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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.
no subject
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.
no subject
Ha! I like the thought of artichokes with ethics
no subject
The ethical artichoke is the best.