De Palma's Obsession

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This movie made me want to scratch my eyes out at times. And then De Palma would inject his usual diabolical creepiness to the proceedings, and it'd win me back So, all in all, it was the usual De Palma movie-watching experience.

First off, the bad: I realize that it was Bernard Hermann ripping off his own score for Vertigo here, but JESUS CHRIST. The score was so completely distracting and overwhelming at times, especially because I've listened to the Vertigo score so often in my life (really there is nothing better to clean the house to) that when Hermann would change a note here and there to make this score "different" it made me want to turn the sound off and just play the Vertigo CD alongside the film. It hurt me physically to hear this "score but not the score".

And Cliff Robertson should have never been cast as a lead in anything. I can't think of having seen Robertson anywhere besides as Spiderman's Uncle, but ohmigod he was awful. I get that De Palma was probably directing him to be as blank a slate as possible, a la Jimmy Stewart's Vertigo or Rear Window performances where half the films are Stewart just looking at things, but Stewart injected so much into those reaction shots, while Robertson was just not even registering.

I do think De Palma was trying to explicitly mess with this (and many other) Hitch conventions, specifically in these static "looking shots" where Robertson was wearing sunglasses - a shot of someone watching something out of frame while wearing sunglasses so you can't see their eyes is a pretty big fuck you to the audience - and this is presumably what De Palma was going for, so this might not have been Robertson's fault entirely, but it just got to be so completely off-putting.

It did remind me of Hitch's "hero" in Frenzy, though, where the inherent creepiness of a Hitch leading man became explicit and just completely overwhelmed the story and made the entire experience nearly unbearable. See, yes, Hitch's leading fellas are always flawed guys, but they're Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant, so you tend to like them, you understand them, even when they're total creeps. I mean, is there a bigger creep than Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, when you think about it? Yet somehow you're with him. Not so with Jon Finch in Frenzy, though (a film I've almost always found unbearably ugly to sit through) and not here with Robertson. So yeah, there's something interesting about making the leading man as explicitly creepy as he inherently is, about taking away that layer of audience identification we have inherently with Stewart or Grant; but to what end? What's a Hitch movie without the bubbling charm? Right - a De Palma movie!


But I speak too harshly, because there was good, and plenty of it, enough to warrant a B- from me over there at the side. As always with De Palma, the film was gorgeous, a visual buffet of shots swiped from Hitch but filtered through De Palma's gauzy 70's lens. And this was fun - when the soundtrack wasn't drowning you - to spot the Hitch shots, and remember what they were from - the crane shot down from the ceiling to a small item in someone's hand (stolen from Notorious); the frantic desktop duel with scissors being wielded in the glow of lamplight (stolen from Dial M For Murder); and the endless (to the point of too much and then back again) series of shots and sequences swiped from Vertigo.

And I really enjoyed Geneviève Bujold's performance, which, to quote the boyfriend, "She's doing all the acting for everybody." She got it, she was having fun, and occasionally knocking her teeth against the scenery. It's in these moments, when you watch her or Melanie Griffith in Body Double or Angie Dickensen in Dressed to Kill or Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface or Sissy Spacek in Carrie (I could go on) that you know you can call bullshit on the claims of misogyny often levelled at De Palma - he loves women, and he gives them great juicy things to work with, even if his films are primarily (besides Carrie) male-centric. Because in his world of male protagonists, the Sun is always a woman that the entire film is spinning around, and she's always the most fascinating thing to watch.

And I have to say, I dug the unexpected twist the proceedings took about 3/4 of the way through, and the way it colored everything with an even deeper layer of complete creepiness. That ending shot was a world of shudders.
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I Want My Arm About You, The Charm About You

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I think the highest compliment I personally could pay The Artist is that I immediately wanted to go and watch a musical when it was over. If you know me, then you know I don't want to go and watch musicals. Ever, really. But there's a tap routine at the end of The Artist that is one of the most joyous things you're going to see in any film this year, and so there I was at the end, seriously contemplating going home and watching something like Top Hat.

The second highest compliment I can give The Artist is that I didn't go home and watch Top Hat; I went home and watched Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. The score to The Artist flirts with Bernard Hermann music for that 1958 Hitch flick through it's entire running time, which seemed a strange pick to me, until the last reel where the movie stops flirting with Hermann's score and actually starts using Hermann's score itself. And that seemed really strange to me. I couldn't really figure out why this modern take on a silent movie would go the Vertigo route.

Until I got home and put in Vertigo and remembered that there are long stretches of Vertigo that are essentially a silent film - it barrels through a heap of exposition in the first twenty minutes, and then for long periods we just watch Scottie drive around following Madeleine as that beautiful beautiful music swells in the background.

So we've got a 2011 film pretending to be a silent film from the 20s referencing a pseudo-silent film from the 50s... and somehow it makes sense, ultimately. Because The Artist is a love letter to Hollywood, to the history of film-making and a respect for the technologies of the past. Hitchcock came out of silent films and his camera was always trying to tell the story itself, in place of words as much as possible.

But he was also one of the pioneers of sound - consider the scene in "Knife!" scene in Blackmail:

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Point being, it makes more sense for The Artist to score a portion of itself to Vertigo than it did at first glance, and these are the thoughts I've been thinking since seeing the movie last night. So what a gift, right? That is this movie's gift to us, sending us off on little scavenger hunts of cinematic delight like this. I'm sure there are a thousand more references bouncing around in this baby that are just waiting to be played with.

Oh and Jean Dujardin is like flashbulbs bursting in your eyeballs. He's every inch the movie star the movie demands and then sixteen swaggering steps further. Total hammy megawatted perfection. If I have a complaint to voice about the film it's that I never fell for his partner in love and tap shoes played by Bérénice Bejo quite as deeply as I did for him, and so the love story seemed a little bit lopsided. Not terribly so, it wasn't ruinous, but she was a layer or two of less sparkle than him. He should've ended up with Beth Grant, is my point.

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Psycho (1960)

Marion: I better get back to the office. 

These extended lunch hours give my boss excess acid.

Sam: Why don't you call your boss and tell him you're taking 

the rest of the afternoon off? It's Friday anyway, and hot.

Marion: What do I do with my free afternoon?

Walk you to the airport?

Sam: We could laze around here a while longer.

Marion: Checking out time is 3 P.M. Hotels of this sort

aren't interested in you when you come in,
but when your time is up...

Hitch scream queen Janet Leigh was born 85 years ago.

I was just having a conversation with the boyfriend about her last night. It started because of The Film Experience's latest entry in the "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series was on the film Picnic, which stars William Holden and that other Hitch chick Kim Novak. Just looking at Kim Novak makes me want to watch Vertigo right that immediate second, you see. 

Anyway after some verbal tussling over the hierarchy of Hitch chicks I got to thinking about something else Hitch-related - I think there might be a chance that Vertigo has started to replace Rear Window as my favorite Hitchcock movie. I've maintained for years when asked that my favorite movie of all time was a tie between Rosemary's Baby and Rear Window. Well I think Rosemary has pulled ahead to take the lead, the jewel in the crown, the forever highest perch, and I think that Vertigo has maybe snuck in ahead of Rear Window...? I just know that Vertigo's become my go-to comfort Hitchock - it's slow dreamlike atmosphere, Bernard Hermann's romantically deranged score (the only score I've consistently had on my iPod since I have had an iPod), and the sad sadder sadness of its story stirs something deep inside every time I go back. 

What about you? What's your favorite Hitch?

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Did You Hear The One About...

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... this bullshit?

A welcome back to everybody post-holiday, I hope and trust y'all had a pleasant one, and apologize for this being my opening number, but how could I not jump out of the starting gate on this when it's what I'm looking at? Via THR via AICN:

"A new incarnation of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" could be coming to the big screen.

"Buffy" creator Joss Whedon isn't involved and it's not set up at a studio, but Roy Lee and Doug Davison of Vertigo Entertainment are working with original movie director Fran Rubel Kuzui and her husband, Kaz Kuzui, on what is being labeled a remake or relaunch, but not a sequel or prequel.

... The new "Buffy" film, however, would have no connection to the TV series, nor would it use popular supporting characters like Angel, Willow, Xander or Spike. Vertigo and Kuzui are looking to restart the story line without trampling on the beloved existing universe created by Whedon, putting the parties in a similar situation faced by Paramount, J.J. Abrams and his crew when relaunching "Star Trek."

One of the underlying ideas of "Buffy" allows Vertigo and Kuzui to do just that: that each generation has its own vampire slayer to protect it. The goal would be to make a darker, event-sized movie that would, of course, have franchise potential.

The parties are meeting with writers and hearing takes, and later will look for a home for the project. The producers do not rule out Whedon's involvement but have not yet reached out to him.Speaking from Tokyo, Fran Kuzui said the company is constantly approached not only about sequels but theater, video games and foreign remakes for "Buffy." When Vertigo's Lee contacted them, they were intrigued.

"It was Roy's interest in taking Buffy into a new place that grabbed us," she said, noting that original exec producer Sandy Gallin also was consulted. "It was based on our respect for what he does, and his particular sensitivity to Asian filmmakers, that we wanted to work with him."

Kuzui, who is prepping do direct a movie in Japan in the fall, added: "Everything has its moment. Every movie takes on a life at some point, and this seems like the moment to do this."

No. That's the only thing I can say. If I say more, my head... my head will fucking explode. See how that happened there? The vulgarity just starts, and it will never stop, never never ever never... so I have to stick to a single syllable. No. No. No. No. No. I will literally throw every noun in connection with this into a volcano. No. Unless they hire Joss, unless it's a big-screen adaptation of the TV show, NO. NO. NO. Volcano! I fucking swear it!
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Quote of the Other Day

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Much to my shame and horror I missed posting on the occasion of what would've been Alfred Hitchcock's 110th birthday last Thursday. The shame. Thankfully there are people less scatter-minded than I like Kim Morgan at Sunset Gun who wrote up a lovely piece on The Master, and I would be a moron not to share this beautifully insightful take on Kim Novak's performance in Vertigo, which might just be my favorite performance in any Hitch film (not that I could really make such a list; I'd die first!):

"Hitchcock explored truly disturbed female protagonists in his early films, but none matched the wrenching melancholy displayed by Kim Novak in Vertigo. While Stewart was lauded for his flawless performance as the detective who becomes morbidly obsessed with resurrecting the image of his dead lover, Novak unjustly received criticism (at the time) for her uncomfortable portrayal of that lover. She presented a woman whose beauty bequeathed her a power she was ultimately unable to control, making Novak's Madeleine/Judy both wise and naive, hard and soft. Novak revealed the sadness that lurked beneath the smiling facades of bombshells like Marilyn Monroe or Rita Hayworth, by allowing that nervousness to bubble to the surface. It's all in the way she holds herself, talks or furtively moves her eyes. It's as if her mind seems ill-suited for her body, unhealthy almost, making her something of a sexual contradiction. It’s not merely that underneath the classy, gray-suited, sternly coiffed Madeline there's an even bustier, tight-sweatered and common Judy -- it’s that she, like the picture itself, embodies the irrationality of desire."

God that's well put. I couldn't agree more, I think Novak was a terrifically underrated actress and she gave a great performance in Vertigo. Maybe her greatest, although I'm not an expert on her films. Just even on simple terms, how distinct Madeline and Judy are from each other, and the degrees with which she starts to blur them... sure, a lot of that precision's obviously due to Hitch's firm hand, but Novak knocks it outta the park all the same. And to think he didn't want her for the role! He found her too earthy and liked his blondes a tad bit icier. It ended up being a perfect play of contradictions.

Anyway, to sorta make up for the disservice I did Mr. Hitch by forgetting the dead man's birthday, here are a bunch of belatedly random shots from a few of his films. Whee!

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Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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Vertigo (1958)

Is that is or is that ain't one of the greatest opening scenes of all time? (And it's a trick question that I even ask the question, clearly it is, so don't bother answering.) That poor nice policeman. I've seen this movie enough times (read: countless) that I've often wondered about the back-story here even though Hitch leaves it nothing but MacGuffins and unimportant - who was the guy they were chasing? Did he ever get caught? I should probably stop asking these questions lest I give a producer the idea for a Vertigo prequel television series or something. But still...

... that's the dude (with some lightening of the image - this is a dark scene) and I can't help but wonder. He looks so preppy! Actually what with the roof-top setting what he looks like is someone straight out of West Side Story.

Anyway I remember studying this scene in one of my film classes in college where we were talking about Hitch's use of vertical and horizontal lines and how smart he is about segmenting his screens - the opening shot of this movie... following the free-flowing and swirling geometric patterns designed by Saul Bass, of course...

... is of a vertical line slicing the screen in half, 

which immediately reveals itself to be the rung of a ladder.

I mean immediately, from second one, Hitchcock has got you subconsciously thinking about the deceptive nature of a straight line - of how going from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen, from Point A to Point B, is merely a bridge dangling above an abyss. And yes that's surely some film student speak that Hitch himself would scoff at, but I stand by it. Dude maybe knew what he was doing!

Anyway tomorrow is the 108th anniversary of the birth of Jimmy Stewart, so maybe watch Vertigo tonight or over the weekend in his honor. Besides seeing his best performance in what critics have agreed is The Greatest Movie Ever Made, you can keep your eyes peeled for Hitch's disorienting use of verticals vs horizontals...

... and see I ain't just blowing smoke here. 

And hit the jump for links to Previous Ways Not To Die...