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Was it a ghost? Was it fun?
I just got back from seeing Vertigo (1958) in 70 mm at the Somerville. I hadn't seen it since high school despite reading the source novel between then and now. My mother feels this movie would be infinitely improved if James Stewart fell from a great height at the end.
I am rapidly coming to the disgruntled conclusion that it may be impossible for me to see Psycho (1960) in a theater anywhere in this town and not have the audience laugh inappropriately, because there were people tonight who snickered their way through Vertigo just as loudly and mystifyingly as they did through The Birds (1963). Judy's painful, resigned "If I let you change me, will that do it? If I do what you tell me, will you love me?" isn't a comic beat—it's the nightmare of every relationship, that no one loves you for yourself, that you are desirable only if you're a pin-up, a fantasy, a stand-in for the real thing, made in Judy's case even crueller by the fact that the "real thing" was a fiction in the first place. But people laughed. And I screamed a little into![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel's shoulder. He thinks it's the melodrama of the story that people cannot respond to seriously, but I don't understand it. It's like going to the opera and laughing because people are singing. I'm well aware of the values of camp and irony as modes of reinterpretation, but they're not the only filter in the world. I don't find Vertigo a pleasant story, but that doesn't mean I can't take it on its own terms. Too much of Scottie is believable for it to play as comedy.
I think my mother is probably right, though.
I am rapidly coming to the disgruntled conclusion that it may be impossible for me to see Psycho (1960) in a theater anywhere in this town and not have the audience laugh inappropriately, because there were people tonight who snickered their way through Vertigo just as loudly and mystifyingly as they did through The Birds (1963). Judy's painful, resigned "If I let you change me, will that do it? If I do what you tell me, will you love me?" isn't a comic beat—it's the nightmare of every relationship, that no one loves you for yourself, that you are desirable only if you're a pin-up, a fantasy, a stand-in for the real thing, made in Judy's case even crueller by the fact that the "real thing" was a fiction in the first place. But people laughed. And I screamed a little into
derspatchel's shoulder. He thinks it's the melodrama of the story that people cannot respond to seriously, but I don't understand it. It's like going to the opera and laughing because people are singing. I'm well aware of the values of camp and irony as modes of reinterpretation, but they're not the only filter in the world. I don't find Vertigo a pleasant story, but that doesn't mean I can't take it on its own terms. Too much of Scottie is believable for it to play as comedy.I think my mother is probably right, though.
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"Did he train you? Did he rehearse you? Did he tell you exactly what to do and what to say? You were a very apt pupil, too, weren't you? You were a very apt pupil!"
Yes.
It interested me to see the movie as an adult with my mother, because she's put off by Scottie's behavior even before the supposed death of Madeleine Elster, when he's supposed to be as sane as the next man plus or minus a fear of heights—she thinks he was just as weird and obsessive then. He never loves the fiction of Madeleine for herself. He loves her fey, death-doomed fragility, tipping ever more into Gothic possession by a woman dead long before they were born; he loves Madeleine for the Carlotta in her, just as he will later love (if that's what you want to call it) Judy for the Madeleine in her. He can't make the connection with Midge, who is alive and well and independently employed and not any kind of helpless ghost at all. I don't think my mother is wrong. The Scottie figure in the original novel actually believes in possession and ghosts, which makes him more sympathetic to me. Scottie just believes in a particular kind of male fantasy and Judy's mistake is not in keeping the telltale necklace, it's in thinking that he ever could have been capable of loving her for herself at all.
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I remember seeing Vertigo in a theater in the eighties, and the audience laughed then too. Watching Psycho at home might be your best bet...
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I'll tell her. She and my grandparents were the major movie-watching force on my childhood: I keep forgetting how many classics I've seen because she rented them with me.
I remember seeing Vertigo in a theater in the eighties, and the audience laughed then too.
What the hell, people! [edit] It isn't even that I think you should take all movies seriously all the time. Just to pick on Hitchcock, Spellbound (1945) is ludicrous—its plot is idiocy within idiocy and its psychology is reductionist, risible, and rather insulting to the state of the field at the time; I feel bad for any psychologist who was the technical advisor for Gregory Peck's case. I can only imagine how much the film would have been improved by a twenty-minute Dalí dream sequence—at the very least, it would have left less room for the rest of the plot. But that's an actual failure of scientific accuracy, the mental health equivalent of Armageddon (1998), it's not a function of the film's age. It would be just as inaccurate if it were presented nowadays. Ingrid Bergman's character doesn't have the professional ethics God gave an artichoke. I really have almost nothing nice to say about this movie that isn't about the dream sequence. But I wouldn't go see it in a theater and then MST3K it, because somewhere in the audience is someone who thinks that Peck is troubled and beautiful and Bergman is perceptive and risk-taking and the way that he recovers his memories (including his suppressed childhood trauma) with her aid touches a chord in their experience. I don't think Vertigo is anywhere near the top of the best films ever made, but for God's sake, it's not Spellbound. It's full of big gestures and meaningful colors and tragedy on the soundtrack. So what? Most people don't talk to one another in coloratura, either. I don't have to love the film to know it isn't automatically funny from being made fifty-eight years ago.
Watching Psycho at home might be your best bet...
I really want to see it in a theater, on film if I can get it. I don't have a moral objection to watching movies at home—it's still how I see the majority of mine unless they're first-run, in which case I might still miss them and have to catch up with the DVD. I've never even seen many of my favorites on a big screen. (A Canterbury Tale is top of the list. I think the HFA will need to do a Powell and Pressburger retrospective.) But I prefer film when I can get it and Hitchcock still gets reasonable play on the arthouse circuit and considering Psycho's reputation and the fact that I'm not even sure if I'll like it outside of Anthony Perkins, my attitude toward it right now is pretty much "go big or go home." I just have this pipe dream of doing it with as little audience static as possible and I'm starting to think it might not be possible.
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Ha! I like the thought of artichokes with ethics
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The ethical artichoke is the best.
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so right. I'm shuddering that that produced laughs.
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It surprised me. I don't even think it's an especially mannered delivery—she sounds naked, a kind of desolate hope. She's voicing the subtext, but I think it's important: there has to be no ambiguity on the part of the audience that Scottie knows what he's doing to her. And she agrees and everything goes the express route to a very specifically feminine kind of hell.
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I am forced to assume this was a very nervous audience.
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(This reminds me of seeing Labyrinth on the big screen a few years back, and the three youngish guys in front of me, and their little strained giggle every time the camera lovingly went for a Bowie crotch shot.)
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It's very disorienting for people who don't, in audience contexts, if so.
(This reminds me of seeing Labyrinth on the big screen a few years back, and the three youngish guys in front of me, and their little strained giggle every time the camera lovingly went for a Bowie crotch shot.)
Seriously, what is Labyrinth without David Bowie's Area?
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Indeedy. It really, really bothers me when I'm watching something I'm into.
Seriously, what is Labyrinth without David Bowie's Area?
Absolutely nothing. :D
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I was thinking about that recently when listening to a song that someone dismissed as derivative. Dismissed it, without even letting the heart of the song come through. It was like once that initial comparison and reactive judgment was made, they couldn't hear anything else.
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I think that's true. It is entirely possible for a narrative to break my belief in it, but I don't think it has ever happened because of the register of reality in which the story was taking place—taking a recent exampe, I loved Jules Dassin's Phaedra (1962) and I wouldn't necessarily call it a realistic movie, which has nothing to do with whether its special effects are convincing or its dialogue intelligent. Almost nothing in Frank Borzage's Moonrise (1948) is real except the ways the characters feel and behave, but that's what matters. I tap out of stories when they insult their audiences, break their own logic, fail the world as we know it for no reason other than carelessness. If the core of a story is real, I can go a long way for its sake.
I was thinking about that recently when listening to a song that someone dismissed as derivative. Dismissed it, without even letting the heart of the song come through.
What was the song?