Vertigo as TWIN PEAKS CINEMA #7 (podcast)

Continuing the "What's in a name?" theme, Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo shares at least three names with Twin Peaks, two intentional, one possibly coincidental yet the most intriguing of all: Madeleine, Ferguson, and Judy. However, names are the least of the connections here - Vertigo's links to the original series, Fire Walk With Me, and especially season three are so rich, deep, and compelling that this is probably the longest Twin Peaks Cinema episode I'll ever release (at least outside of comparisons to David Lynch's own films). In fact Vertigo resembles a prism that you can hold up to Twin Peaks - and vice versa - at different angles to produce different results. The dogged, obsessive detective attempting to dominate a young woman; the haunting presence of a beautiful, mistreated beauty whose influence extends beyond the grave; the loyal, neglected ally whose admiration eventually shades into exasperation; the hallucinatory spirals; the looming trees; the enigmatic portrait; the long drives into the night...even as I write out these motifs out I'm realizing there are others I may have missed in an episode two or three times longer than usual. I'm particularly struck by how enmeshed this film already seemed to be with Twin Peaks prior to 2017...and yet the new season goes so much further with these allusions that at times - particularly in the final episode - it seems almost like an abstracted remake.

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May 2020 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #16 - Season 2 Episode 8 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #67 - Twin Peaks Cinema: Vertigo (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Emory, Jerry, Lucy, Tremond house, Dream corridor, Shelly & Bobby & Leo/Part 11, Journey Through Twin Peaks update & more)

While the overall podcast is shorter this month, the Twin Peaks Cinema section has never been longer. And no wonder: Vertigo is a goldmine for Peaks correlation, especially after season three. The acclaimed Hitchcock thriller - and one of my personal favorite films - is discussed for fifty minutes, before the last hour of the podcast is taken up by a further deep dive into my previous work on Vertigo (the subject may have come up more often than almost any other - save for Twin Peaks itself). And I'm sure the conversation will continue in listener feedback going forward; please share any of your own thoughts on this rich cinematic/televisual shared universe...

Episode 67: Twin Peaks cinema - Vertigo (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Emory, Jerry, Lucy, Tremonds' house, Dream corridor, Shelly & Bobby & Leo/Part 11, Journey Through Twin Peaks update & more)

In addition to the main podcast's "Reflections" coverage of beloved characters, intriguing locations, and storyline connections across the years (as well as a rundown of my recent Journey activity and ongoing plans), I'm also plunging into a very interesting section of Twin Peaks on my Lost in Twin Peaks rundown. For the $5/month patrons, we're now post-reveal with all that has to offer...

Lost in Twin Peaks #16: S2E8 (Drive With a Dead Girl/"Episode 15")

All patrons meanwhile now have access to the second episode of the season, the Lynch-directed gem which expands the supernatural iconography significantly...

NOW AVAILABLE: Lost in Twin Peaks #10 ("Episode 9") open to all patrons

Podcast Line-Ups for:

The Favorites - Vertigo (#3)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Vertigo (1958/USA/dir. Alfred Hitchcock) appeared at #3 on my original list.

What it is • In the opening minutes of Vertigo, Det. James "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart) experiences his first, but not his last, trauma, nearly falling from a tall building - and then watching as the police officer who tries to save him actually falls to his death. For the rest of the film, he suffers from acrophobia, a fear of heights so debilitating he can't even look out the window of his apartment without collapsing. An old friend, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) offers him a job to relieve the tedium of his unexpected retirement. Elster's wife Madeleine (Kim Novak) has been acting strange - she may in fact be possessed by the spirit of an ancestor, Carlotta Valdez, an Old San Francisco beauty who was scorned by her husband and separated from her child. This is a Hitchcock movie, and Hitchcock movies, however eerie and tense they get, don't usually dabble in the supernatural. Nevertheless, as Scottie immerses himself in the Elster mystery he does seem to be uncovering a case of genuine possession. He falls in love with Madeleine, an aloof, aristocratic blonde, vowing to keep her safe. And then... Well, I saw the film without knowing much about it and I'd recommend you do the same if you can. Stop reading now, and seek the film with a fresh curiosity (jump to the "How you can see it" section to find a convenient option). Only if you have watched Vertigo, or have already had it spoiled, should you keep on reading. After losing Madeleine, Scottie disappears into a fog of regret and anxiety, a catatonic state which, when he finally emerges, leaves him an emotional cripple obsessed with the past. He meets Judy (also Kim Novak), an earthy brunette, nothing like Madeleine...except that she does looks a bit like her. If just for her hair...or her clothes...or her manner of speech. Vertigo's trailer presents this character as a distinct individual and the film could easily play into that expectation. Instead Hitchcock does something far more interesting - something he hesitated to do, only acquiescing when his wife/lifelong collaborator Alma urged him to trust his initial instinct. With a good half-hour or so remaining, Vertigo reveals that Judy is Madeleine; or rather, there never was a Madeleine, not that Scottie knew anyway. In the recent documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut, an interesting survey of the American auteur's method, the commentators all concur that Vertigo is - for better or worse - exclusively interested in Scottie's perspective. I find this opinion confounding. The big twist of Vertigo is that we learn Judy's secret long before the climax. Therefore from this point forward, while we may sustain a lingering sympathy with Scottie, if we are paying attention our sympathy is just as likely to shift, irrevocably, to her. This is a powerful subversion of the preceding film; as the fantastic recent episode of the Projection Booth podcast observes, Judy's flashback changes everything. Prior to Steven Spielberg, no director had greater name recognition than Hitchcock, but Vertigo perplexed critics and audiences. It remained hard to see for close to forty years, finally getting a major restoration in the late nineties. Now Vertigo's star has ascended; in 2012, it became the first film in fifty years to surpass Citizen Kane on the Sight & Sound poll. Today it is regarded by a wide swathe of critics as the greatest film of all time.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Rear Window (#66)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Rear Window (1954/USA/dir. Alfred Hitchcock) appeared at #66 on my original list.

What it is • L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is a globe-trotting photographer at home in exotic locales ranging from remote wilderness to combat zone. In the skies over Europe or the Pacific in World War II, he befriended co-pilot Thomas Doyle (Wendell Corey), now a police detective in New York City. Jeffries is in New York too, recovering after an accident on a car race track which broke his leg (but the picture was worth it). Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly), a lovely high society girl, flits from social event to social event on Park or Fifth Avenue, but her heart is in humble Greenwich Village with Jeffries, whom she hopes to marry (he's resistant both to accepting and breaking off their relationship, preferring the non-commital status quo). Meanwhile, the man who lives across the courtyard from Jeffries, Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) has sent a woman off to the countryside - perhaps to Connecticut or Long Island, and perhaps she's his wife...or his mistress. But if it's his mistress, where is his wife? Buried somewhere else? Stashed away in the apartment? Ghoulishly scattered across the city and in the East River? (I just now got Thelma Ritter's "I want no part of it" pun for the first time.) Our story of adventure, romance, and murder spans all of these various locations...

Except it doesn't. Rear Window takes place entirely within a single apartment (save for a few one- or two-second shots in the courtyard). Even when we look into other rooms we are doing so from Jeffries' vantage point. This is the brilliance of Rear Window: it locks itself down to one location despite its multiplicity.

Why I like it •

Side by Side: Rear Window and Dial M For Murder (video)

Update 12/1: The video is finally up!

Adapted from my review Rear Window (& thoughts on Dial M For Murder). The previous entry in the Side by Side series covered the TV shows Neon Genesis Evangelion & Twin Peaks.

The Vimeo upload appears after the jump, along with the original message.

Vertigo, Vertigo Variations, and Watching Movies While Blogging

This concludes "The Big Ones," a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image. The film is addressed below, nearer the end - but, fair warning, there are many pit stops along the way.

Good evening. Nearly a week ago, I wrote my final review of 2011, a piece to conclude an era of blogging, an era which began in the summer of 2008 when I sat down at the town library and addressed Be Kind Rewind and the Lumiere short films in typed prose. The page was all-white, there were no images, there was no sidebar and, of course, there were no readers, except for me. I closed that review with an admonition to myself and the invisible reader, stating that I would return to revise my first blog post since it wasn't quite satisfactory. I never did.

Today, however, I have deleted my "final" piece, the 32nd post in "The Big Ones," on Vertigo, one of my favorite films. The piece was terrible and while I've no doubt posted crummy pieces in the past, I feel I've mostly managed to skirt mediocrity. Not this time - so the "Vertigo" of December 31 is gone, replaced by this "Vertigo, Vertigo Variations and Watching Movies While Blogging" (the date remains for archiving purposes, but in fact I'm posting on January 7.) The irony of such tangled identities and convoluted elisions and replacements, of past and present overlapping and intertwining in both the subject of my post and the post itself, is not lost on me.

Rear Window (& thoughts on Dial M for Murder)

This is an entry in "The Big Ones," a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image. There are spoilers.

Rear Window is a dazzling film, because it's so many things: an entertaining narrative, an enjoyable hang-out film, a beautiful visual experience, a provocative concept, and a clever contraption. This is Hitchcock firing on all cylinders, finding a gimmick (as he loved to do) that opened opportunities rather than constricting options (which was not always the case). It's a movie that has been written about thousands of times, approached from many angles: as a metaphor for the characters' anxieties about marriage, as a clever exploration of voyeurism, and as a meta meditation on film-going (and channel-surfing, in this new age of television). That last aspect particularly interests me, and there's definitely something to it. As James Stewart's L.B. Jeffries looks out over his courtyard, each window is like a separate screen, offering different viewing options in various genres: comedy, romance, musical, and eventually the one that consumes his attention - murder mystery.

Rebecca

Spoilers are discussed. Extensively.

The waves beating violently against the foot of a cliff - the smoldering ruins clouded in a heavy mist - the pristine, untouched room in the west wing, mausoleum for a woman so perfect she seems never to have existed... Rebecca is loaded with Romantic imagery, and as with so much Romanticism a dark secret lies at the heart of all the eerie beauty.

Yet what is significant about this secret is how it shatters the Romantic nightmare and places something coarser, more real, in its place - a reality just as dark but far more tangible than all the doom-laden myths evoked by the aforementioned locales. The mysterious gothic world will come crashing down when exposed to the open air of uncomfortable truths and petty people, to the point where the torching of Manderlay seems almost an afterthought.

Remembering the Movies, Feb. 25 - Mar. 3

Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.

Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past

This week, we finally take a break from 1931 (which has dominated the past few weeks) and skip forward for a screwball from Sturges. There are several classics in the lineup this week, as well as an interesting back-and-forth between Siskel and Ebert (as well as a Tom & Jerry cartoon from the fifties - hard to say which duo is more contentious).

This might also be the place to the mention for those who missed it that Blog 10, the year-end round-up, finally made its debut last week. Check it out for some great links, images, and excerpts...

Remembering the Movies, Jan. 28 - Feb. 3

Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.

Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past

It's a colorful week: eighteenth-century French martial artists, shrinking women, and a liver-munching serial killer rub shoulders as we transition into the second month of the year. Actors include Fatty Arbuckle, Marilyn Monroe, and the very first film star, while a strong directorial field ranges from Hitchock to Huston to Sam Fuller. On another note, opinions are like assholes, and this week I happen to have one (an opinion, that is). So by popular request I offer my (brief) thoughts on the film highlighted above, alongside a memorable "Siskel & Ebert" exchange on the same movie. Break out the fava beans...

Psycho: Long Night at the Bates Motel

Contains spoilers - if such a warning is necessary.

Last week, I almost wrote about Psycho as my #1 horror film. I went with The Shining instead - partly because it may actually be my favorite, partly because it's more exclusively a horror film than Psycho (which contains strong elements of mystery/suspense and psychological drama, with the horror elements consuming surprisingly little screen-time). Besides, the film had already been discussed in the last entry for the horror countdown I was paying tribute to (in a great picture post - check it out). On the other hand, the time was ripe to write about Psycho, as I had just managed to see on the big screen, proceeded by a playful introduction from critic David Thomson, who described his overwhelming desire to grab someone and hold on for dear life after the "big scene" - he even claimed that his 19-year-old self loudly proclaimed to no one in particular (except perhaps the auteur hiding behind the screen as if it was a shower curtain), "Oh please, don't do that to me again!"

Fascinating to me because, well, I've always known that the shower scene was coming. And I've always known that Mrs. Bates was Norman. Indeed, the film has never held many surprises for me, and as I watch it for the umpteenth time I find myself humoring some vaguely contrarian thoughts which perhaps have little bearing on the film itself, but a great deal on my own involvement with it. Psycho has probably been written about more times than any other film save Citizen Kane - although perhaps Norman's knife surpasses Charles' sled in inspiring critical prose. There's a great deal out there already both in print and the blogosphere (for a great example of the latter, check out the Film Doctor's in-depth analysis of the very first scene, tartly titled "Turn Momma's Picture to the Wall".) So what I have to offer here is just my own personal take on the film (which certainly may overlap with others' observations), some scattered reflections and observations, as sliced and diced as Marion's corpse after that fatal cleansing.

Saboteur

The only part of Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur I'd seen before my most recent viewing was the infamous climax on the Statue of Liberty. This is an obvious antecedent to the Mt. Rushmore scene in the director's 1959 North by Northwest and in fact, much of the film foreshadows the later movie. There's the man falsely accused, travelling across the country, attached to a woman who isn't sure if she can trust him. The element of national security is also present (though here it's more pronounced) as is the fugitive's acceptance of his false identity, in order to get in with the conspirators he supposedly knew all along. But as T.S. notes (and if you haven't checked out his recently initiated retrospective of Hitchcock, take this opportunity to do so), "Hitchcock re-tooled each theme and it got better as he career progressed. (North by Northwest is a much better film than Saboteur, for example.)"