Falling In Love...Or Just Falling?

Rating: 9/10 (18 October 2004)

Alfred Hitchcock made a career movie with "Vertigo," one of several career movies of his, but maybe the most enduring. On the surface, it's a love story with a mystery, bright and shiny, maybe his most sumptuous feast of the senses. But it has a cold heart.
James Stewart is the key to the film. I think a lot of people misjudge the film by misjudging his character, police detective John "Scotty" Ferguson. They see him and see the guy who played amiable dipso Elwood P. Dowd in "Harvey" or noble Mr. Smith or George Bailey. The secret of Scotty is he's no nice guy, though. He's more than a bit of a heel, a hard and greedy man eminently deserving of the roasting he gets in Henry Jones' postmortem. Watch Stewart in Hitchcock's "Rope" or the unjustly overlooked "Carbine Williams," and you see the hardness Hitchcock was after, and got, from his lead here.
Scotty does a lot of mean things in "Vertigo," actions that feed his illness and lead to his doom. The character of Midge, subtly portrayed by Barbara Bel Geddes, is a key for understanding this. His casual stoking early on of Midge's flames of unreturned desire, especially when viewed in retrospect, burns through their happy banter and demonstrates how miserable a man he is, nowhere more brilliantly or ruthlessly than when he cuts her off from his life over a silly gag. Watch "Vertigo" more than once, and you may find yourself hating the guy as much as I do. But you still follow his path of doom with total sympathy; because of the elegant, enveloping way Hitchcock draws you into this world of passion, cut off from all bounds of propriety, even space and time.
If Scotty was played by anyone other than Stewart, it's hard to imagine "Vertigo" packing the punch it does. You wouldn't have enough tolerance for the character to stick with his story. In its own day, "Vertigo" was a bit of a misfire, probably because audiences felt alienation from the Stewart image they were accustomed to. Yet now viewed from a decent remove, you get more of what Hitchcock was after, and respond to it better.
Still, it's easy to understand people not liking "Vertigo" the first time they see it. At least that's true with me. I didn't like "Vertigo" the first time I saw it. Here's what helps you find the right handle. Fall in love with the wrong person. Become bitterly disappointed. See the one that you loved in the face of passersby, in odd places, and in your dreams. Then you begin to get it. Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes, as Billy Joel once sang, and trying to hold on too long is a recipe for self-inflicted pain.
Talking too much about "Vertigo" is not a good idea. There's too many obvious spoilers in recounting the plot of the film, in explaining why Kim Novak is so flat-out stupendous in her performance, and how you are left feeling by film's end. "Vertigo" is a uniquely personal film, not only for Hitchcock, but for a broad array of viewers who like me have latched onto its tragic story.
That's not to say it's perfect. There's a murder mystery wrapped up in "Vertigo," and all the pieces don't exactly fit when you think about them later. Hitchcock called it "icebox talk," something to leave the viewer pondering after the film was over, but maybe he left a few more loose ends than he should have this time around.
Still, what "Vertigo" is after is not making sense but magic, and it succeeds wonderfully, nowhere more so then when it bends the laws of reality. Take the moment when the bookstore owner tells the sad tale of Carlotta Valdez while the lights of the room around him dim in eerie, unnatural sympathy. Or the way the flowers in the shop Madeleine visits seem to glow in unearthly splendor as Ferguson, his eyes glowing strangely too, spies on his prey.
You may not like this film the first time you see it, but if you are left disturbed and uneasy from the experience, you owe it to yourself to see it again. "Vertigo" is a film that keeps on giving, with all the power and mystery of unrequited love, but unlike most forms of infatuation, this film has a way of returning the ardor with which it is held. Utterly timeless.