Patchwork of DSM1 disorders to a Serenade of Strings

Rating: 8/10 (22 October 2013)

Its hard to extract the movie medium as story-teller from a linear progression of logic. Failing to do so can be art but more likely bad film-making. In Vertigo (1958) the seams are well and truly showing. I appreciate unpredictable twists and turns drives interest but this presages Cary Grant's drunken drive in the upcoming North by Northwest.
It's 1956-7 and someone behind a typewriter has a list of psychiatric conditions and is plot-lining these. Reminding ourselves that the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders appeared in 1952, its hard not to see the script team thumbing dog-eared versions for more character characteristics.
I'm getting used to Mr Hitchcock's script-progressing irritating irrationality, getting the plot into peril and then extracting us from it. So often he makes us take Fergusonian leaps of faith which similarly has us clutching the gutters of credibility. Clearing the kids from the school in The Birds to name but one or the crop duster pilot not seeing the truck. These abound. The price of a classic scene. Perhaps the gutter is a metaphor the script itself, or even Hitch's hold on the film-making process. Like the ending. Where else could it, and she, possibly go apart from another 1958 industry standard bar?
Mr Hitchcock went for the box. According to IMDb it grossed over half the production cost in the opening weekend so that's the formula there. Lots of magic moments embedded in a crisis of how to link them together, credibly. At least with the Road-Runner, you get a new story each time. But that's the man.
The music score though benign, is the most disturbing. The syntax of the strings is aged and hackneyed (surprising for a man born not far away in Leytonstone and at the peak of his career) - a parody of the style? I doubt it. What progress in a couple of years towards the 'shower strings' in Psycho. Imaging what re-scoring this film could do.
Back to DSM1. Centrally, Ferguson's frankly sexually obsessive stalking behaviour is crudely over-portrayed and uncomfortable. One wonders if JS was the person for this role. Robert Mitchum springs to mind but Brando plus or minus shirt would have done it better. Were the chaotic emotions and behaviour in the principles a crafted representation, or just very bad application of 'disorder' into standard scripting?
Mr Elster must have had a copy too : 'Mrs Elster' appears to be having seizures, later fully entering an apparent dissociative fugue. I say apparent as it turns out (spoiler) it was a script driven put-on. Not bad for a shipbuilding murdering millionaire(script cred logical error). Moving 'forwards', 'Doctor' validates his sanguine Victorian diagnosis of Ferguson as 'melancholia' with evident psycho-analytic tendencies. Perhaps the punters indicated they needed more info. Two years later, in Psycho, we get a comprehensive profile of Bates' condition lacking only a Christopher Waltz accent.
Fear of Germs - the transmission of psychiatric disorders through shared body fluids is put to the audience, after Stewart and Novak have a suitably strung moment of mouth passion, after which he starts having her dreams. Um. Product placement moment.
Ferguson also has a spell of dissociation where he briefly becomes a Jimmy Stewart character from another movie. Most likely the script team were having a go at Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after the first incident in the film.
This movie has many good points like the moody dusk and dawn shots. As Jimmy cruises the streets of SF after the big green Bentley (sorry, Jag) I had a massive Bullitt replay of tyre shredding acceleration. One of those 'oh that's where it came from' moments, like men whining after a woman called 'Livia' in Italian.
The brown suit sits well on the bland career cop we first meet too far up the ladder yet not far enough up to avoid chasing Liberace lookalikes a couple of pants behind an older and fitter but myopic beat cop. Oh they were probably warning shots advising him not to attempt the next leap of faith across 42nd Street onto a 45degree pitched roof. The fools.
And so to the fear of heights. This left a whole generation of folk thinking that is Vertigo. Despite the handy medical lesson on the flashback set of Rear Widow where we learn this phobia is acrophobia. Followed by a well-acted demonstration of Vertigo : provoking spinney sensations via head movement (atop the Croc Dundee 'steps – call that a step?' ). The connection is? Ah, the medical dictionary again. Alarmingly, this demo causes Jimmy to fall (safely - release of tension there for sure) into the string strung safe arms of homely Midge. Any half decent OH&S'er would have known from the brown shoes taking the last step that this was yet further risky behaviour from Mr Brown, which to use the parlance, reflects his underlying relationship needs.
As always the gorgeous wardrobe of the lead lady is fabulously hung. The player / character age thing takes another bow as 1908 JS pursues 1933 KN in mummy's platinum grey. They look like classmates. Her makeover had me fully taken in.
Back on the brink: So the title if the film could have been any medical condition. It does suggest disorientation, discomfort and perhaps a touch of nausea. Well chosen then.
I appreciate there are many fans but Ill leave Mr Lynch as the master of creep at the emotional level and keep watching Hitch's undoubted massive cinematographic legacy.
Thanks for reading.