Movies By Moonlight: Vertigo

Last Friday night, Bev and I went down to the Boston Harbor Hotel and watched Alfred Hitchcock's 1957 classic, Vertigo. We had both seen the movie a dozen times before, but how many opportunities do you get to see a movie this great on the big screen with the beautiful Boston Harbor as the backdrop? To top it all off, the movie was free too. You've got to love Boston...always something fun and inexpensive going on if you know where to look. The "Movies By Moonlight" setting was really unique. Maybe a little too chaotic at first, with waitresses running around and pedestrians strolling the Harborwalk, but as the night wore on and everyone became more involved in the movie, the commotion faded to the background.

Vertigo is easily one of my top 5 favorite Hitchcock films, to go along with Psycho, Rear Window, Notorious, and The 39 Steps. Sorry, Rebecca and North by Northwest, you didn't quite make the top cut. I'm always amazed (and appalled) to think that Vertigo was such a box office flop. It may not have the harrowing suspense of other Hithcock films, but it's such a mature movie, the culmination of so many Hitchcock themes (obsession and voyeurism) and motifs (the Hitchcock Blonde). Here are just some of things I love about the movie:

• It's pure cinema. The movie could have been shot without dialogue and have been just as good. The camera shots are perfectly framed, and the camera itself follows the characters so fluidly and lovingly.


• Bernard Herrmann's score. Alternately haunting and beautiful.


• The colors. Madeleine's green cocktail dress. The red walls at Ernie's. The flower shop. The flashing neon signs outside Judy's hotel room. Scotty's nightmare.

• The setting. Who hasn't wanted to visit San Francisco after watching Vertigo? The Spanish mission, the park under the Golden Gate Bridge, the winding steep streets, the hazy California sunlight.





• The spectre of a spectre. Is Madeleine really haunted by Carlotta's spirit? The scene where a newly-madeover Judy steps out of the bathroom in a spectral haze is probably one of the best 2 minutes in film history.





• The makeover. "It can't matter to you, Judy!" Scotty obsessively remakes Judy into the image of Madeleine. The sequence is sometimes comic, always uncomfortable. You feel so bad for Kim Novak's character, and actually a little creeped out by Jimmy Stewart. Hithcock himself called the second half of the film "a striptease in reverse."


• The final scene. Jimmy Stewart on the brink of the abyss. Talk about an ambiguous ending. Eat your heart out, Sopranos.

I could go on and on. If you haven't seen Vertigo, go out and rent it tonight. Then give me a call afterwards and we'll talk about it for the rest of the night.