VERTIGO:

The Making of a Hitchcock Classic

by Dan Auiler
Foreword from Martin Scorsese

Published by Dan Auiler at Smashwords

Copyright 2011

E-book copyright 2011 Dan Auiler
Foreword copyright 1998 Martin Scorsese
Vertigo images used with permission, all rights reserved the Alfred Hitchcock Estate and Universal Studios

Publication history
First Edition 1998 St. Martin's Press
Paperback 2001 St. Martin's Press Griffin
UK Editions 1998 Titan Books
This eBook edition published by the author and has substantial changes from the original publications

First Edition Dedication
To Rose and Maya

E-book Dedication
To all of us who stand in the tower

E-book acknowledgments

This edition would not have been possible without the invaluable technical and scanning assistance from my father, Wilk Auiler.  I should add that without his contribution and the considerable role my mother, Faris Auiler, played--this entire enterprise would likely not have seen the light of day.
The e-book was revised and set with the support of my sister, Deb Jones, and her family.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge here the extraordinary support of the current Team Hitchcock on the web:  Ken Mogg (http://labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/news-home_c.html), Joel Gunz (http://www.alfredhitchcockgeek.com/), Steven DeRosa (http://www.writingwithhitchcock.com), Daniel Grigsby and Doug Cunningham.  These men always inspire and they have often stood with me in the tower.

FOREWORD

It's difficult to put into words exactly what Vertigo means to me as both a film lover and as a filmmaker. As is the case with all great films, truly great films, no matter how much has been said and written about them, the dialogue about it will always continue. Because any film as great as Vertigo demands more than just a sense of admiration-it demands a personal response.

A good place to start is its complete singularity. Vertigo stands alone as a Hitchcock film, as a Hollywood film. In fact, it just stands alone, period. For such a personal work with such a uniquely disturbing vision of the world to come out of the studio system when it did was not just unusual--it was nearly unthinkable. Vertigo was and continues to be a real example to me and to many of my contemporaries, in the sense that it demonstrates to us that it's possible to function within a system and do work that's deeply personal at the same time.

Vertigo is also important to me-essential would be more like it--because it has a hero driven purely by obsession. I've always been attracted in my own work to heroes motivated by obsession, and on that level Vertigo strikes a deep chord in me every time I see it. Morality, decency, kindness, intelligence, wisdom--all the qualities that we think heroes are supposed to possess-desert Jimmy Stewart's character little by little, until he is left alone on that church tower with the bells tolling behind him and nothing to show but his humanity.

Whole books could be written about so many individual aspects of Vertigo--its extraordinary visual precision, which cuts to the soul of its characters like a razor; its many mysteries and moments of subtle poetry; its unsettling and exquisite use of color; its extraordinary performances by Stewart and Kim Novak-whose work is so brave and emotionally immediate--as well as the very underrated work of Barbara Bel Geddes. And that's not to mention its astonishing title sequence by Saul Bass or its tragically beautiful score by Bernard Herrmann, both absolutely essential to the spirit, the functioning, and the power of Vertigo.

Of course, we can now hear Herrmann's score with a clarity and breadth that it's never had before, thanks to Bob Harris and Jim Katz, the men who worked on the beautiful, painstaking restoration of Vertigo. I'm happy that the Film Foundation was able to play a part in making this important work possible, and I'd like to thank Universal and Tom Pollock for allowing it to go forward and, of course, I'd like to thank the American Film Institute for their invaluable contributions.

-MARTIN SCORSESE

INTRODUCTION

Why does Vertigo affect us so deeply? Why isn't Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 psychological thriller, just coming off its third major rerelease in four decades, and available in gorgeously restored home-video editions, just another "Hitchcock and bull story," as Time callously described it upon its initial release? Doesn't that description better fit the other films Hitchcock created during his last great period? Why? Because Vertigo, like other films that reach somewhere within us and grab us firmly by the entrails, is not the typical Hitchcock film, even as it represents the highest realization of so many of the director's career preoccupations. Seen today, Vertigo can seem like the best of films and the worst of films: At moments throughout, its images shimmer with an incandescent beauty that few films in history could pretend to match, even as other moments---awkwardness’s in the script, longueurs in the storytelling---induce discomforts not originally intended by the director or his crew. Vertigo is not the perfect, pure cinema of Rear Window. Yet who is haunted, dogged, pursued by Rear Window? If Hitchcock, as the critic Robin Wood has argued, is the cinema's Shake­speare, then Vertigo is his Macbeth. Not in theme, plot, or structure, perhaps, but in its status as a flawed gem---whose imperfections somehow make the work all the more effective. Macbeth does not possess the perfect unity and ex­quisite poetry of A Midsummer Night's Dream, but surely this terrible couple's anguish moves us far more deeply than the foolish lover's lament. Vertigo is a classic of the heart-Hitchcock's and ours. It is a film that writes directly on our souls. Who knows the consequences ultimately of such art? I don't feel damaged after watching the film, as Scottie so painfully and permanently is at its conclusion. What I do know is that I've seen and felt something painfully true.

Those final moments in the tower: Scottie confronting his own illusion, his face leaning out of the shadows as its textures seems to ripple and convulse in deep torment. "Oh, Madeleine, Madeleine, I loved you so-oh, Madeleine." This quiet moment, following the Sturm und Drang of the famous tower-climbing scene, is the Lear howl of the film. Scottie has loved and lost and loved and lost again. That final, shocking image of Scottie alone in the tower is what seals the heart and our fate-what binds us to the film, brings us back to countless screenings, drags us to the locations to walk their steps like hungry ghosts, what compels the writing of essay after essay and batters us in each new audience with question after unanswerable question.