Damnation echoing throughout eternity

Rating: Null/10 (24 November 2010)

Some movies I can't nitpick when they end a certain way. What is there to say for example about Seppuku or The Treasure of Sierra Madre or Sword of Doom that is not drowned out by its ending? In the defeaning silence of their aftermath, even a murmur is annoying, sounds too loud. For the sake of justifying my writing this because adulation is not reason enough, I will nitpick. I will start by the end though, not just the iconic image of a character left by the movie in a purgatory of eternal doom, but with the image that brings him teetering to that edge. The apparition of a figure emerging in silhouette from out of the dark chilled my bones, truly one of the most terrifying things of the decade. This is my favourite type of ending though. The one where the damnation of our protagonits echoes through eternity.
I am pleasantly surprised that Hitchcock for once treats his movie with the seriousness it deserves. Not at all times, but for the most part. The flashback scene Kim Novak experiences alone in her Hotel Empire room that explains how Jimmy Stewart was tricked is tacky. A patient audience could have understood in due course but Hitchcock wants the gasp of the twist to be immediate. Their romance I had to struggle a bit to buy. And I'm very sorry that the scene where Stewart's college ex-fiancé curses herself for painting the Carlotta Valdes imitation didn't go anywhere. Her being incidentally blonde, and knowing this is a movie about obsession corrosive to the soul, I hoped Hitchcock would pull a Psycho two years earlier and reveal the most unexpected character to be the one really obsessed. The movie forgets the scene ever happened though.
I like a lot the fact that Hitchcock makes a movie about a detective following a woman around town a movie about a detective following a woman around town. I was crossing fingers some sort of stupid voice-over narration where Stewart explains his innermosts wouldn't be pulled out of a hat of cheap tricks and ruin this like it ruined something like The Haunting. In all this Kim Novak is an amazingly sensual sight. Beautiful Hollywood women have rarely been depicted in a manner as iconic as that of Kim Novak in that fire-engine red bath robe. She doesn't act much, like Betty in Mulholland Dr. she's a bit of a porcelain figure with lips painted red, but it suits the movie. I like how she continuously evades Steward, disappearing right in front of him. Hitchcock shoots her reflection on mirrors often, and near the end completely shrouded in darkness, the shade of a person, something to be recognized by the outlines of her face. The gaps in time, case closed, Stewart in and out of mental hospital, don't bother me, I actually like movies that shake loose from the confines of what we may expect of them.
Which brings me to why I liked Vertigo much more than other Hitchcock films. Unlike his other films, this one may begin very conveniently and movie-like with Stewart becoming aware for the first time that he suffers from acrophobia, but the movie extends outside of the ending. A couple is not happily reunited, the crook is not just exposed or brought to justice, the movie goes beyond loose ends neatly tied up to give us something that echoes through eternity. Our protagonist is frozen in place for all time in that amazing posture of lament and anguish, damned for not being able to prevent the same death not once but twice, tragic because he beats his handicap, standing on top of the church tower looking down, but there's no triumph there.