Vertigo in its place

Vertigo in its place

Among the list of artistic works that at the time were misunderstood and even ignored, Vertigo, the film by Hitchcock, classifies as a case worthy of study.

Kim Novak and James Stewart in Vertigo. Photo: Movie still

Author: Rolando Pérez Betancourt | internet@granma.cu 
January 25, 2019 21:01:41

A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.

Among the list of artistic works that at the time were misunderstood and even ignored, Vertigo, the film by Hitchcock, classifies as a case worthy of study.

Last December, the film’s 60th anniversary was celebrated with great fanfare, and Kim Novak, the leading actress, she retired from a ranch in Oregon in her retirement ranch in Oregon.. From there she didn’t go out even to look for gold nuggets in a cinematographic world that, in the 50s and 60s of the last century, had kissed her feet. She was, however invited to participate in the 2014 Oscar ceremony, a sort of tribute, she believed, like the one offered at the Cannes Film Festival.

Just a few minutes on the stage of the so-called Mecca of cinema that cost her the most bloody jokes and mockery in various media, because of the plastic surgery that made the two characters she played in Vertigo, at 25 years of age, look very remote.

 Television and social networks were filled with images of the actress and comments, such as those leaked by Donald Trump, who was not president at the time, although he had already given signs of what Twitter unleashed would become in his hands:  “Kim should sue her cosmetic surgeon,” wrote the magnate.

Before returning to her ranch, Novak defended herself on Facebook: “…I’m not going to shut up in front of tyrants. You can’t let people destroy your life. You have to stand up against them.¨

Known for not giving interviews, the actress agreed a month ago to a request from an AP journalist. The pretext was impossible to ignore. Vertigo, the film that launched her career, was 60 years old and in 2012 had moved from first place in the preference of critics and historians over the mythical Citizen Kane, after 50 years of the film of Orson Welles reigning in the polls conducted by the prestigious British magazine Sight and Sound.

An ascent in which the indisputable quality of the film mediated, unusual for the Hollywood of the 50s, the love story marked by the obsession of a man (James Stewart) who intends to resurrect the woman who fascinated him, and the unparalleled performance of Kim Novak (beautiful and sensual, but nothing outstanding until then in the field of acting).

It´s producers weren´t enthusiastic, and so it competed without pain or glory at the 1958 San Sebastian Festival, it was considered below Psycho and other Hitchcock films. However, step by step it opened the way to the reign of myths thanks to its values, and also to the music of Bernard Herrmann. It´s a film that today – dozens of books and studies conceived in its favor – is considered one of the most significant in the history of cinema.

In the AP interview, Kim Novak revealed that she identified so much with the character  In Vertigo because it was exactly what Hollywood was trying to do with her: turn her into what she wasn’t (another platinum blonde who competed with Marilyn Monroe and was a worthy successor to Rita Hayworth).

It is known from François Truffaut’s famous interview with the suspense magician, that Hitchcock insisted Novak had not been well on her role, to which the Frenchman responded categorically that Vertigo was she. And he didn’t lack reasons, especially when you consider that the actress played two totally different characters. However, when referring now to Hitchcock, Kim Novak has words of praise for the director who, according to Tippi Hedren (The Birds, Marnie), was nuts about blondes and sexually harassed her to the point of threatening to ruin her career.

Also with Kim Novak?

He never behaved that way with me, she responded sharply. And she added: “Others did. And, although she didn’t offer names, she said that the reports of harassment and sexual assault that flourish in Hollywood today were always like that, only now they have lost their fear and are beginning to talk.