Friday, August 02, 2013

HITCHCOCK'S "VERTIGO"


Here's a question for the film buffs out there: what non-Hitchcock film most closely resembles the kind of film Hitchcock used to make? "Diabolique"? "Charade?" "Arsenic and Old Lace"? "Portrait of Jenny"? I say none of the above. For me the film that most approximates Hitchcock is the 1953 Technicolor thriller, "Niagara," directed by Henry Hathaway. 


Niagara had some classic Hitchcock icons: the imposing falls at Niagara, the hint of fate,  a menacing supernatural presence, and the characters who dare to venture into the abyss and are unable to extricate themselves. 

The film must have rattled Hitchcock. It must have seemed like the industry was on to him, that all his innovations were on the verge of becoming standard practice. It's tempting to speculate that his response was to remake Niagara, and do it in such a way that it would be clear to everyone that only Hitchcock could do Hitchcock. That remake would have been "Vertigo." 


I remind the reader that Hitchcock was famous for his use of monumental icons. Here, from Hitchcock's "Saboteur" is a shot from the fight scene on the torch of the Statue of Liberty.


Taking a page from Hitchcock, Hathaway staked his claim to Niagara Falls (above). For Vertigo, Hitchcock would have to find something else.


And he did...San Francisco and, in particular, The Golden Gate Bridge. It's a water motif again, only with a more art directed feel. The awe-inspiring bridge is made to feel like the creepy entrance to another world.


Hathaway also flirted with the idea of another world with a doorway into our own. From Niagara, that's (above) the monumental arch that used to grace the Canadian side of the falls. Arches are a classic surrealist symbol for the beckoning unknown.


Vertigo (above) employed a similar arch.


Niagara (above) is about a man's obsession for a woman.


So is Vertigo (above).

Niagara's climax takes place in a bell tower (above).


So does Vertigo (above).


Above, the corpse in Niagara

Above, the corpse in Vertigo. 


Niagara starred the openly sensuous Marilyn Monroe. For Hitchcock this was a mistake. He's quoted as saying:

“As for myself, I prefer a woman who does not display all of her sex at once – one whose attractions are not falling out in front of her. I like women who are also ladies, who hold enough of themselves in reserve to keep a man intrigued.... When a man approaches her, the audience should be led to wonder whether she intends to shrink from him or tear off his clothes.”


Hitchcock's lady was Kim Novak. I think he would have preferred Grace Kelly.

One final speculation: Vertigo was a marvelous film but I'm guessing that Hitchcock felt he'd lost control over it and made a film the public wouldn't understand. Even so, the taste of freedom and experiment was intoxicating and Hitch found he couldn't go back to the type of film he'd made before. At the threshold of old age, and at great risk to his career, he cast about for something new, and that search would eventually lead to "Psycho" and "The Birds." 

That's all I have room for here. Before I go let me thank Joel Gunz. Some of the opinions and pictures here are stolen from his excellent blog:

http://www.alfredhitchcockgeek.com/search/label/Niagara



8 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm immediately adding that blog to my bookmarks. I'm a big Hitchcock fan, but I wasn't familiar with Niagara or some of the other films you listed. I got some serious movie watching to do soon. I'm not even sure if I'll have that much time for entertainment when I go back to college (the one I was at last summer) the 26th of this month.

Jorge Garrido said...

I think while he would have preferred Kelly to Novak, the film was ABOUT his obsession with Grace Kelly. So it's more poetic that the film is about Kim Novak being made over into someone else. Vertigo was named the #1 movie of all time, and I think it's because it appeals both to the old guard of film critics and newer young hipster cinema geeks because it's an incomprehensible high-brow art film, a very personal film, about its director and his obsessions, which nobody has quite ever interpreted fully, and also a low-brow genre crime thriller/melodrama.

Our culture has rejected the middlebrow. The art we love the most is a mix of low-brow genre and high-brow pretensions. It's the two extremes, preferably simultaneously. Like Pauline Kael said about Band Of Outsiders: It’s as if a French poet took an ordinary banal American crime novel and told it to us in terms of the romance and beauty he read between the lines.

I never noticed the similarities between Vertigo and Niagara. Fascinating.

While also deeply personal to Hitchcock, I think the film also has a lot of say about male and female agency and the patriarchy, specifically how men represent the idea of owning power and freedom and how they are forced to cede it to women in modern society, and how some men are reactionary to that.

The Jerk said...

I've bever seen Niagara, so can't really make a fair comparison, but of films I HAVE seen, I thin Charade is a good candidate for the most Hitchcock-esque Non-Hitchcock film.

zillustration said...

I love Hitch! I worked in the "Gov't Safe House" from "Topaz" for 3 years. It's a mansion in northern VA, owned by Cisco Systems founders, Lerner and Bosack - Music studio, design studios, etc. No Hollywood set there... It's a real stone and plaster estate with a sweeping staircase.

Joshua Marchant (Scrawnycartoons) said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mike Pelensky said...

Eddie:
To coin a phrase: "!!!"

I made "A Little Hitch," one of the films you saw at LCAD last May, as a nod to my inner thriller fan, and have long proclaimed Vertigo as one of my all-time favorite films. I am humbled -- I have never seen Niagara. I'm not sure I've even heard of it!

I'd better hunt this film down. Of course, I can't say now whether it would take my breath away like Vertigo does, but clearly Hitchcock saw enough genius in it to draw intimate parallels to it in his own work.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Mike: Hey, I heard that you finished "Hitch." Are you going to post it to YouTube?

Mike Pelensky said...

Eddie: I'm planning to run it thru the festivals first...and most of them prefer that I don't. Otherwise, yes, I would throw my cartoon in everyone's face like a lousy cream pie. Thanks for asking though!