Midweek Mention... Vertigo

Sidey - Vertigo

Dan: blobby really,

Sidey: It's a perfect segue into this week's movie I think. It's the start of, what week? What themed week?

Cris: Oh, right, Yeah,

Dan: Mm-Hmm.

Reegs: Acrophobia

Sidey: Because this is one I think I've mentioned before when we used to do like a Hall of Shame like films that you hadn't seen.

I hadn't seen this before. Yeah. A Hitchcock classic. Vertigo.

Dan: Yeah.

Long long long time ago. I've seen this it needed re watching. Because

Yeah.

it's

Reegs: This is commonly acknowledged as one of the greatest films of all time. And, Yeah, and afterwards,

like in the seventies, I guess, was sort of critically re evaluated and a lot of people came up with new interpretations of the movie and that sort of thing. Gonna be really quite, we were talking off air before that this is quite a difficult one to talk about because the plot is fairly convoluted and it's as much thematic as it is anything else, but we'll struggle through and try and keep it as short as we can and just talk about the bits that are interesting to us, I

Dan: Yeah.

What would you make of the, the title straight from the beginning there?

Reegs: This was one of my favourite parts of the whole movie.

Sidey: It really

Dan: There's a Robert Polanski movie

Sidey: there's a Roman Polanski movie. I think it's called Revulsion where I think he's just completely ripped off like the big eyeball shot.

He's just completely lifted it.

Dan: Shot and he's just completely lifted it.

He was a nice guy,

Sidey: a nice guy as well. Roman Polanski. So, yeah. More more power to him. Yeah.

Dan: And, and Hitchcock.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: It's a close up of a woman's eye in black and white, and then it dissolves into this like spiraling vortex of hallucinogenic

Sidey: was thinking Spirograph for Christmas

Reegs: Yeah, and it was Saul Bass is the designer for this, and it's Bernard Herrmann with the score, and it's early computer animation.

Sidey: The first film with computer animation in it

Reegs: And it is really terrific.

Sidey: Yes.

Cris: wow.

Reegs: And then we get like, the beginning of the matrix basically running across the rooftops.

Sidey: Yeah, someone climbing up a ladder and then

Dan: Yeah, we're straight

Sidey: a chase across the rooftops like you say.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: And the guy who's running away, he's being shot at. They can't hit him though because he's, he's zippy, he's on over buildings and he makes a jump and the policeman and the detective also chasing after him.

They make the jump and then there's another jump and it's on a Real kind of steep part of the roof and everybody who jumps on it, they slide back a little bit and then manage to get their, their grip. Everybody apart from our, our man, our detective, who's the, the one chasing

Sidey: Jimmy Stewart.

Dan: Jimmy Stewart and he's ends up sliding back and holding onto the gutter looking

Sidey: Well, this is where we get the first shot of the they call it the contra zoom

Reegs: Yeah, or a dolly zoom. I

Sidey: or zoom out and track in.

It's where. The camera's pulled back, but zooming in.

Reegs: Yeah, the camera's moving closer, but

Sidey: the other way around

Reegs: lens is zooming backwards,

Sidey: it high exaggerates the depth of the what the fall would be So it's fucking bit like disorientating when you see it, especially I imagine if you see on this big screen, it would have been like

Dan: brilliant

Reegs: it's been used brilliantly in loads of other movies. Jaws is a really classic example.

But yeah, there you go. So anyway, the, the uniformed copper comes back to help Jimmy Stewart. Scotty, I think the character's

Sidey: high. Yeah

Reegs: it's got you too high. And he goes to kind of help him and then he just falls to his death, doesn't he? Just falls

Dan: Well, it's such a pitch to the roof and he's saying, give me a hand, give me a hand holding on to like a nothing. Just his hand stretched out and he goes, I couldn't believe it. It was like,

Sidey: yeah,

Reegs: And we see people come through and I think when we had, we cut to black with him just still hanging there.

Sidey: Yeah, the guy's got away and he's there and and then when we fade back in he's now a retired policeman he's sort of got that trauma and also You know knows he's kind of

Reegs: trauma,

Sidey: yeah,

Reegs: it's like, Oh, I couldn't go to work today. I think I need a whiskey in the morning and whatever, you know, that sort of

Dan: yeah. My question

Cris: of like My question about this scene is, why is he wearing a corset? Did he fall from that, or what was the thing, what was the point of all this corset talking

Reegs: Well, he definitely did his backing, I think, and he's been rehabilitated. That was part of

Cris: Right, okay, anyway, yeah. He's in this room with I also Did he call that woman Minj? Or is

Reegs: or no?

Midge. Marge. Midge.

Sidey: Midge. M I D G E

Cris: Well, it's very close

Sidey: Marjorie is her full

Cris: they, yeah

Sidey: They, they were engaged at one point and she still holds a torch for him, but he's just like oblivious or just ignorant or whatever. I

Reegs: love the way that's conveyed because it's actually pretty subtle. She's a fashion designer and she's working and she just raises like one eyebrow almost imperceptibly.

So yeah, it's really good the way that's dropped in there. So yeah, we find out it was, it was like broken off, you know, Scottie sort of blithely waves it off.

Sidey: That's a, a kind of subplot that kind of runs through.

But essentially he's now recruited by the husband of.

And he says that something's going on with her. She's not herself. She's doing weird stuff. I'm concerned for her safety, but not, I'm not expecting her to be killed.

Reegs: He sort of hints at some supernatural shit,

Sidey: He's just, yeah, something's happening to her that she's not in control.

Cris: and he dismisses the, he's like, oh, so is she cheating, he doesn't say it like that, but he's like, oh, so, no, no, she's not into that, she's definitely, so he, the guy clearly just hints at the supernatural rather

Sidey: yeah. else? So I didn't know anything about this film, other seeing the sort of stills and whatever, but I didn't know it was kind of gonna go down this route.

Yeah. So it was quite surprising actually, when you see it like this.

Reegs: So Scotty is the ex police officer is hired to follow Madeleine. And he's sent off to Ernie's restaurant. And this is when we first see her, Kim Novak, looking absolutely smoking hot in this black dress with this, like, slash of green across her.

And green will be a recurring you know, color. thematic element and color used across the movie. Her color is green and his color is red. And yeah, it's obviously the color of jealousy and all that other stuff as well. He's instantly mesmerized by her, isn't he?

Dan: Yeah, he's taken by a straight away and

Sidey: bear in mind he's been hired by her husband. Yeah, yeah. I was watching going, what the fuck?

Dan: yeah, yeah, it's the reason he takes the job. Yeah. You know, he, he's basically, instantly just attracted to her. And

Cris: And rightly so.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: and, and so the next day he,

Reegs: follows her.

Dan: following her. He's outside her place waiting for her to go.

And he sees her do all these crazy kind of crazy things, but strange and weird.

Reegs: goes off to get flowers. She visits a

Sidey: She's got a sort of strange routine, hasn't she? And she'll go off to an art gallery and just sit and stare at a particular painting.

Reegs: She visits a grave at Carlotta, I think it is, Carlotta Valdez, and then she goes to sit at a painting in an art gallery of Carlotta Valdez, and she yeah, also looks very much like the character in the painting that she's looking at.

It's quite a strange

Sidey: of

hones in on her hairstyle and she's got a particular way that her hair is done, which is mirrored in the picture and the painting

Reegs: And she's got a distinctive

Sidey: jewelry. Yeah.

Reegs: thing that's going to come back as well.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: Anyway, he follows her back after that to a hotel. And then when he goes into like, Oh, I want to go up to that room.

I, he's watches her go up to a fifth floor or something. And then when he goes to talk to the receptionist, she's like, no, nobody came through. And there's nobody, there is somebody who's staying there, but she only comes once a week and she's not

Sidey: there for a bit. Yeah,

Reegs: It's all very bizarre,

Dan: Yeah. It, it is. And he, he. Doesn't really know what to make of it. He goes back into the is his place. He has another chat to the girl in there and then he's out looking for her again. He eventually follows her the next time and she's doing these kind of crazy drives.

And she goes to the was it the, the golden gate

Reegs: Yeah, Fort Point is the name of the point there.

But yeah, you can see the Golden Gate Bridge in the

Dan: so she gets out of the car and. He does and he's the, he's the worst tailor in the world. You can't believe that, you know, how, how, how has he not been caught?

It's sometimes there's like no cars between them. There's clearly just him going

Reegs: Well Dan, as it turns out, that doesn't, I mean he's the patsy isn't he, as we'll find out,

Dan: As as we find out anyway. Yes. But I mean, even to him to think that I'm getting away with it anyway, so it took a bit of a stretch believing it, but she froze

Reegs: Well, he's an easy target because we've underplayed how mesmerized he is by her. He is enchanted by her.

Dan: And so when she froze herself into the, into the bay, he dives in after her, takes her back to his place and. She's in bed, all her clothes are hung up and, and at some stage, there's this awkward kind of, ah

Sidey: You see me naked?

Dan: seen me naked kind of thing. And you just think, whoa, this guy is like, this is his mate's wife that he's been hired to hide.

He calls at one stage, doesn't he? And he goes, yeah, yeah, I'll call you back. And he's like, My Mrs is just thrown herself in this, in the sea. Now she's in your bed and you've taken all her clothes off. And anyway, that doesn't get, he does yeah. Well, he's he's, he's just besotted with her, isn't he? And he, he tries to,

Sidey: well he goes to see Midge, doesn't he? And he says, I need to get the lowdown on these people Like, is there anyone in town who knows the history? And I don't just mean like a local historian I mean, like, basically someone who's got all the gossip Yeah, right.

And that's how he gets the backstory of Carlotta Had an illegitimate child And then killed herself Yeah and so there's all this twisted kind of backstory and now it all feeds into this supernatural thing of,

Reegs: She's

Sidey: Carlotta that in the painting, like in fucking Ghostbusters 2, is, is possessing this woman.

That's what we're kind of told. Yeah. Cause she doesn't remember, she claims to not remember falling in the water. She doesn't know how, you know, she just keeps coming to, doesn't really know what's happened. Yeah.

Reegs: and he's sort of in and out of her life saving her and because after that she drives off, doesn't she? And then he goes to follow her and he follows her around and where she's going is back to try and find his house. So do you remember? It's so bizarre. Like he's the more he watches, the more obsessed he becomes.

They go for a big ride. Let's cut to. I can't remember exactly how we get there, but they go out to the woods, don't they? And they have a big romantic. There's a strange bit where she becomes

Cris: had the planet of the apes, where the apes.

Sidey: Yeah, the sequoias. The big sequoias.

Cris: I remember that, so this was before, but it's the same woods where they released the Planet of the Apes

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: I thought I saw a Caesar in the woods, actually.

Sidey: might have done, yeah.

Yeah. But

Cris: she,

panics again, I was born here, all that kind of stuff. So it's, you know, when they cut that tree and she's like, I was born here. And he's like, how were you born here? This is 140 years ago. And I died here.

Sidey: to the beach and they'll be all snog, yeah.

well, they basically just fall in love, or at least that's what she tells him. Yeah, she, they, he is, he is obviously infatuated with her, and which he then I think, muddles with being in love with her. And as we later find out, she's effectively working off a script and, and says that she loves him and they,

I can't remember how exactly it's, but they end up out

Cris: in a

Reegs: a nightmare and she describes these events and he says, oh, it's this ch he tracks it

down from the historian to the church. Yeah, that's right.

And they go out to Revit to sort of,

Sidey: And they kiss, they kiss on the lawn outside the outside the bell

Dan: Yeah, and they go to revisit these places. He's under the belief that visiting them to show him a real will, will sort of magically awaken her from this kind of you know, these demons that she's having.

Of course it, it doesn't. And she ends up going, look, you've just got to leave me, go up to the tower. I've got to go up to the tower

Sidey: And you're

Dan: And, and he's like, he lets her go despite his

Sidey: she runs off. Yeah. And then he's sort of

Dan: but he lets her he lets her go and then he runs after her to the door

Sidey: it did seem to be getting greyer and greyer in each

Reegs: Yeah,

Dan: of it

Sidey: he was quite old.

Dan: And next

Reegs: Well, his vertigo kicks in, he can't

Dan: he's halfway up the stairs and he looks out the window and here's the scream

Sidey: said, and it's important because it does actually play in the film. But I said, fuck it. I should didn't even think about it. She just, cause as soon as she gets the top, she's straight, she goes past the window. And obviously like we find out later on and why that is. He's then obviously crestfallen and immediately

Reegs: into Into

Sidey: into an inquest.

Yeah. The guy just fucking pans him.

Reegs: slays

him! He's like, oh you're a weak bastard for having vertigo it's all your

Sidey: It's like, you're, you're like, it's a fucking terrible choice to pick you given that you'd already fucking lost someone like this. Anyway, that's not what we're here for. And then locked into a second tirade. And I was like, well, stop getting on about it. If it's not part of the inquest. Yeah.

Reegs: Anyways, it's ruled a suicide and Gavin doesn't really seem all that bothered about it. It certainly

Sidey: It looks like he's got lunch appointments to get to. He's

Dan: man, you know Don't worry about that.

And and he is just like

just stunned he's he's there in this kind of

Sidey: state. He's just taken an absolute kicking from the guy.

He's lost someone that he was in love

Dan: all the confidence and and for the next sort of few weeks months or whatever you get the appearance that he is in he's just wandering and he doesn't

Cris: he's in a

Reegs: we get the nightmare man. The nightmare is amazing. We get this nightmare that he has like blue and purple, and then he's walking through a graveyard and then it goes to that, like, the basically the sort of image that was the poster of the silhouetted sort of stick figure in animation style is he catatonic pretty

Cris: Yeah. Well he gets to the asylum. No. Or

Sidey: Yeah. Midge is talking to him and he's just like, no, unresponsive. He doesn't say anything bad

Reegs: And he's earlier talked about like, oh, the reason they, there's been this sort of thing that he's thrown away about her being motherly towards him. And that's kind of what has been in the way of them having a truly romantic relationship.

And now she truly is like mothering him and caring for him in this state.

Dan: and yeah, and she's kind of talking to him about, you know, You know, music is the doctors, you know, just music isn't going to fix him. But what is going to fix him is the sight of a gal that looks just like, Madeline. Yeah. And he

Reegs: Well, he goes out

Dan: though.

Reegs: them though,

Dan: yeah. Well, he, he just catches her out of all the people in San Francisco.

He just catches this gal in striking green kind of

Sidey: outfit Brunette

Dan: and and she's brunette though. But Her profile is just

Sidey: Very reminiscent,

Dan: and and so he follows her and makes the most outrageous kind of

Cris: This is like Stork

Sidey: like Stork getting towards BitRapy.

Dan: Yeah,

Cris: Yeah. I

Sidey: but we know why. Right? Yeah. But, but the, just the approach is like, don't think you can redo

that, do that

Dan: do it. No, no, you, you really, you really can't. Yeah.

Sidey: fifties, yeah.

Dan: Well apparently she says I've been picked up before and you know something like that you don't really know what the slang there meant to be honest, but you get the impression that She's lonely or that she wants somebody as well because she lets this guy into his his life and

Cris: then he is like, oh, should we go for dinner?

I'll be back in an

hour. like, oh mate.

Dan: half an hour.

She says give us an hour and he goes Okay, then like he's thinking about it. You think alarm bells all over this, but she dresses up and slowly, slowly over the next

Reegs: Well, I think we get a flashback

sequence at that point, don't We

Cris: Yeah. That's when it's the flashback. When you actually get shown

Reegs: What happened

Sidey: She's writing a letter.

She's writing a confession. So she is Madeline.

Reegs: wouldn't be able to make it up the stairs, so he had already broken his wife's neck, and as

Sidey: he knew he wouldn't be able to make it up the stairs. Yeah. So he's, he had already broken his wife's neck.

Yeah. And as soon as the fake one got the stairs, she is thrown out. And of course everyone's gonna just agree that it's a suicide. And he's gonna take the fall for it and all the rest of it's fucking

Dan: and you assume

Reegs: a body switch effectively at the last

Sidey: minute.

Yeah.

Dan: You assume she's got some money for it as well. So, but she's starting to feel a little bit of guilt because she actually did feel something for our hero our hero seems a bit he's just really not that likable.

But he's he's He, he managed, he slow,

Cris: part weird, though.

Dan: well he

Reegs: What, the bit where he forces her to change her identity? Yeah. That is pretty weird, yeah.

Cris: thought this is

Sidey: Change your appearance, change your clothes, change the colour of your hair. I kinda love

Cris: is this? Okay, I love you, okay. You're gonna have to wear only this stuff from now on. Okay, you're gonna have to do this. Well, you're gonna have to change your hair. Just because she was like that

Sidey: well they're

Reegs: not really love, is it Chris? It's obsession and control, that's

Cris: Well, yeah, I know, but it's not,

Sidey: he's obsessed she's she's got this obviously massive feelings of guilt and she's just completely dysfunctional as well so they kind of go with it in this weird Bonkers relationship.

Yeah. Until it all goes fucking

Cris: until when they, until they, they have to go for dinner. One, one evening. Where

Reegs: Oh, just sorry, sorry, sorry to interrupt me Flo. It's just, just before that is the great scene in the hotel where it's all bathed in green, her room.

And she like fades in and out in the

Sidey: Oh. Of the, the other, the other woman,

Reegs: kiss, yeah. She's sort of superimposed upon her and all

Sidey: that. Yeah.

Yeah.

Reegs: it's great. Sorry, sorry. Anyway, go

Cris: her and all that, yeah, it's great.

Sidey: The ne he spots the

Cris: Which is the exact same necklace that was in the painting and that

Sidey: belongs. Then he, he twigs

Cris: And then he's detective instincts come to life. And he's like, should we go to Ernie's? He's like, no.

He's like, should we go to Ernie's? And he's like, no, no, we're going somewhere else. Back to where it started or something like that. Or, I don't know, something like that. We need closure

Reegs: He's doing that super aggressive thing of just driving really, like, quite aggressively and being really like like stonewalling a conversation. really scary.

Sidey: So they go back to the church tower. Yeah. And he forces her to confess, he forces her to go up the stairs, and they're right at the very top, and a nun

Reegs: He's overcome his

Sidey: Yeah, he's made it to the top, and this time a nun comes out and startles her. And she fucking goes off and dies. Yeah, yeah. And pretty much, like, he's stood at the edge, and that's the end, and you're like,

What? This is fucking

Cris: what? Yeah,

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: yeah.

Dan: My first gut feeling was that the original fans of the day got it kind of right, to be honest.

That I was thinking, no, wasn't, wasn't as cracked out. All it was meant to be this film. That was my initial reaction. I actually thought it was you know, really good.

Going to be this, this great film that I kind of remembered seeing before and enjoying maybe more than I did this time. We're talking about reflecting on the art of the film and everything and how they brought it up.

It was. You know clever and it's amazing and brilliant of its day, but the characters and things were really tough to get into into To enjoy and to like and I know a lot

Reegs: of people No, they don't.

Dan: don't there's not many Sort of just normal characters. They've all got different motives going on and it is sort of super clever It's not my favorite hitchcock film though.

I put it up, you know birds. We we watched a few weeks ago That that was a far better film for me than than vertigo

Sidey: Well, I don't agree with you often, Dan, but I a hundred percent agree with you on this one.

I really liked some of the aspects of it, like the, the technical shots and the way it's made and stuff, but the characters were all like, I don't know, I.

It's the least enjoyment I've had from a Hitchcock film. I prefer Psycho, I prefer Birds that I've seen. I still want to see North by Northwest and all the rest of it.

But it's still really, really good. I just didn't like anyone in it.

It's

good and twisty and stuff, like a good Hitchcock

Reegs: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: and the shots that you talked about and all that kind of thing of, you know, outstanding because it hadn't been done before and the kind of angles and the way that he shoots film hadn't been done before so each one was just groundbreaking and you you can see why lots of other filmmakers are directly ripping him off because he's so good at it and you know or hugely influenced but i think some of them have even done that better now

Reegs: Oh, it's, I think we're gonna be unanimous on this. And I was thinking earlier how weird it is to like watch a film that is like declared this absolute

Sidey: overtook Citizen Kane. Yeah. In some sort of pole or whatever of the best film of all

Dan: all

Reegs: It makes you feel a bit of a freak show sometimes if you don't vibe with something that's like declared and

Sidey: stuff in it.

Reegs: Really enjoyed talking about it tonight It's been fun and maybe that's part of it like because it is there's because it's so much metaphor and stuff You can hang any ideological framework on it and any interpretation on it that you want and there's a load of stuff in it I personally don't relate to having like three different types of women in my life fighting over me Vampiric sexy and all that shit, no.

So like, he had a lot of cool problems, Hitchcock. But I don't know if I relate to all of them. So, yeah.

Cris: Yeah, I can relate to all of them,

Reegs: them.

Cris: still not it's still not a great, I mean, I've made the mistake of not researching it, but you know, when you Google a film and just to kind of see where, where it's at and what's the premise of it.

And it's the second, you know, when they have the suggestions on Google, where it gives you the question, why is Vertigo the best movie ever made? I was like, fuck hell, this is the best movie ever made.

Get

ready kind of thing. And it never really gets going. I don't know. It, it goes to the thing. And then I was a bit disappointed with the reaction after the lake with the, sorry, the, the water, when she falls into the, into the bay and then the reaction, and then it was all in the reveal of how she thinks about it.

With the, with the flashback, I thought it would have been, it could have been done a lot better in, in explaining more subtle rather than, you know, It tells you straight away and now get ready for the second part of the film. And also the long police is here. It was long. It was too long for what it needed to be, in my opinion.

Sidey: Yeah, I felt it a little bit,

Reegs: bit, could have been tighter editing maybe a little

Cris: But again, for a, for a, for a movie from 1958, I will, I will never say, Oh my God, this was, it was, it was by far better than some of the things we've seen recently.

Sidey: I love the 50s aesthetic him with his hat on I was like, man I wish you could

Dan: this start.

Cris: And the contrast with his eyes, the way it's filmed, like how blue his eyes are.

Sidey: are but he does look old in this I think yeah for it's a bit like

Cris: was surprised that he's that kind of like a, all this kind of Johnny sexy man when he's like in his sixties and these women are all in their thirties. What's going on

Reegs: Well, that was Hollywood

Sidey: That's the times, you know.

Kim Novak. Was he a cunt to

Reegs: Probably.

Sidey: tended to be. She was questioning him about her motivation in a particular scene and he said, Let's not probe too deeply into these matters, Kim. It's only a movie. So patronising.

Reegs: imagine that.

Sidey: Did

he support his cameo? it? It's right at the very, very start, and it's a scene that just exists for him to walk across the pavement.

It just walks across and it just cuts to something else. Yeah, it was nice,

Reegs: walks across and he comes to something else.

Sidey: Yeah, I wasn't prepared for like a stupid thing. Although it actually isn't, but that's the way it sets it up. But yeah,

Reegs: know if it sets

Sidey: I do think the poster art is like one of the best going. It's really iconic. It's great.

Reegs: It's

Sidey: And I'm sure, you know, listen, this is just our opinion, but

Reegs: just our

Sidey: other people fucking jerk off over this.

Still a good film, just not, not my favourite Hitchcock

Reegs: number. Probably suffers a little from the hyperbole maybe around it.

Sidey: So a strong to moderate recommend.

Dan: Yeah, go for

Cris: strong recommend, you can see it on ITVX, strong recommend.