famous, holding an incredible influence on the then-adolescent art of filmmaking and a consistent commercial and critical appeal through the major part of his career, and they would be right. Much like fellow legend and frozen-pea enthusiast Orson Welles, Hitchcock helped to raise the public perception of film directors from mere names on a screen to full-fledged icons, able to match the star-power of the actors (in some cases, obviously). Unlike Welles however, Mr. Hitchcock was not an actor nor ever made an effort to be, outside of the hosting segments of his popular television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents perhaps, yet his trademark look and peculiar brand of charisma placed him firmly in the pop-culture of the mid-20th century. It’s hard to mistake a Hitchcock film: the macabre sense of humor, the witty dialogue, the masterful sense of pacing, whether it was a thriller or a comedy wasn’t really separated from the other. Vertigo, Psycho, North by Northwest, Rear Window...looking back on it now is like looking through Michael Jordan’s career in the 90s, ‘masterpieces’ in layman’s terms.

     So of course I haven’t seen any Hitchcock movies.

     Well that’s not entirely true. I had seen the beginning portions of The Birds, a pioneer in the ‘random animals attack small town’ genre (see also: Frogs, Piranha, Slugs) and probably the only good thing to come out of a portly British man chucking birds at Tippi Hedren’s face. While an interesting film, the B-movie concept done well, I never ended up finishing it for reasons that absolutely did not involve birds in any way. I didn’t really have any compulsion to watch it either, even when I had decided to get back into the watching/writing film game, just a complete lack of enthusiasm on my part to write about this film that’s had 40 years of the critical eye placed upon it (which I didn’t think about when considering Psycho or Vertigo, so maybe I have an unconscious bias against that movie for some unknown reason). To cut a short story even shorter, I decided to go with a A.H. film that’s maybe a little bit under the radar that still holds a fine reputation. Because we should always watch films based on hearsay.

     Rope starts off the proceedings with a bang, most good films often do, as within the first few minutes we seen a man get totally strangled, by a rope even. The strangled man is David, and the stranglers are Philip and Brandon (Farley Granger and John Dall, respectively), Dave’s former schoolmates and the type of well-to-do white people that only really existed in the 1940s. Philip is a little shaken up by the whole thing, but Brandon is entirely too excited, for reasons that we’ll get into a bit later down the page. They stuff Dave’s corpse into a drawer in the center of the room, placing candlesticks such upon it to keep the housekeeper from digging into and to otherwise make it more presentable. There’s to be a party you see, and Brandon has invited a plethora of interesting guests that just so happen to have a connection to David, including his relatives, his fiancee Janet Walker, his former friend and Janet’s ex-boyfriend Kenneth and Rupert Cadell (James Stewart, a recurring name in the Hitchcock filmography), their former teacher. Of course the reasonable thing would be to cancel the party so one could focus on disposing of the body, never mind not murdering anyone in the first place, but Brandon is not the type to just cancel a party on account of death. They’ll just have it in the front room. In front of the box holding their dead friend. Waiting for him to show up. What a magical night eh?

     So Rope is in essence a whodunit that’s already been solved, a one-sided murder mystery to coin a phrase. We know who killed David, and we know that Brandon and Philip are going to get their just desserts in the end, we the audience are just waiting to see it happen. Hitchcock dances around it beautifully too, drawing out the tension, dropping the hints, always keeping the partygoers on the edge of realization (and the audience on the edges of our seats). Tension is the name of the game, and a helpful portion of that is the fact that this is a ‘bottle movie’ (a movie centered entirely on one location), and the fact that it’s done in one take in one continuous shot. Although the set is fairly roomy, the fact that our attention is unceasingly connected to someone serves to make it feel a tad claustrophobic, while also keeping you on your toes waiting for any sort of slip-up by Brandon and Philip to bring the whole thing down. I’ve always believed that a director who understands how to effectively use tension is about a step away from a great film, and Hitchcock is the go-to guy for that. It’s almost like “The Tell-Tale Heart” in a way, at least in Philip’s case, who seems to be in a perpetual state of crapping his own heart out.

     What does a man do with his life that deems we to end it? Who has the right to judge over the forces of life and death, if anybody? The philosophy of Social Darwinism is the major theme of Rope, variations of which are espoused by Brandon and Rupert throughout the movie. Remember that this film was set and released in 1948, a scant three years after the end of World War II and that little campaign of genocide known as the Holocaust. While we in the present are removed from that by several decades, the idea of people spouting off quotations from Mein Kampf is similar to someone starting up an Osama Bin Laden fan club in 2004. So the moral of the story is a little transparent (you shouldn’t kill people folks), and certainly one that is incredibly easy to hamfist all up in your story, but it never really feels heavy-handed for my tastes. Plenty of that credit goes to the actors of course, particularly James Stewart and John Dall, who slip into their roles of darwinian teacher and asshole almost effortlessly. Despite the movie having the the ‘it’s a play’ feeling to it (because it was, by Patrick Hamilton), the characters feel real to me. A film done right, I guess.

     I don’t know if films by one of the most celebrated directors can count as ‘underrated’ or ‘obscure’, but if it can I’d say Rope is an obscure underrated gem. If you’re interested into getting into Hitchcock, might as well add this one to your list after you’ve gotten through the big-names. Just don’t strangle people okay? You’re not Hitler.

Result: Recommended