Given my reg­u­lar vis­its to the Lau­rel­hurst The­ater this past month for their revival series, I should per­haps approach the man­age­ment about a PR posi­tion. On Fri­day, I attended Hitchcock’s Ver­tigo (1958), a film to which so much appro­ba­tion and crit­i­cal analy­sis has accrued that any com­ments I might add are undoubt­edly super­flu­ous. Nev­er­the­less, I am com­pelled to write if only to encour­age those who have never seen this mas­ter­piece to attend this week.

I see Ver­tigo when­ever it appears on the big screen; it is a film that demands a the­atri­cal expe­ri­ence, not because of scale but because of its extra­or­di­nary inti­mate inten­sity. We still go to see a movie while we watch a video at home. Ver­tigo is a film to be seen. I believe this is not merely a seman­tic anachro­nism. “See­ing”, para­dox­i­cally, is more active (and there­fore more sat­is­fy­ing) than “watch­ing”. A visit to the cin­ema requires fore­thought, a com­mit­ment of time and, pre­sum­ably, atten­tion which rep­re­sents an invest­ment, even an oblig­a­tion to par­tic­i­pate as spec­ta­tors. We sit silently in the dark with strangers. We detach our­selves from the exter­nal world for a cou­ple of hours and allow our­selves to be manip­u­lated: to be told a story. ^[1] Great cin­ema requires one to sur­ren­der one­self. In the case of Ver­tigo it asks us to dive into a whirlpool of obses­sion, per­ver­sity, men­dac­ity and night­mares. In exchange, it offers a quin­tes­sen­tial cin­e­matic expe­ri­ence for those will­ing to truly attend. Its themes are oper­atic in scale and its rewards are equally grand.^[2]

View­ing Ver­tigo peri­od­i­cally is akin to revis­it­ing a great steak­house for an anniver­sary din­ner. Rep­e­ti­tion does not dimin­ish the plea­sure; with each iter­a­tion new sub­tleties appear com­pli­ment­ing famil­iar fla­vors and mem­o­ries recalled. One may sim­i­larly reprise great cin­ema: always a film reveals itself again to the viewer. The film may never change but we cer­tainly do.^[3]

I’ve seen Ver­tigo per­haps a half dozen times now (always the­atri­cally — I could never watch it on video even when I was research­ing Hitch­cock in col­lege). I have rel­ished the film as a naive viewer and dis­sected it as an aca­d­e­mic. Despite this, it aston­ishes me each time I see it. On Fri­day, I mar­veled at the long sec­tions devoid of dia­logue. The open­ing scene has but two lines and even they are unnec­es­sary. More sig­nif­i­cantly, the “courtship” of Scotty and Made­line is almost entirely silent. Scotty watches voyeuris­ti­cally, sur­rep­ti­tiously; just as we in the audi­ence watch the screen. On the page this must have appeared quite tedious. For sev­eral min­utes of screen time Scotty fol­lows Made­line in his vehi­cle and on foot; to the florist, to an art gallery, to a grave­yard accom­pa­nied only by Herrmann’s hyp­notic score. It is pure silent cin­ema. The gaze, the POV shot, and the music con­vey every­thing nec­es­sary. But the true func­tion of this pro­tracted silent sequence is to seduce us into empathiz­ing with Scotty, to share his fas­ci­na­tion with the mys­te­ri­ous Made­line. Effec­tive cin­ema com­pels us to invest our­selves in the story and Hitch­cock deployed the entreat­ing lan­guage of cin­ema as few oth­ers have.

Most mod­ern pro­duc­ers would have cut this sequence in the script down from ten min­utes to well under one to con­serve screen time and foment action. But Ver­tigo inhab­its an oper­atic realm, where char­ac­ters fall fate­fully in love in moments but where the drama of love is played out in extended ada­gio pas­sages. Func­tion­ing as his own pro­ducer, Hitch­cock had the lux­ury to make this, the most oper­atic of his fea­tures exactly as he desired.

As I men­tioned, I really have no new insights to offer regard­ing this remark­able film. For those inter­ested I will rec­om­mend two titles from among the dozens on Hitch­cock: Don­ald Spoto’s, The Art of Alfred Hitch­cock, and Hitchcock/Truffaut. How­ever, I can offer some­thing tan­gi­ble to any­one who has not seen Ver­tigo, par­tic­u­larly those under the age of 25: I will pay for your admis­sion at the Lau­rel­hurst The­ater this week.^[4] Sim­ply write me via the con­tact page. Hell, tell your entire sopho­more class. Don’t miss it on the big screen!

1. ^[1] Sadly, our gad­gets have pen­e­trated the sacred space of the the­ater and defiled the sanc­tity of the dream palace. ↩
2. ^[2] I am cer­tain some­one will one day adapt the film to the opera or musi­cal the­ater stage. Bernard Herrmann’s mag­nif­i­cent score was inspired in part by Wagner’s Tris­tan und Isolde. So inte­gral is his music that I would argue that the mar­quee should always include Mr. Her­mann along­side Jimmy Stew­art and Kim Novak as the “stars” of the pic­ture. ↩
3. ^[3] In the case of Ver­tigo the film has changed. In 1996, a restored ver­sion of the film, includ­ing new 70 mm the­atri­cal prints, was released which, in addi­tion to restor­ing the orig­i­nal vivid Tech­ni­color, remixed the sound­track and even replaced cer­tain sound effects. Crit­ics (with whom I sym­pa­thize) argued that this exceeed the archivist’s purview. For exam­ple, the gun­shots in the open­ing chase scene were updated to pre­sum­ably sound more men­ac­ing. It has been argued that this mis­places empha­sis within the scene; the nar­ra­tive is not con­cerned with the bad guy or even the pur­su­ing police offi­cer, only the cir­cum­stance which leads to Scotty’s ver­tigo. ↩
4. ^[4] Restric­tions apply. All elec­tronic devices must be OFF upon enter­ing the build­ing. There is to be no talk­ing once the lights dim in the the­ater. ↩