On this day, 22 May, in 1958, Vertigo went into wide release. It had its premiere on 9 May in San Francisco. Then it was released in the UK. Finally, the week after, it was released in the US.
People who have been reading me for a while are probably thinking, “Oh no! Not another hit piece on Hitchcock!” But it’s not! Rather, I want to look at the other side of it.
Imagine Destroying John Carpenter’s Career
One of my favorite filmmakers is John Carpenter. There is no filmmaker who consistently delights me more. A number of his films are my very favorites: The Thing, They Live, and In the Mouth of Madness.
(There is so much more to love in Carpenter’s catalog. In addition to all the usual ones that people mention, there’s Vampires, which I really enjoy. And Escape From LA has really grown on me.)
But if people spoke of John Carpenter as though he was some brilliant art film director, I wouldn’t be able to take it. And I say that knowing that Carpenter is as skilled and creative a director as you will find. If he wanted to make art films, they’d be wonderful.
But he doesn’t make art films. (I wouldn’t love his work as much if he did.) It would be an insult to him to pretend that he does — an insult to him but also an insult to the kinds of films that he makes and that I love.
Hitchcock Was Better Than Vertigo
I wish that I could do something for poor Alfred Hitchcock. He deserves better. Above all, he deserves to have his great films admired. I think Vertigo is a joke.
The contortions I’ve seen critics go through to justify why it is a great film! Oh yes, the boring pastels of the film are so meaningful! And the boring plot? Pure genius!
Vertigo is the Alfred Hitchcock film for people who don’t like Alfred Hitchcock. Almost any other Hitchcock film would be a better symbol of his talent. And it shows that all those critics and film “scholars” who supposedly love his work so much don’t really appreciate it at all.
Rather than Vertigo, watch Shadow of a Doubt or The Birds or Strangers on a Train. Or better yet, watch Halloween.
Other 22 May Anniversaries
Filmmakers:
- Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930): Creator of Sherlock Holmes.
- Richard Benjamin (1938-): Actor known for Westworld and Saturday the 14th. He is also a very successful director who made My Favorite Year.
- Paul Winfield (1939-2004): Actor known for The Terminator, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and much else.
- Michael Sarrazin (1940-2011): Actor known for many things but especially Frankenstein: The True Story.
Films:
- Svengali (1931): A music teacher uses hypnotism to control a singer.
- The Immoral Mr Teas (1959): Premiere of Russ Meyer’s first film, a charming nudie-cutie.
- Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969): My favorite of the Hammer Frankenstein films.
- Outland (1981): People are dying while mining on Io.
- The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988): TV movie based on the TV series.
- Alien 3 (1992): The third film in the franchise, which makes the ending of Aliens pointless.
- Mission: Impossible (1996): Film based on the series.
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997): Turns out there is a second island.
- Boa vs Python (2004): Kinda obvious, right?
- Tormented (2009): Undead slasher comedy.
- Poltergeist (2015): Remake of the Tobe Hooper classic starring Sam Rockwell.
Vertigo (1958) poster via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.
What’s odd is how critics tend to see everything Hitchcock did before Vertigo as practice for his MASTERPIECE. They’ll blow off 39 Steps, Lady Vanishes, Sabotage. (James doesn’t like it when critics blow off Sylvia Sidney movies.) Or the bigger-budget movies that actually look AMAZING, like Rebecca and Notorious. (Nothing Hitchcock did in color looked good, but I love NxNW because Grant and Mason and Landau are so fun! Plus — that auction scene, which never fails to make me smile.)
That critical worship of Vertigo is a joke. It’s basically, “Hitchcock matured into showing us his obsession with making all the female actors in his films into interchangeable erotic fixations! How bold!” How dull. Directors have had the dehumanizing hots for starlets since movies began, it isn’t interesting. I prefer the story of how Otto Preminger was making Robert Mitchum slap Jean Simmons in take after take for Angel Face until Mitchum got sick of it and slapped Preminger instead.
Now, a Frankenstein written by Christopher Isherwood… that DOES sound interesting! Three hours is a long haul but the cast is cool, I’ll give it a try!
It is excellent. But it is also very horror. For example, there are body parts moving around. What I think makes it work so well is how sympathetic the creature is.
I’m glad you brought up The 39 Steps. For its time, it was excellent. And — in stark contrast to later films — was totally lacking in pretense. But there are fun later films. I just wrote about Family Plot and it was great! (Well, technically it has a lot of the usual Hitchcock issues but it works completely.) I just want people to allow Hitchcock to be Hitchcock. And that means letting him fail. And he failed a lot! And he also succeeded. But when a filmmaker cannot do wrong, it isn’t criticism or appreciation; it’s religion.