Vertigo - From the realm of the dead

Movie
German title	From the realm of the dead (first performance) Vertigo - From the realm of the dead (re-performance)
Original title	Vertigo
Country of production	United States
original language	English
Publishing year	1958
length	129 (formerly 128) minutes
Age rating	FSK 12 (formerly 16)
Rod
Director	Alfred Hitchcock
script	Samuel A. Taylor Alec Coppel Maxwell Anderson (anonymous)
production	Alfred Hitchcock Herbert Coleman (Associate Producer)
music	Bernard Herrmann
camera	Robert Burks
cut	George Tomasini
occupation
James Stewart : John "Scottie" Ferguson Kim Novak : Madeleine Elster / Judy Barton Barbara Bel Geddes : Midge Wood Tom Helmore : Gavin Elster Henry Jones : Coroner Ellen Corby : Hotel Manager Konstantin Shayne : Pop Leibel Raymond Bailey : Scottie's Doctor
synchronization

Vertigo - From the realm of the dead (formerly: From the realm of the dead , original title: Vertigo , dt. "Dizziness" ) is an American psychological thriller by Alfred Hitchcock from 1958 with James Stewart and Kim Novak in the leading roles. The script is based on the novel D'entre les morts (1954) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac .

The film, which was received with caution by critics and audiences at its premiere, is one of the director's most important works today. In the critics' survey carried out every ten years by the British magazine Sight & Sound for the “best films of all time”, the film was named the top of the list by more than 800 film critics in 2012.

Retired police officer John “Scottie” Ferguson falls in love with a suicidal woman, but can not prevent her death due to his fear of heights . When he later meets a young woman who is exactly like the dead woman, he tries to transform her into the image of his deceased love.

action

While chasing a criminal over the rooftops of San Francisco, the police officer John "Scottie" Ferguson finds himself in a life-threatening situation: he slips on a tiled roof and clings to the gutter at the last second. A colleague who tries to help him falls to his death. Scottie quits because of a diagnosed fear of heights and feelings of guilt. His long-time platonic friend Midge Wood tries to support him in his new life.

Scottie's former school friend Gavin Elster asks him to shadow his wife Madeleine. Elster worries about his wife, who seems to be obsessed with the ghost of her late great-grandmother Carlotta Valdes. The former took her own life at the age of 26; According to Elster, Madeleine, also 26, is increasingly feeling the urge to do the same. She wears her hair like Carlotta, regularly visits Carlotta's grave and one of her portraits on display in the museum, and has rented a room in the hotel where Carlotta last lived. After Madeleine's jump into San Francisco Bay, Scottie saves her from drowning and takes her home. The two fall in love, but Madeleine's longing for death remains. During a trip to the old Spanish mission in San Juan Bautista , Scottie cannot prevent Madeleine from falling from the bell tower. The examining magistrate ascribes to him - even if he is innocent in the legal sense - joint responsibility for her death. Scottie falls into depression and is admitted to a mental hospital.

Discharged as cured, but marked by the death of his lover, Scottie meets the young saleswoman Judy some time later, who looks astonishingly like Madeleine. In fact, they are one and the same person: Judy had pretended to be Elster's wife Madeleine so that he could murder the real one. Since Judy really loves Scottie, she leaves him in the dark. Obsessed with the idea of ​​resurrecting the image of the dead Madeleine, Scottie urges Judy to adopt Madeleine's appearance in clothing, hair color, hairstyle and behavior. Judy reluctantly engages in it, hoping Scottie may fall in love with her real self over the course of their relationship. When she puts on a piece of jewelry that belonged to Madeleine, Scottie realizes that Judy and Madeleine are identical, that he was the victim of a deception.

Scottie then goes to the mission again with Judy and forces her to re-enact what happened in the tower: Elster knew that Scottie's fear of heights would prevent him from following Judy to the top of the tower. Elster was waiting there with the corpse of his wife, which he pushed down at the right moment. So the helpless Scottie served as a witness to the faked suicide. Before Elster moved to Europe, he left Judy and bought her silence with clothes and jewelry from Madeleine's estate.

Scottie overcomes his fear of heights and climbs up to the top of the tower with Judy. Judy reaffirms her love, but Scottie is unable to return it. They kiss one last time, but for fear of a suddenly appearing dark figure - a missionary sister had followed them - Judy backs away, loses her footing and falls into the abyss. Scottie is free of his illness, but he has lost Madeleine a second time, this time for good.

background

Book and film

The film is a very free adaptation of the original from 1954: the scene of the novel is that of the Second World War subscribed Paris . Here, too, the protagonist (in the book Roger Flavières, in the film “Scottie” Ferguson) is deceived by a staged “suicide” and develops a passion for a woman who looks amazingly similar to the dead Madeleine (in the book Renée, in the film Judy). While the film reveals the intrigue game to the viewer early on, the reader of the novel only learns the solution at the end, together with Roger. He then kills the young woman in anger - an ironic contrast to his statement that he actually belongs to the dead, but Renée to the living.

According to François Truffaut , the authors of the novel, Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, had speculated on Hitchcock's interest in the material when writing the book, as Hitchcock had previously tried in vain to obtain the film rights to their earlier novel Celle qui n'était plus (Eng. Dead should be silent , filmed as Die Teuflischen ) to secure. Narcejac, however, has denied this. Maxwell Anderson wrote the first draft of the script in 1956 under the title Darling, I Listen , the second Alec Coppel as From Amongst the Dead (the literally translated title of the novel). It was Samuel A. Taylor who first delivered a design that satisfied Hitchcock. In the course of the preparations for production, the project finally received its final title Vertigo , the medical term for a feeling of dizziness that afflicts people who suffer from vertigo when they look into the depths.

The resolution

Unlike in the novel, the film reveals to the viewers the resolution of the story (Madeleine and Judy are identical, Madeleine's "suicide" is supposed to cover up Gavin Elster's murder of his wife) not in the finale, but at the beginning of the last quarter. A flashback shows what really happened in the bell tower from Madeleine's / Judy's perspective. Whether the idea for this came first to Hitchcock or his scriptwriter Taylor is presented differently by both. Taylor considered introducing a scene in which Elster is preparing to move to Europe and Judy asks him what will become of her now. Finally, Hitchcock and Taylor agreed on the scene in which Judy Scottie writes a letter in which she explains the truth to him, but then tears it up. After a first viewing of the finished film, Hitchcock decided, against the opposition of the film producer Herbert Coleman , to remove the scene. It wasn't until Barney Balaban , president of production company Paramount Pictures , pushed for the scene to be reinstated that the director relented.

production

Alfred Hitchcock, 1956

The role of Madeleine was originally supposed to play Vera Miles , who had already appeared in The Wrong Man and the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents . Costumes had already been made for her when she was canceled due to pregnancy. Thereupon Kim Novak was hired, with the Hitchcock was less happy and about which he complained years later. Both members of the production staff and critics such as Hitchcock expert Truffaut, however, described Novak as the ideal cast because of their sensitivity and unaffected representation. In fact, due to the relatively long production preparation - also because Hitchcock was still hospitalized in the spring of 1957 - it would even have been possible to replace her with Vera Miles in good time before filming began.

Hitchcock was shooting for the fourth and final time with James Stewart.

The film was shot from September 1957 to January 1958 using the Vistavision widescreen method preferred by the production studio Paramount Pictures at the time . The budget was 2.5 million US dollars estimated. The opening credits were, as later with The Invisible Third and Psycho , designed by Saul Bass , who was also responsible for the design of the US cinema poster. The dream sequence was designed by abstract expressionist John Ferren , who also drew the portrait of Carlotta.

As usual, Hitchcock made a cameo in Vertigo too . You can see him walking in the street when Scottie Gavin enters Elster's company.

Locations

Although Hitchcock preferred to work in the studio and often had existing locations rebuilt in the studio (such as "Ernie's Restaurant"), many scenes were shot on original locations in San Francisco, including the recordings in front of Madeleine's residence, Judy's hotel and Scottie's apartment.

The painting by Carlotta Valdes, in front of which Madeleine remained for a long time, was hung for the filming in the Californian Palace of the Legion of Honor , which is located in Lincoln Park . The painting was specially made for this film and is therefore not an exhibit in the museum.

Carlotta's tombstone is in the San Francisco de Asís Mission cemetery , also known as Mission Dolores (Dolores Street). The place under the Golden Gate Bridge where Madeleine jumps into the water is today's Fort Point National Historic Site . The sprawling building that Scottie and Judy walk in front of is the Palace of Fine Arts .

The scene in which Scottie and Madeleine look at the annual rings of a felled tree takes place in Muir Woods National Monument . In fact, this scene was shot in Big Basin Redwoods State Park near Santa Cruz , the tree was a dummy. The place on the Pacific coast where Scottie and Madeleine kiss is Cypress Point on 17-Mile Drive , south of San Francisco. The exterior shots of Madeleine's “Suicide” and Judy's death were taken at the Spanish mission in San Juan Bautista , also south of San Francisco.

The chase scenes in which Scottie is detective in his car after the potential suicide driver driving in front of him were actually filmed on the streets of San Francisco. However, the order of the streets shown in the film does not always match the actual possible route.

Censorship and alternative ending

Hitchcock shot an additional final scene: Midge hears on the radio that the police have recorded Elster's trail in Europe and that if he is arrested, he will be extradited. When Scottie enters her apartment, she turns off the radio and mixes a drink for both of them. Together they silently look out the window at nighttime San Francisco.

According to popular information, this scene was filmed for those countries whose censors required punishment of the "bad guy" to release the film. In fact, Coppels and Taylor's draft script from September 1957 (completed before filming began) already contained this scene in detail, as Geoffrey Shurlock of the MPAA had urgently advised the murderer Gavin Elster to be punished. Shurlock, responsible since 1954 for compliance with the ethical rules for domestic feature film productions set out in the Production Code , noted: "It is extremely important that the reference to Elster's repatriation and indictment is made clear enough." However, Hitchcock was successful against most of Shurlock's complaints enforce (mostly concerning erotic hints), also against the attached end. After an initial demonstration, Hitchcock made the short note, "Cancel it," and Vertigo ended with the well-known final shot: Scottie stares down from the top of the tower, from which Judy fell to her death.

The version of the premiere in Great Britain was a little longer at almost 132 minutes (according to the information about the censorship clearance at the time by the British Board of Film Classification ). It has not been clearly proven that it contained the additional final scene, as has been repeatedly claimed on various websites.

The "vertigo effect" and visual concept

In order to visually implement the dizziness, Hitchcock used the so-called vertigo effect for the first time . The camera moves towards the object while at the same time, up to a wide-angle setting, it zooms backwards without changing the image section. As a result, the background and image elements further away from the camera appear to move away from the viewer, while the near area of ​​the image remains almost the same. This leads to a stretching of the perspective depth, creating the optical illusion of vertigo. The effect can be seen four times in the film; once at the beginning in the nightly urban canyon of San Francisco and three times in the tower of the San Juan Bautista Mission (which in reality does not exist and was added by an optical trick). For cost reasons, Hitchcock had the entire stairwell of the tower rebuilt as a model in a lying position and the camera moved on a horizontal rail . Subsequent filmmakers who used this effect, attributed to second-unit cameraman Irmin Roberts , included François Truffaut in Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Claude Chabrol in The Unfaithful Woman (1968), Steven Spielberg in Jaws (1975) and Tobe Hooper in Poltergeist (1982).

Another, seldom mentioned effect in Vertigo made use of the color-changing effect of filters : To create a visual connection between Madeleine and Judy, Hitchcock filmed a scene in which Madeleine visits a cemetery with a fog filter that produced a greenish-tinged image. In a later scene, Judy can be seen in the hotel room with the green light of a neon advertisement. In this way, Hitchcock not only achieved a connection between the two female figures in terms of color, but also to the cemetery, the proverbial "realm of the dead". The color green associated with Madeleine / Judy also appears in other places - Madeleine drives a green car and Judy wears a green dress when Scottie first sees her.

In order to visually underline the theme of the duplicated person or their likeness, Hitchcock instructed his production designer Henry Bumstead to use many mirrors. “These mirrors, which should become even more important in Psycho , can be found at important points [...] especially in Novak's hotel room, in which a woman is transformed into her idealized doppelganger, an image of fantasy, for the second time. "( Donald Spoto )

Film music

Vertigo was the fourth collaboration between Hitchcock and his (since Always Trouble with Harry , 1955) "house composer" Bernard Herrmann . Herrmann wrote the soundtrack in January and February 1958, but was unable to produce it himself because of a musicians' strike in the USA. Instead, the Scottish conductor and composer Muir Mathieson played them with the London- based Sinfonia of London , an orchestra specializing in film music, founded in 1955. A strike called out of solidarity with our American colleagues ended the recordings prematurely. Mathieson recorded the missing pieces in Vienna . For technical reasons the music was recorded in stereo in London and in mono in Vienna . Contrary to a different statement by producer Herbert Coleman, Herrmann was dissatisfied with Mathieson's work and described it as sloppy and flawed.

Further compositions to be heard in the film are the second movement from Mozart's Symphony No. 34 and the song Poochie by Victor Young . Hitchcock turned down the request of the production company Paramount to use a specially composed song with vocals for the opening sequence. According to the song's composers, Jay Livingston and Ray Evans , it was Hitchcock himself who approached them but rejected the result.

Herrmann's original film music first appeared on record in 1958 ; Like later editions, this only contained the pieces recorded in London with a total running time of approx. 35 minutes. In 1996, as part of the restoration of the film, a revised new edition was released with a total running time of around 65 minutes. One of the compositions, (The Graveyard), was no longer usable due to damage to the original tapes . However, it is included on a new recording made by Joel McNeely and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and released that year (as part of the piece Scotty Trails Madeline [sic]).

First and re-performance

The premiere of the film took place on May 9, 1958 in San Francisco, on May 28, Vertigo ran in New York and Los Angeles . The contemporary critics were largely unanimous; Hitchcock's craftsmanship and the work of the actors were mostly praised, while the film's plot, logic and tension curve were the main criticisms. During its initial evaluation, Vertigo only earned its costs, so that Hitchcock spoke of a commercial failure in an interview with François Truffaut . After four films together, Vertigo was the last collaboration between Hitchcock and James Stewart; According to Truffaut, Hitchcock secretly blamed his advanced age for the poor box office performance. From February 3, 1959, the film ran under the title From the Empire of the Dead in the Federal Republic of Germany . The original title was put in front in later re-performances.

For many reviewers today , Vertigo is considered one of Hitchcock's most important and personal films, even if its reputation only solidified over time. In 1965 Hitchcock connoisseur Robin Wood described Vertigo as “the director's masterpiece” and as one of the “deepest and most beautiful” representatives of the film medium. The rediscovery was still a long time coming, also due to Hitchcock's technical rental calculation. As well as Cocktail für eine Leiche (1948), Das Fenster zum Hof (1954), Immer Ärger mit Harry (1955) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo was not seen from 1973 until the re-performance in 1983, because Hitchcock did the Had acquired performing rights and used them as part of his inheritance for his daughter. In 1996, after an extensive restoration of the film, it was shown again.

restoration

In the mid-1990s, the film was extensively restored by Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz on behalf of Universal Pictures . Since the camera negative and the color separations of the film shot in the Technicolor process were severely damaged, film copies of differently preserved versions had to be used for image restoration . The film sound available in mono should also be expanded from universal to stereo if desired. By Bernard Herrmann's film music existed to two-thirds in stereo, one third in Mono recorded original tapes. The dialogues had to be removed from the still existing film material, while the sound effects had to be completely re-recorded. However, some details of the new sound track such as added or removed sound effects gave cause for criticism. The additional end credits (to name the names of those involved in the restoration) increased the running time of the film from 128 to 129 minutes.

synchronization

There are three German synchronized versions , all of which were created by Berliner Synchron GmbH Wenzel Lüdecke . The first version was created in 1958 for the German premiere (book: Christine Lembach, dialogue director: Volker J. Becker).

In 1984 a second dubbed version was created on the occasion of the German re-releases of Vertigo and four other Hitchcock films (book: Hans Bernd Ebinger, director: Martin Grossmann). For this version, Siegmar Schneider could again be won as the German voice of James Stewart, but the other roles were newly cast.

In 1997, Vertigo was performed again in the version restored by Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz. A new dubbed version was commissioned for the German version. It was created using Ebinger's dialog book from 1984, and the dialogue was directed by Lutz Riedel . Sigmar Solbach took over the dubbing of James Stewart for Siegmar Schneider, who had died two years earlier .

The 1997 version was used for the German-language DVD publications. The Blu-ray Disc , released in 2012, contains the dubbed version from 1984.

After the cinema re-release with the second dubbed version, the film was also broadcast on television in this version. From the end of the 1990s, only the 1997 synchronization was used for television broadcasts. In 2016 arte showed the second synchronized version for the first time.

role	actor	Speaker (1958)	Speaker (1984)	Speaker (1997)
John Scottie Ferguson	James Stewart	Siegmar Schneider	Siegmar Schneider	Sigmar Solbach
Madeline Elster (actually Judy Barton)	Kim Novak	Gisela Trowe	Rita Engelmann	Martina Treger
Midge Wood - Scottie's girlfriend	Barbara Bel Geddes	Sigrid Lagemann	Hallgard Bruckhaus	Susanna Bonaséwicz
Gavin Elster - Scottie's client	Tom Helmore	Wolfgang Eichberger	Horst Schön	Norbert Langer
Examining magistrate ( coroner )	Henry Jones	Alfred Balthoff	Herbert Stass	Eberhard Prüter
Pop Leibel, bookstore owner	Constantine Shayne	Erich Poremski	Eberhard Wechselberg	Gerry Wolff
Manager of the McKittrick Hotel	Ellen Corby		Christine Gerlach	Ingeborg Wellmann
Scottie's doctor	Raymond Bailey		Rolf Schult
Chairman of the jury	William Remick		Manfred Grote
Owner of Madeleine's car	Lee Patrick			Agi Prandhoff
Saleswoman at Ransohoff	Margaret Brayton			Bettina Schön

subjects

Thematic precursors

Elisabeth Bronfen discussed vertigo in connection with Boileau's / Narcejacs D'entre les morts and Georges Rodenbach's symbolist novel Das tote Brugge (1892), in which a man falls in love with the image of his deceased wife and kills her when love remains unattainable.

Rodenbach's novel served, among other things, as a template for Arthur Schnitzler's story The Next (1899). Here, too, a man kills a woman after he has realized that she is unable to fulfill the role of a deceased and resurrected love intended for her. In her essay Remembered Love? Astrid Lange-Kirchheim drew parallels between Schnitzler's The Next and Hitchcock's Vertigo and speculated about Boileau's and Narcejac's possible knowledge of Rodenbach's novel.

In addition, Lange-Kirchheim saw references to the Pygmalion and Orpheus and Eurydice myths. In ancient descriptions, the sculptor Pygmalion creates a sculpture of the perfect woman for him, who comes to life at his request. In George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, a professor raises a lower-class woman to be an upper-class lady; but his love is only for his creation, not for the real person. In the Orpheus legend, the hero of the same name descends into the underworld to snatch his late wife Eurydice from the realm of the dead.

Projected images of women

Kim Novak, 1962

For him, the most interesting point about Vertigo , Hitchcock told Truffaut, was James Stewart's endeavor to bring the image of a dead person back to life in the form of another living woman: “To put it quite simply: the man wants to be with one Dead sleep, it's about necrophilia . [...] Stewart's efforts to resurrect the woman are shown on film as if he was trying not to put her on, but to take her off. "

Hitchcock biographer Donald Spoto didn't want Hitchcock's motif reduced to a purely erotic one. The film shows “from beginning to end the signs of Hitchcock's deeply personal feelings - that is, his feelings towards himself, his idealized image of women, the dangerous limits of emotional fixation and death, the ultimate obsession of every romantic. [...] Never have romantic exploitation and self-denial been articulated so clearly in a Hitchcock film. And never before has a complex relationship had such a confessional character. "Spoto exemplifies James Stewart's accusatory words to Kim Novak in the finale:" [Elster] has transformed you, hasn't it? He changed you just like I changed you - only he was better. Not just the clothes and the hair, but also the looks, the manners and the words. And those wonderful false trance states ... and what did he do then? Did he train you? Has he rehearsed with you? Did he tell you exactly what to do and what to say? ”Stewart's haunted and hopeless hunt for an empty ideal, according to Spoto,“ represents Hitchcock's final statement on the subject of romantic deception. ”

On the subject of female role models, Danny Peary added in his book Cult Movies : “As Madeleine [Judy] showed all of her potential that must remain deeply hidden in the simply knitted Judy. That Hitchcock shows the possible transformation of a vulgar, uncultivated shop clerk into the fine, educated Madeleine, is perhaps his comment on the 'illusion of the film star'. "

Georg Seeßlen went so far as to take literally the motif of the image of women created by the hero and speculated about the possibility of seeing women as a purely fantasy product: "Since we only see [Madeleine] from Scottie's perspective, the thought is not far off that it is a ghost or a fixed idea of ​​the hero, a message 'from the realm of the dead', a longing for death made form. […] The places Madeleine Scottie leads are, so to speak, gaps in the urban reality of San Francisco [sic]: to the cemetery, to the old house of a woman who has long since died, to an art gallery, and finally to the Spanish monastery. These are, so to speak, doorsteps to another world. "

Dream state

Vertigo not only repeatedly conjured up associations with a dream or nightmare, partly through its deliberately slow narrative pace; In the analyzes of Danny Peary and Georg Seeßlen, the film was interpreted as a possible dream of the protagonist Scottie. Both point to the fact that the film never explains how Scottie was able to save himself from the life-threatening situation at the beginning of the film, when the rain gutter he was clinging to began to separate from the roof edge.

Danny Peary: “If [Scottie] isn't dreaming while hanging high off the ground, at least he's withdrawn into a dream-like state. In order to escape this - as we wake up from our dreams - it must fall . […] Only when Madeleine / Judy falls from the church tower does [Hitchcock] allow Scottie to 'wake up' - and at the same time overcome his fear of heights. Scottie identifies with Madeleine [...] Thus her death corresponds to the moment in which he would let go of the rain gutter [...] One could even imagine a final scene in which Scottie hangs on the rain gutter again, either to be saved (to show that he has been cured of his fear of heights) or fall down (which would end his dream - and the film). "

Georg Seeßlen: “The picture of [Scottie] hanging on the gutter over the abyss and looking down in horror does not leave the viewer in the whole film (the story of the film could just as easily be a hallucination dream during the fall). […] [Madeleine's suicide] is a shock not only for the hero, but also for the viewer, because 'Madeleine' is actually the content of the dream that we dreamed together with the hero. Because of this shock, the viewer wakes up in a certain sense [...] Scottie, on the other hand, still cannot wake up [...] In his dreams [...] the identification with Madeleine continues. "

Ambivalent figures of identification

Hitchcock's decision to resolve the Madeleine / Judy riddle prematurely sacrifices the surprise effect in favor of the viewer's tense question of what will happen when Scottie finds out the answer. According to Danny Peary, this is one of the ambiguities of the film: “We want Scottie to understand, as we do, that Judy played Madeleine and that Madeleine was a mere illusion [...] but we fear how his fragile mind will react to this disappointing revelation This ambivalence is reinforced by the fact that Judy, although a participant in the intrigue game, was also one of the victims. “We despise the cruel game [Judy] played with Scottie, but we sense that she was just Magpie pawn. And her pain is so great - Judy loves Scottie, who cannot return her love because he is obsessed with the nonexistent Madeleine that we feel sorry for her. [...] When Judy falls from the tower to her death [...] we are no longer on Scottie's side, but on Judy's side. "

This shift or at least an equal distribution of audience sympathies was also emphasized by film critic Roger Ebert in 1996: “From the moment we know the resolution, the film also tells about Judy, her pain, her loss, the trap in which she is stuck [...] when the When both characters climb the tower of the mission, we identify with both of them, we are worried about both of them, and in a way Judy is less guilty than Scottie. ”Another factor contributing to this is that Judy is one of the most sympathetically drawn female characters in Hitchcock's work . “Time and again, in his films, Hitchcock has enjoyed dragging his female characters through the mud, literally and figuratively, degrading them and ruining their hairstyle and clothes, as if he wanted to flagellate his fetishes. Judy in Vertigo is the female victim who is most likely to enjoy his sympathy. And Novak, who was criticized at the time for playing her role too stiffly, had the right flair for acting: ask yourself how you would move and speak if you were going to suffer unbearable pain, and then see yourself Judy again on."

The few characters in the film are also noticeable: Only four characters appear in more than one scene: Judy and Scottie, as well as the supporting roles of Scottie's friend Midge and Gavin Elster. The latter two secondary characters disappear from the plot in the second half of the film, so that only Judy and Scottie remain at the end. That creates a great tightness between the two figures.

reception

Reviews

The critics judged the premiere of Vertigo very differently. The reviews of the New York Times ("fascinating detective film [...] the resolution is clever, even if it is drawn by the hair") and the Los Angeles Examiner were comparatively positive. The Los Angeles Times , whose opinion film historian Dan Auiler later rated as representative of the general tenor, reacted negatively and criticized the too long exposure and diffusion. The Saturday Review recognized Hitchcock's "formal dexterity and imaginative color dramaturgy," which, however, failed to sustain interest. The New Yorker simply described the film as "far-fetched nonsense".

The Cuban author Guillermo Cabrera Infante , who prophesied that the film would be rediscovered later, opposed the prevailing opinion : “ Vertigo is a masterpiece, the importance of which will become apparent over the years. It is not only the only great surrealist film , but also the first romantic work of the 20th century. "

The judgment of the audience and critics in the context of the re-performances in 1983 and 1996 was far more positive than that at the time of the first cinema release. Geoff Andrew wrote in 1983 in the British Time Out Film Guide : “Hitchcock reveals the resolution in the middle of the film […], which inevitably reduces the tension, but allows a deeper exploration of the themes of guilt, exploitation and obsession. The barren form may be heavy fare, but no one can deny that the director is at his best here, and Novak is a revelation. Slow in the pace, but absolutely irresistible. "

" [Vertigo] is one of Hitchcock's two or three best films and he's the one in whom he reveals the most about himself," noted Roger Ebert in 1996, summing up a widespread criticism. There was also broad consensus that Vertigo was ahead of its time. “Other Hitchcock films were tighter, more terrifying, more entertaining on the surface. It took Vertigo some time before the audience knew how to appreciate the film's indulgence in the dark, ”wrote David Ansen in Newsweek at the start of the restored version. Even Janet Maslin of The New York Times saw Vertigo as a film whose time had now come first: " Vertigo has always been an exception among Hitchcock's classics, as he was but open in his erotic less playful. And he has flaws that actually work to his advantage. Kim Novak's contrived game may have been unintentional, but it uses the story in a devilish way [...] In the 1950s, Vertigo's attraction was diminished by its perverse, disturbing power. Nowadays it is useful to him. ”Rather against the trend, James Berardinelli described Vertigo as partly old-fashioned and naive, although he has held up well.

Vertigo's unavailability contributed to its myth, according to an attempt to explain it on Film.com for the euphoric re-evaluation. "The film [is] a myth of memory [...] Memory suggests that it is Hitchcock's most beautiful film," said Der Spiegel as early as 1983, shortly before the German re-release. Author Tom Shone explained the reassessment with the tendency on the part of "intellectual" critics (especially the editors of Sight & Sound magazine ) to appreciate commercial films that did not work in the way they intended, and led Vertigo and Blade Runner to do so as examples.

A change in the assessment was also observed in Germany. In a short review from 1959, the then author of Spiegel described the “ghost thriller” as “effective, but by no means entertaining”. 25 years later, on the occasion of the re-performance, Hellmuth Karasek named the "great necrophilic work of Hitchcock - the most beautiful testimony of a black romanticism in the middle of the 20th century" in the same Vertigo magazine . Time critic Hans-C. In an article published in Vertigo in 1979, Blumenberg saw "one of Hitchcock's best films, a dark meditation on the swaying of the ground we lose underfoot" and "an inkling of the instability of conditions". The lexicon of international films says: “Behind the perfect, excellently played crime story, a brilliant psychological soul drama reveals itself, which is about love, but also about how love is prevented by the obsessions of fantasy: a man loves his imagination Woman and tries to shape her afterwards. In the extraordinary dramaturgy of tension, the layers and contradictions of the inner soul life of the main character are subtly revealed. "

Awards

In 1958, Hitchcock and James Stewart were awarded the "Silver Shell" for best director and best actor at the San Sebastián International Film Festival . In 1959 Vertigo was nominated for an Oscar in the categories " Best Production Design " ( Hal Pereira , Henry Bumstead, Sam Comer , Frank R. McKelvy ) and " Best Sound " ( George Dutton ) . Hitchcock himself was also nominated for the Directors Guild of America Award . In 1960 cameraman Robert Burks received the Catalan Sant Jordi Award for best cinematography in a foreign film.

In 1989, Vertigo was listed in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically and aesthetically outstanding" . In 1996, the restored version received the New York Film Critics Circle Award for "Most Distinguished Reissue". In 2003, the Federal Agency for Civic Education, in cooperation with numerous filmmakers, created a film canon for work in schools and included this film in their list.

In the critics' survey for the "best films of all time" carried out by the British magazine Sight & Sound every ten years, Vertigo was first among the top ten in 1982 (7th), then rose to 4th in 1992 and 2nd in 2002 the film was ultimately chosen by more than 800 film critics as the top of the list of the best, which had been led by Citizen Kane since 1962 . In 1998 and 2007 Vertigo was listed by the American Film Institute (AFI) in the list of "100 Best American Films" (9th place in 2007). The AFI also listed the film in the categories “The 100 best American thrillers”, “The 100 best American love films”, “The 25 best American film scores” and “The 10 most important films in 10 classic genres” (1st place in the “Mystery "-" crime film ").

Aftermath

Despite its delayed recognition by critics and audiences, Vertigo early influenced other filmmakers, both in commercial and experimental cinema. The influence ranged from the visual design, e.g. B. by using the "vertigo effect" or based on Vertigo's color and image design, up to the variation of motives for action, such as the man dominated by the memory of a woman or her image or the duplicated female figure who appears under different identities.

This is how the film worked on Chris Marker's short film Am Rande des Rollfelds (1962), Alain Resnais ' Last Year in Marienbad (1960) and Carlos Saura's Peppermint Frappé (1967) - in all three examples a man is obsessed with the memory image of a woman. A portrait of Hitchcock can even be seen briefly in Resnais' film.

In 1976, Brian De Palma made an homage with Schwarzer Engel based on a script by Paul Schrader , who is an avowed supporter of Vertigo . Here a man meets a doppelganger of his long deceased wife, who turns out to be the daughter who was also believed dead. De Palma later varied Vertigo again in Death Comes Twice (1984).

It was also Vertigo common in each scene ( - Open Your Eyes , dialogues or role name (1997) Twin Peaks quotes, 1990). The film was parodied in Mel Brooks' Höhenkoller (1977) and the music video Last Cup Of Sorrow (1997) by Faith No More .

Excerpts and stills from Vertigo can be seen in Chris Marker's essay film Sans Soleil - Invisible Sun (1983), The Kiss Before Death (1991) and 12 Monkeys (1995), Terry Gilliam's remake of Markers On the Edge of the Runway . Paul Verhoeven described Vertigo as a major visual influence on his 1992 film Basic Instinct, also based in San Francisco .

Others

The green vehicle from Madeleine is a Jaguar Mark VIII (Bj. 1957), which was probably painted extra green for the film, because this color was not the original paint job.

DVD / Blu-ray publications

Vertigo is available internationally on DVD & Blu-ray in the original cinema picture format 1.85: 1 (concealed VistaVision format). While older editions contained both the restored (and slightly changed) stereo and the original mono soundtrack, the latter was dispensed with in the newer editions. In addition, the originally black and white woman's face has been colored red in the opening credits of recent DVD editions in the USA . This coloration was reversed for the Blu-ray Disc released in 2012 and 2013 .

literature

• Pierre Boileau , Thomas Narcejac : Vertigo. From the realm of the dead. (Original title: D'entre les morts), Rowohlt, Reinbek 1998 ISBN 3-499-26115-4 (first rose from the dead . Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1959)
• Robert A. Harris, Michael S. Lasky (authors), Joe Hembus (eds.): Alfred Hitchcock and his films (OT: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock), Citadel film book. Goldmann, Munich 1976 ISBN 3-442-10201-4
• Dan Auiler: Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic , St. Martin's Griffin, New York 2000
• Marshall Deutelbaum, Leland Poagne (Eds.): A Hitchcock Reader , Iowa State University Press, Ames (Iowa) 1986
• Dan Jones: The Dime Novel and the Master of Suspense: The Adaptation of D'Entre Les Morts into Vertigo , University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul (Minnesota) 2002
• Jeff Kraft, Aaron Leventhal: Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco , Santa Monica Press, Solana Beach 2002
• Film Review , 282, June 1980: Focus on Vertigo ; Contributors Hartmut Bitomsky , Jürgen Ebert, Harun Farocki , Klaus Henrichs
• Chris Marker: A free replay: Notes on ›Vertigo‹ , first: Positif # 400, June 1994; German in: Birgit Kämper, Thomas Tode (Ed.): Chris Marker - film essayist . CICIM-Revue, Center d'Information Cinématographique Munich, # 45/46/47, Munich 1997 ISBN 3-920727-14-2 pp. 182-192
• Helmut Korte: Deceptive Reality: "Vertigo", in Fischer Filmgeschichte. 3, 1945 - 1960. Ed. Werner Faulstich , Korte. Fischer TB, Frankfurt 1990, pp. 331 - 361 (with detailed content, sequences of scenes)

Web links

Commons : Vertigo - From the Realm of the Dead  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Vertigo - From the realm of the dead in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Vertigo - From the realm of the dead at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
• Vertigo - From the Realm of the Dead in the online film database
• Background information and reviews on Turner Classic Movies
• Review by Jens Hinrichsen from the film-dienst on Filmzentrale.com
• Review by Ulrich Behrens from F.LM - Texts about the film on Filmzentrale.com
• Movie poster on filmposter-archiv.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Certificate of Release for Vertigo - From the Realm of the Dead . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2008 (PDF; test number: 17 722 DVD).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Robert Fischer (ed.): Truffaut / Hitchcock , Diana Verlag, Munich and Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-8284-5021-0 , pp. 206-210 (formerly: François Truffaut: Mr. Hitchcock, how did you do it? Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 1973).
3. ^ Dan Jones: The Dime Novel and the Master of Suspense: The Adaptation of D'Entre Les Morts Into Vertigo, University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, Minnesota 2002.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Donald Spoto: Alfred Hitchcock - The dark side of genius, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-453-55146-X , pp. 445-479.
5. ↑ Patrick McGilligan: Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light , HarperCollins Publishers, New York 2003, ISBN 0-06-039322-X , pp. 563-564.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d} Vertigo in the Internet Movie Database .
7. ^ Vertigo on Turner Classic Movies .
8. ↑ Locations listed in the San Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 2008, accessed May 20, 2012.
9. ↑ Vertigo film locations on Movie-locations.com, accessed May 20, 2012.
10. ↑ Vertigo 2-Disc Special Edition DVD, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 2008.
11. ↑ screenplay by Vertigo September 1957 Dailyscript.com.
12. ^ "It will, of course, be most important that the indication that Elster will be brought back for trial is sufficiently emphasized." - Dan Auiler: Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic , St. Martin's Griffin, New York 2000, ISBN 0-312-16915-9 , pp. 68-69.
13. ↑ For example, when Scottie and Madeleine kissed, Shurlock forbade himself to make an intercut to the troubled sea.
14. ^ "Drop tag." - Dan Auiler: Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic , St. Martin's Griffin, New York 2000, ISBN 0-312-16915-9 , p. 69, p. 130.
15. ↑ Vertigo - From the Realm of the Dead in the British Board of Film Classification
16. ↑ James Monaco: Understanding Film. Art, technology, language, history and theory of film and the media, Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-499-16514-7 , p. 78.
17. ↑ What is meant here is not a fog filter that uses the red color spectrum to make an actual fog visible, but an effect filter that simulates the presence of a fog.
18. ↑ ^{a b} Book accompanying the CD published in 1996 with the restored Vertigo soundtrack (Varèse Sarabande, VSD-5759).
19. ^ ^{A b} Jack Sullivan: Hitchcock's Music , Yale University Press, New Haven (Connecticut) 2006, ISBN 978-0-300-11050-0 , pp. 231-233.
20. ^ Steven C. Smith, A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann , University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1991, ISBN 0-520-22939-8 , p. 222.
21. ↑ Dan Auiler: Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic , St. Martin's Griffin, New York 2000, ISBN 0-312-16915-9 , pp 145-146.
22. ^ Robert Fischer (eds.): Truffaut / Hitchcock , Diana Verlag, Munich and Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-8284-5021-0 , p. 275.
23. ↑ " Vertigo seems to me Hitchcock's masterpiece to date, and one of the four or five most profound and beautiful films the cinema has yet given us" - Robin Wood, Hitchcock's Films, A. Zwemmer, London / New York 1965, p. 72 .
24. ↑ Michael Oliver-Goodwin, Lynda Myles: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco in Douglas A. Cunningham (ed.): The San Francisco of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo: Place, Pilgrimage, and Commemoration , Scarecrow Press / Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Lanham (Maryland ) 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-8122-8 , p. 81.
25. ↑ Universal Pictures article on the restoration of Vertigo, accessed November 24, 2011.
26. ↑ Article in the Chicago Tribune on the Restoration of Vertigo, October 27, 1997, accessed January 7, 2012.
27. ^ Post by Robert A. Harris on the restoration of Vertigo on Hometheaterforum.com, accessed on November 24, 2011.
28. ↑ Article in Chicago Reader, October 24, 1996, accessed January 7, 2012.
29. ↑ ^{a b} DVD review with restoration details on DVDBeaver.com, accessed November 24, 2011.
30. ↑ 1958 synchronized version of Vertigo in the German synchronous index , accessed on May 19, 2012.
31. ↑ 1984 synchronized version of Vertigo in the German synchronous index , accessed on May 19, 2012.
32. ↑ 1997 synchronized version of Vertigo in the German synchronous index , accessed on May 19, 2012.
33. ↑ Arte broadcast 2016 on OFDb.de
34. ^ Elisabeth Bronfen: Dangerous Similarities , in Only about her corpse - Death, Femininity and Aesthetics, Kunstmann, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-8260-2806-6 , pp. 466-500.
35. ↑ ^{a b} Astrid Lange-Kirchheim: Erinnerte Liebe ?, in Wolfram Mauser and Joachim Pfeiffer (eds.): Erinnern, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-8260-2805-8 , pp. 93-110.
36. ^ "[...] as Madeleine, [Judy] revealed all the fine potentialities that are kept deep within the simple Judy. That Hitchcock shows how a crude classless shopgirl can be transformed into the refined, erudite Madleine is perhaps the director's statement regarding the 'illusion of the movie star.' "- Danny Peary: Cult Movies, Dell Publishing, New York 1981, ISBN 0- 385-28186-2 , pp. 375-378.
37. ↑ ^{a b} Georg Seeßlen: Cinema of fear. History and mythology of the film thriller, Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1980, ISBN 3-499-17350-6 , pp. 164–166.
38. ↑ ^{a b} Hans C. Blumenberg: Archipel Hitchcock , in: Die Zeit No. 33 of August 10, 1979.
39. ↑ Ronald M. Hahn, Volker Jansen: Lexikon des Horror-Films, Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1989, ISBN 3-404-13175-4 , p. 38.
40. ^ Leonard Maltin's 2008 Movie Guide , Signet / New American Library, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-451-22186-5 , p. 1477.
41. ↑ "If not actually dreaming as he hangs off the ground, [Scottie] has certainly withdrawn into a dreamlike state. To get out of it - to wake up as we do from our dreams - he must fall . Presumedly Scottie is rescued, but it is noteworth that such a rescue is never shown in the film or discussed […] By leaving him suspended in midair, [Hitchcock] chooses to keep him in his dream state. He only allows Scottie to finally 'wake up' - and simultaneously overcome his vertigo - when Madeleine / Judy accidentally falls to her death from the church tower. Scottie identifies with Madeleine […] So her death by a fall is the same as his letting go of the drainpipe: it allows him to wake up – to overcome his vertigo and his guilt. A scene could even be added at the end in which Scottie is back on the drainpipe and is either rescued (signifying his vertigo has been cured) or falls (signifying his dream – the film – is over). "- Danny Peary: Cult Movies , Dell Publishing, New York 1981, ISBN 0-385-28186-2 .
42. ^ "We want Scottie to realize, as we do, that Judy was Madeleine and that Madeleine was just an illusion [...] but we are afraid of how his fragile mind will react to such a disappointing disclosure [...] we despise the cruel trick." [Judy] played on Scottie, but we sense she was Elster's pawn. And her suffering is so great - Judy loves Scotty, who cannot return her love because he is mad about the nonexistant Madeleine - we must feel solace for her. […] When Judy falls from the tower to her death […] we have long given up on Scottie and have starting rooting for Judy. "- Danny Peary: Cult Movies, Dell Publishing, New York 1981, ISBN 0-385-28186 -2 .
43. ↑ "From the moment we are let in on the secret, the movie is equally about Judy: her pain, her loss, the trap she's in [...] when the two characters climb up that mission tower, we identify with both of them, and fear for both of them, and in a way Judy is less guilty than Scottie. [...] She is in fact one of the most sympathetic female characters in all of Hitchcock. Over and over in his films, Hitchcock took delight in literally and figuratively dragging his women through the mud - humiliating them, spoiling their hair and clothes as if lashing at his own fetishes. Judy, in Vertigo, is the closest he came to sympathizing with the female victims of his plots. And Novak, criticized at the time for playing the character too stiffly, has made the correct acting choices: Ask yourself how you would move and speak if you were in unbearable pain, and then look again at Judy. "- Chicago Sun-Times from October 13, 1996. [1] .
44. ^ "Fascinating mystery [...] that secret is so clever, even though it is devilishly far-fetched [...]" - Bruce Crowther in The New York Times of May 29, 1958. [2] .
45. ↑ "Crazy, off-beat love story" - Los Angeles Examiner, quoted from Dan Auiler: Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic , St. Martin's Griffin, New York 2000, ISBN 0-312-16915-9 , p. 172 .
46. ^ "[Takes] too long to unfold [...] bogs down further in a maze of detail [...]" - Phillip K. Scheuer in the Los Angeles Times on May 29, 1958.
47. ↑ Dan Auiler: Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic , St. Martin's Griffin, New York 2000, ISBN 0-312-16915-9 , pp 170-171.
48. ↑ Quoted from Joe Hembus (Ed.): Alfred Hitchcock and his films. Citadel film book from Goldmann, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-442-10201-4 , p. 194.
49. ^ "Alfred Hitchcock [...] has never before indulged in such farfetched nonsense." - John McCarten in The New Yorker of June 7, 1958.
50. ↑ " Vertigo is a masterwork and with the years its importance will become clear. Not only is it the only great surrealist film, but the first romantic work of the twentieth century. ”- Guillermo Cabrera Infante in Carteles, November 1959, Havana; English translation in: G. Cabrera Infante: A Twentieth-Century Job , Faber and Faber, London 1991.
51. ^ "Hitchcock gives the game away about halfway through the movie [...] the result inevitably involves a lessening of suspense, but allows for an altogether deeper investigation of guilt, exploitation, and obsession. The bleakness is perhaps a little hard to swallow, but there's no denying that this is the director at the very peak of his powers, while Novak is a revelation. Slow but totally compelling. ”- Time Out , December 1, 1983, London; Time Out Film Guide, Seventh Edition 1999, Penguin, London 1998.
52. ^ "[ Vertigo ] is one of the two or three best films Hitchcock ever made, is the most confessional." - Chicago Sun-Times of October 13, 1996.
53. ↑ Other Hitch movies were tauter, scarier, more on-the-surface fun. "Vertigo" needed time for the audience to rise to its darkly rapturous level. - David Ansen: Hitchcock's Greatest Reborn ( January 9, 2012 memento on the Internet Archive ) in Newsweek October 20, 1996, accessed May 21, 2012.
54. ↑ "With less playfulness and much more overt libido than other Hitchcock classics, Vertigo what always anomalous. And it has flaws that actually work to its advantage. Much of Kim Novak's artificiality may have been unintended, but it suits the plot devilishly […] the appeal of "Vertigo" in the 1950's was limited by the film's perverse, disturbing power. That only makes better sense of it today. ”- The New York Times, October 4, 1996. [3] .
55. ↑ James Berardinelli: Vertigo , undated review on Reelviews.com, accessed May 23, 2012.
56. ↑ Eric D. Snider: What's the Big Deal ?: Vertigo (1958) on Film.com, accessed May 21, 2012.
57. ↑ Announcement in Der Spiegel 36/1983 of September 5, 1983, accessed on May 23, 2012.
58. ↑ Tom Shone: Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer, Free Press / Simon & Schuster, New York 2004, ISBN 0-7432-3568-1 , p. 120.
59. ↑ Vertigo in a short review from 1959 in: Der Spiegel 10/1959 of March 4, 1959 and a review from 1984 , accessed on May 23, 2012.
60. ^ Vertigo - From the realm of the dead in the lexicon of international film
61. ↑ Tim Robey: Is Vertigo really the greatest film of all time? . The Daily Telegraph , August 1, 2012.
62. ↑ Kevin Jackson (Ed.): Schrader on Schrader and Other Writings, Faber & Faber, 2004.
63. ↑ Commentary by Paul Verhoeven and Jan De Bont on the Basic Instinct: Uncut Limited Edition DVD, Artisan 2001, German Kinowelt 2003.
64. ↑ IMCDB Internet Movie Cars Database: https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle.php?id=3083&l=de
65. ↑ [4] Technical information from the Internet Movie Database, accessed on December 7, 2016.

This article was added to the list of articles worth reading on June 7, 2012 in this version .