Classics I'm Not A Fan Of...

[MacGuffin]

Well, you use mystery in place of thriller. That's not really saying it is anything that different, because both resolve the situation upon an action sequence. You note the pace of the film and give it a nicer term like "mystery", which is fine.

No. It's NOT a thiller. It's not chase movie. It's not like "North By Northwest". The mystery is, as with Scottie, you wonder what she is up to. Why she throws herself into the water. Why she is visiting the museum. And so so. Then a twist comes as the mid-point that furthers the mystery. Conventionality would have said to not let the audience in on the twist and become surprised. But Hitchcock breaks that by saying she's not dead and, thus creates the suspense in finding out when and if Scottie will find out. I associate thriller with more action based films, and "Vertigo" does not have that.

Well, the subject and idea that Hithcock was making a personal comment in this film in following Stewart's obcession to loving this woman that he would try to control another woman in recreating her. The subject is worthy of a serious situation, but I don't take Hitchcock that seriously at all to think he can come through on an exploration of the subject. Graham Green said it nicely when he gave his reasons for disliking Hitchcock because "his films consist of a serious of small 'amusing' melodramatic situations...Very perfunctorily he builds up to these tricky situations...and then drops them; they mean nothing; they lead to nothing." Hitchcock's exploration of the subject just leads to an extended chase scene that gives the great situation of the woman pretending to kill herself and thus sending the character, audience into a head spin. All of Hitchcock's films end in terms of putting his grip hold to the genre above the story. He's been doing the same genre his entire career and even as he made Vertigo later in his career and is said to carry the most drama, but it still resolves itself on the same platter as any of his other films.

I don't understand what you're saying in the part I bolded, and is it related to your next sentence? Because that scene is not the ending. That scene starts the exploration of the subject, doesn't lead to it. The irony with the ending is now the Scottie character is cured of his vertigo. He was shown another tramatic situation and is able to climb and look down the tower, and that falls in line with the story.

[Gold Trumpet]

I still think you're missing what's great about Vertigo. To me, it belongs in the same psychosexual lineage as Persona and Mulholland Dr..

...how Vertigo can be a huge cinematic achievement without necessarily being a "dramatic" achievement signifies to me that you're scrutinizing things about it that are fairly irrelevant to its greatness.

This should cover Mac's grievances as well:

But, to put Vertigo alongside Persona, it would have to excell to the same level of Persona. Persona is a very objective film that seems to know no bounds of where it will take the subject. To give Vertigo the same place, you would have to rationalize with a filmmaker whose cinema really is quite limited to Bergman's. Of course, its nice to give each filmmaker the benefit of the doubt and say, "Well, for his approach, I think it does well." I disagree. Some filmmakers have an expression that is limited with exploring certain subjects and their limitations should be noted. Bergman couldn't go Hollywood, nor could Hitchcock go indepedent really. Both are tied to their filmmaking approach and must aim to achieve what their filmmaking is best suited for.

To see Vertigo as being more than the typical Hitchcock, it has the trappings of Hitchcock in attempt to thrill, but a melodramatic plot that only scratches below the surface. In its attempt be objective about the obcession of this man to control the woman, it has the same controlling nature in filmmaking that limits Hitchcock himself in exploring subjects. As usual, the woman of desire from the start couldn't be dolled up to a percise image. The sex scenes are as clinical as ever and Stewart seems to be a wandering actor making a variety of facial reactions instead of being allowed to act.

As a Hitchcock film, the film starts randomly with a roof to roof chase like is it just old hat for Hitchcock and quickly goes into a police officer falling and Stewart beginning his 'vertigo' problems that will plague him the entire way through. What I don't see here is just execution of what Hitchcock is known for, but a disbelief in it being effective because the scene is trying to be thrilling, but yet so casual. Little in the rest of the film really does little to excite at all. The meladramatic pacing is mostly there with, as I said before, a story that hardly delves or really is effective.

[godardian]

Blue Velvet

Agreed.  Although I'm not a huge Lynch fan anyway, so...

Oh, how could I forget? 2001: A Space Odyssey...blech

Oh! Blasphemer! It's hard to think of 2 films (American ones, at least) that were as a) important to their day and b) revelatory as far as what can be done, whether in content or in form, with the medium.

[Pubrick]

i propose we change the name of this thread to "Who Hates The Best Movies?"

[SHAFTR]

But, to put Vertigo alongside Persona, it would have to excell to the same level of Persona. Persona is a very objective film that seems to know no bounds of where it will take the subject.

Bergman couldn't go Hollywood, nor could Hitchcock go indepedent really. Both are tied to their filmmaking approach and must aim to achieve what their filmmaking is best suited for.

I would call Persona subjective.

I don't believe Bergman was ever "independent."  As far as I know he worked well within the studios in Sweden.  So the difference between the two would lie in their national cinema.  I think it's fair to say that they fit the art cinema market more so than their national cinemas, meaning they are pretty much working in the same realm of filmmaking.

[Gold Trumpet]

But, to put Vertigo alongside Persona, it would have to excell to the same level of Persona. Persona is a very objective film that seems to know no bounds of where it will take the subject.

Bergman couldn't go Hollywood, nor could Hitchcock go indepedent really. Both are tied to their filmmaking approach and must aim to achieve what their filmmaking is best suited for.

I would call Persona subjective.

I don't believe Bergman was ever "independent."  As far as I know he worked well within the studios in Sweden.  So the difference between the two would lie in their national cinema.  I think it's fair to say that they fit the art cinema market more so than their national cinemas, meaning they are pretty much working in the same realm of filmmaking.

So, since Hitchcock veers from Hollywood and Bergman from the studios in Sweden, they are thus in the same realm of filmmaking? Their work may be outside their respective communities but it hardly makes them the same or anywhere near it. Yes, the difference is in their national cinema.

[SHAFTR]

But, to put Vertigo alongside Persona, it would have to excell to the same level of Persona. Persona is a very objective film that seems to know no bounds of where it will take the subject.

Bergman couldn't go Hollywood, nor could Hitchcock go indepedent really. Both are tied to their filmmaking approach and must aim to achieve what their filmmaking is best suited for.

I would call Persona subjective.

I don't believe Bergman was ever "independent."  As far as I know he worked well within the studios in Sweden.  So the difference between the two would lie in their national cinema.  I think it's fair to say that they fit the art cinema market more so than their national cinemas, meaning they are pretty much working in the same realm of filmmaking.

So, since Hitchcock veers from Hollywood and Bergman from the studios in Sweden, they are thus in the same realm of filmmaking? Their work may be outside their respective communities but it hardly makes them the same or anywhere near it. Yes, the difference is in their national cinema.

so is Hitchcock's National Cinema the US or the UK?

Hitchcock and Bergman are very poor examples of national cinema.  I would argue that they have more similarities with each other than with their national cinemas.

[godardian]

i propose we change the name of this thread to "Who Hates The Best Movies?"

Oh, yes... I see plenty of people around here with some 'splaining to do. "All Kubrick films" had to have been a joke... had to have. Even notorious Kubrick detractor Pauline Kael loved Lolita!

[Gold Trumpet]

so is Hitchcock's National Cinema the US or the UK?

Hitchcock and Bergman are very poor examples of national cinema.  I would argue that they have more similarities with each other than with their national cinemas.

I definitely disagree they more in common than with their respective cinemas. For all I know, Sweden followed suit like most of Europe in realizing that it couldn't compete with USA in production value so focused on much smaller, personal films. Bergman strays from that, but has foundations in it. Hitchcock, to say USA for him, found freedom to make his films, but they were closely tied to the entertainment vehicles that many other American films were. You could say he strayed with some of his films, but he also has foundations in USA. I haven't seen enough of his UK work to comment on that.

[godardian]

I still think you're missing what's great about Vertigo. To me, it belongs in the same psychosexual lineage as Persona and Mulholland Dr..

...how Vertigo can be a huge cinematic achievement without necessarily being a "dramatic" achievement signifies to me that you're scrutinizing things about it that are fairly irrelevant to its greatness.

This should cover Mac's grievances as well:

But, to put Vertigo alongside Persona, it would have to excell to the same level of Persona. Persona is a very objective film that seems to know no bounds of where it will take the subject. To give Vertigo the same place, you would have to rationalize with a filmmaker whose cinema really is quite limited to Bergman's. Of course, its nice to give each filmmaker the benefit of the doubt and say, "Well, for his approach, I think it does well." I disagree. Some filmmakers have an expression that is limited with exploring certain subjects and their limitations should be noted. Bergman couldn't go Hollywood, nor could Hitchcock go indepedent really. Both are tied to their filmmaking approach and must aim to achieve what their filmmaking is best suited for.

To see Vertigo as being more than the typical Hitchcock, it has the trappings of Hitchcock in attempt to thrill, but a melodramatic plot that only scratches below the surface. In its attempt be objective about the obcession of this man to control the woman, it has the same controlling nature in filmmaking that limits Hitchcock himself in exploring subjects. As usual, the woman of desire from the start couldn't be dolled up to a percise image. The sex scenes are as clinical as ever and Stewart seems to be a wandering actor making a variety of facial reactions instead of being allowed to act.

As a Hitchcock film, the film starts randomly with a roof to roof chase like is it just old hat for Hitchcock and quickly goes into a police officer falling and Stewart beginning his 'vertigo' problems that will plague him the entire way through. What I don't see here is just execution of what Hitchcock is known for, but a disbelief in it being effective because the scene is trying to be thrilling, but yet so casual. Little in the rest of the film really does little to excite at all. The meladramatic pacing is mostly there with, as I said before, a story that hardly delves or really is effective.

It still seems to me that you're judging the film on "dramatic" terms of plot and storyline. Maybe this is where you and I differ in our response to films: I see those things- and even, in the case of a film like Vertigo, the characters themselves, with their personalities and attributes- as quite secondary, a very bare, skeletal, mere blueprint for what any film will actually be.

What matters more, and what tells us more about the filmmaker's intentions, is what we actually see. I'm talking about the execution- the framing, the camera movements, the colors, the lighting, the editing patterns- which are always equally important, and in this case I believe much more important, than a list of the events that occur in the film. And to me, in execution, in the way in which it uses its raw materials of "plot" and "character," the film bears a strong resemblance to films like Persona and Mulholland Dr.. The story/plot itself are either disrupted or a red herring; the artifice is apparent to us, cluing us in that there is something else, something more disturbing and elemental, going on beneath the "dramatic" surface.

There is a nebulous, nefarious psychosexual element in Hitchcock's work that reaches its peak in Vertigo. A riveting articulation and exploration of the sexual archetypal (particularly the female archetype) through a mastery of cinematic language is what the three films I mentioned have in common, which is not based in any arbitrary "independent/Hollywood" distinction. You could add many of Bunuel's films to this group, as well. There is a certain dream-logic at work that overrides  literal-minded narrative circumscription; there is no better place for dream-logic than a medium that is first and foremost about images.

I believe Hitchcock's intention was to "thrill," but not through the conventional means of suspense, routine identification with the characters, and "plot." I think it was much more unique and much more forceful, even primal, than that, and supremely, irrevocably effective.

[NEON MERCURY]

::thorws water ballons at SHAFTR and coffeebeetle annd speaks in thick italian/New York Accent::

"whats da matta wit ya?   Blue Velvet is a mastapiece. "

[soixante]

Vertigo left me cold, but I only saw it once, 20 years ago.  I should give it another chance.  I've seen Chinatown 3 times, and read the script, and even though I like it, I just don't think it's the shit like so many others (in every screenwriting class the script is regarded as the best of the past 40 years).

It is amusing that De Palma's Scarface has become a classic of sorts, as it is basically a B-movie.

[©brad]

cbrad reading this thread


raise ur hand if u want me to lock it!

[SHAFTR]

i propose we change the name of this thread to "Who Hates The Best Movies?"

Oh, yes... I see plenty of people around here with some 'splaining to do. "All Kubrick films" had to have been a joke... had to have. Even notorious Kubrick detractor Pauline Kael loved Lolita!

I have seen Full Metal Jacket, The Shining, Dr Strangelove, Eyes Wide Shut, A Clockwork Orange and parts of 2001.

I'll admit that Kubrick chooses excellent source material and I think his films have more to owe to that than anything else.

[SHAFTR]

cbrad reading this thread


raise ur hand if u want me to lock it!

you better be joking.