Penelope Houston, ‘Vertigo’, Sight and Sound, Spring 1959, p.319.
Please let me know your thoughts on the review and leave a comment. The first viewing is only an introduction, but it is in the re-watching that the film starts to take hold and become an obsession. This may be due to the fact that Vertigo is ultimately defined by its repeated viewing. She does not seem to have sensed the repressed passion that drives as an undercurrent throughout the film. She believes that the film suffers from a plot of ‘egg-shell thinness’ and that one of its key problems is that of pacing: ‘this time he is repeating himself in slow motion’.
VERTIGO FILM FULL
The fact that Vertigo, along with Rope (1948), Rear Window (1954), The Trouble with Harry (1955), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) were quickly removed from circulation only to be seen again in the 1980s may have contributed to their appeal when re-evaluated (pirate black and white copies circulated for those desperate to see them during that dark age).īelow is the full review that was published in the Spring 1959 issue of Sight and Sound, written by Penelope Houston, which offers an interesting perspective on how the film was received on initial release. Today the film is revered by critics and film lovers, and during the last Sight & Sound Top Ten Poll in 2002 the film almost beat Citizen Kane to the number one spot – it was only 6 votes away. But again Hitchcock seems to smuggle dark themes into these studio movies, with Vertigo being a particularly bleak emotional journey concerned with loss and obsession. He made a couple of grittier movies in the 1950s, notably I Confess (1953) and The Wrong Man (1956), which had the feel of film noir and neo-realism, but Vertigo was clearly aligned with his bigger releases: vivid colour, Vistavision, and a star name in James Stewart. At first glance his films of the 1950s were clearly Hollywood products, as was the case with the glossy star vehicle The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) with James Stewart and Doris Day, or To Catch a Thief (1955) with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. So when Vertigo was released it was clearly seen as another ‘Hitchcock film’. The controlled movement and pacing of his visuals suggest control behind the camera. Indeed Hitchcock is seen as perhaps the ultimate auteur: the precise visual style of his films suggest to the viewer that he knew what he wanted and achieved it. In the review below Houston talks of a ‘typical Hitchcock joke’, for instance. The combination of this shift in film criticism and the strong Hitchcock brand meant that Hitchcock’s role as an auteur was indisputable. Influenced by the politique des auteurs promoted by the French critics of Cahiers du Cinéma, British film critics of Sight and Sound focused more on the role of the director and the director’s responsibility for the film as a whole, then they ever had before. The 1950s saw key changes in how films were written about. Hitchcock had become an unlikely but powerful brand.
VERTIGO FILM TV
It was Hitchcock himself who had transformed his profile into a neat logo, which then went on to open every episode of his TV show. No doubt this was galvanised by his appearance on television as host of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-61) in which Hitchcock was cleverly cementing a clearly-defined screen persona – the slow drawl, the black suit, the sense of humour, the portly figure, and the famous profile. One of the single most interesting cases is Vertigo (1958), a film that has become embedded in the consciousness of serious filmgoers.īy the time the film was released in 1958 (1959 in Britain) Hitchcock was the most high-profile Hollywood director of them all. I am very interested in how the reception of films change over time, and how their initial reception relates to their standing today. Below I reprint the review of Vertigo published in the influential British journal Sight and Sound upon its original release in 1958, but first a brief introduction.