Vertigo (Universal Legacy Series)
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DVD details
Actor: James Stewart, John Benson, Kim Novak, Margaret Brayton, Paul BryarBrand: Universal
Cinematographer: Robert Burks
Composer: Bernard Herrmann
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 128 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-10-07
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Reviews of Vertigo (Universal Legacy Series)
DVD Review: The master of suspense completely outdoes himself...
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm sure many, if not all of you, have seen this movie (it is a widely loved classic) but for the sake of those who have not, I will keep this review as brief and as vague as I can.
`Vertigo' is a masterpiece.
Okay, so I'll say more than that. The thing is, `Vertigo' is one of those movies that the less said about the better. I personally knew nothing of this movie when I saw it. I merely knew that it was supposed to be the best film Alfred Hitchcock ever made. While I am partial to `Psycho' I must admit that `Vertigo' is a much grander achievement and seriously is one of the best films ever made, by anyone. With every twist and turn and shocking revelation, `Vertigo' remains suspenseful throughout, and the end result is beyond satisfying. It's those twists and turns that make it so hard to review or even talk about without giving something vital away.
So, I'll attempt this.
John Ferguson is a former police detective suffering from acrophobia (fear of heights) who is hired by an old friend, Gavin Elster, to follow his wife Madeleine. Gavin feels that Madeleine is possessed by the spirit of a madwoman, and after John watches her closely for a time he begins to think the same way.
Then the unthinkable happens.
I don't want to say anything more, for the second half of the film is just brilliant. All you think you know vanishes before your eyes and when the truth is revealed it will leave you breathless. It's less the actual revelation and more the way in which Hitchcock does the revealing. He is a master of suspense (as we are all already aware) and here he builds the tension masterfully, so when the final scene is upon us we are clenching our seats in anticipation.
A lot has been said about the lack of talent possessed by Kim Novak, but I personally find her performance here to be iconic. Maybe it is solely the character (that twofer she has going here is a whirlwind) but I like to think that she brings a lot of the films mystery with her connection to the role. The role may have only required her to be desirable, but she captures that desire with a hint of ambiguity that really intrigues us. James Stewart is also very, very good here as John. He manages to look and act confused without crossing over into recklessness. He is in complete control all the time. Personally, Barbara Bel Geddes steals the show for me with her small yet powerful portrayal of Midge, John's friend and confidant. She has so much spunk and fresh vitality that one cannot take their eyes off of her. She is a revelation.
The film is lauded as cinematic perfection, and for once I actually agree with the critics of the world. This truly is an iconic film; a masterpiece. I'm sure you've already seen and possibly own this film, but if you haven't I urge you to see it immediately.
DVD Review: Vertigo DVD
Summary: 5 Stars
Again, one of the great movies by Director Alfred Hitchcock (my favorite). James Stewart and Kim Novak are together again in this great mystery with a surprising ending. Don't miss Vertigo.DVD Review: Church towers as the golden gate to hell
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is one of the best and not only of Hitchcock's films, but of all universal global cinema. What's good about it? Everything. And yet what exactly, if I may ask? First of all it is a beautiful love story. A man who has been disabled by life, or rather by his profession - he was a cop and saw his partner die by falling from a roof when trying to save him - and his developing a severe case of acrophobia, is hired by a friend of his to watch his wife and find out what she is doing in her afternoons when she gets out and does not seem to remember later in the evening what she has done. The man falls in love with the woman who is of course not the wife but a bait that is supposed to make that man witness her suicide, or rather the husband's wife's murder by the husband himself. But that he cannot know. And that love will survive that event, and even his second phase of disability, this time entirely mental since he feels guilty for having been unable to stop the woman when climbing in the tower of the Mission's church because of his acrophobia. And this love survives so well that he falls again when he sees the woman again in the hotel room where he had seen her when she was baiting him into the drama, though now he does not know it is her, he just thinks she looks like her. And she falls again herself in spite of all her attempts at resisting. And the next phase in the drama is going to lock up these two in total bleakness. But there I stop. You have to find out these superb details all by yourself. The second reason that the film is a masterpiece of global cinema is because it is a thriller that is so well sown up and patched up and glued up that even if you know every detail you will enjoy it just the same: it is a thriller that deserves to be watched a hundred times. The haute cinematographic couture of Hitchcock makes every single viewing more enjoyable than the previous one. Even, I think, you may see in the one hundredth viewing elements you had not seen before because the film, each frame of the film, each image of the film, is loaded with myriads of details that are all more significant than the others. And yet it does not look neither baroque nor rococo. It is just perfect and yet so rich that the perfection takes one hundred viewings to be seen. The third reason why this film is a jewel is that Hitchcock plays on height and stairs and staircases and climbing, and descending or ascending, as he so often, or should I say always, does. Here the stairs are coming naturally since we are in San Francisco and the streets are going up and down, and the houses are perched on slanting slopes, and the embankments have stairs to walk into the Bay, and naturally all buildings, churches, hotels, and whatever have stairs in the front and stairs in the back and stairs inside to go up to the upper floors. And the best is of course the staircase going to the top of the church tower in the Mission, and we will go up that winding staircase twice. And we will fly down that staircase twice in exactly the same way. And the whole film will be dominated by the long apparition of the Golden Gate Bridge, that bridge under which all fish bite into the bait that is thrown at them and are fished out of the foaming water into the burning furnace of the hell of a frying pan. The staircase metaphor is powerful in that film, and so natural, that we just wonder if at that moment Hitchcock has not been able to control his own derangement and we can maybe envisage the fact that he is not completely schizophrenic or psychotic, just psychedelic. The last thing I would like to say on that film is that Hitchcock is also a master of rhythm. He must have been a conductor in some other life of his and his temperament is definitely not perfect. He likes rhythmic variations and he can have scenes that seem so slow that they must last hours and some others that go in a wink of an eyelid. But it is neither haphazard nor unjustified nor in any way disturbing or boring. Every single pace, no matter what, is entirely ingrained in the plot and is part of the beauty of the film and our pleasure. We don't even have the freedom to breathe some when the rhythm is going down because then the dramatic tension goes up and vice versa. The denser the slower and the faster the least intense, but then the two together always give the maximum meaningful signification you can imagine.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
DVD Review: The dark side of romantic love.
Summary: 5 Stars
----Some major spoilers below---
What I find striking about this film is how it presents such a cynical view of romantic love.
James Stewart (as Scotty) starts out playing one of his every-man/average-guy hero characters, who falls into depression and then into a troubling obsession because of his misplaced romantic love.
Most films seem to glorify romance & love.
Hitchcock seems to have wanted to point out that though this emotion can be at the center of our lives it is often based upon superficialities.
Many films present love as something that is DESTINE to happen between two people.
I think that Hitchcock was having fun with this idea, flipping it on its head and twisting it with all sorts of irony.
e.g. (SPOILERS) The person who Scotty fell so deeply in love with did not really exist, she was simply an 'act' (i.e. It's Judy pretending to be Madeleine, who were two very different types of women).
Scotty does not appears to be capable of loving Judy for who she really is.
Scotty becomes morbidly obsessed with Judy's fake version of Madeleine, and later he pressures Judy into looking & acting like her (once again) which she does out of love for him.
Contrast this with Scotty's best friend (Midge), a fairly attractive woman who adores him. She seems like a woman much more suited to Scotty's taste than Judy is. But he is just too romantically fixated on Judy's 'faux' Madeleine for Midge to have a real shot at him.
This movie is great for a lot of reasons, many of which have already been mentioned here in other reviews, including:
Novak skillfully playing two very different personalities.
The view it gives us of San Francisco circa the 1950's.
The movie's plot goes through very interesting thematic changes (Starting as a supernatural love story/drama then changing mid-stream into a psychological drama heavily laden with irony.).
It has a wonderful musical score.
And there is a VERY dark ending to the story (Something almost unheard of in American movies prior to the mid-1960's)
There are some glitches to this film's storyline,
None of which I feel are too distracting with the possible exception of the somewhat convoluted wife-murder-scheme, which might seem too far-fetched for some people to accept.
(Perhaps this somewhat bizarre murder scheme was necessary to set up the two-in-one character role played by Kim Novak.)
If I remember correctly Hitchcock said that he felt that such background details were not that important when trying to get an audience immersed into a story.
Hey the story works for me! :)
This is one of my favorite movies.
DVD Review: Veritgo
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this as a gift for my son. He really likes Alfred Hitchcock and
loved this movie. And Jimmy Stewart gave an awesome performance.
Description of Vertigo (Universal Legacy Series)
One of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest cinematic achievements, Vertigo, celebrates its 50th anniversary with an all-new 2-disc Special Edition DVD! Set in San Francisco, Vertigo creates a dizzying web of mistaken identity, passion and murder after an acrophobic detective (James Stewart) rescues a mysterious blonde (Kim Novak) from the bay. Recognized for excellence in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies, this dreamlike thriller from the Master of Suspense is as entertaining today as it was 50 years ago. Featuring revealing bonus features and a digitally remastered picture, Vertigo is a "great motion picture that demands multiple viewings" (Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide).Although it wasn't a box-office success when originally released in 1958, Vertigo has since taken its deserved place as Alfred Hitchcock's greatest, most spellbinding, most deeply personal achievement. In fact, it consistently ranks among the top 10 movies ever made in the once-a-decade Sight & Sound international critics poll, placing at number 4 in the most recent survey. (Universal Pictures' spectacularly gorgeous 1996 restoration and rerelease of this 1958 Paramount production was a tremendous success with the public, too.) James Stewart plays a retired police detective who is hired by an old friend to follow his wife (a superb Kim Novak, in what becomes a double role), whom he suspects of being possessed by the spirit of a dead madwoman. The detective and the disturbed woman fall ("fall" is indeed the operative word) in love and...well, to give away any more of the story would be criminal. Shot around San Francisco (the Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of the Legion of Honor are significant locations) and elsewhere in Northern California (the redwoods, Mission San Juan Batista) in rapturous Technicolor, Vertigo is as lovely as it is haunting. --Jim Emerson
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