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Get ‘Vertigo’ in Middletown today
Whenever someone asks me what my favorite movie is, I can’t give a straight answer. We film buffs are like that. We love so many movies, it’s hard to settle on just one.
That’s why I usually name three titles: Vertigo, Citizen Kane and A Hard Day’s Night. Press my back against the wall, however, and I’ll say Vertigo, which plays at 2 p.m. today at the Middletown Public Library as part of a new cult/classic film series. I wrote this story about it.
Why Vertigo? There are so, so many reasons, and to try to give a complete explanation would result in the longest blog entry ever on any Cox site. There’s that difficulty with straight answers again.
But, pressing myself against the wall, I have to say is that it’s the film that feels most like being in a dream. Watching any good or great movie is like entering a dream state if you give all of yourself to it, but no film absorbs me, entrances me and enthralls me like Vertigo, so powerful is its hold.
How does it do this? It’s partly the nature of the supernatural story, partly its sometimes languid pace and especially because Alfred Hitchcock imbues it with such rich imagery and boldness of color. Images like this one are never more vivid than in dreams or movies.
What also makes Vertigo resonate is the key question it asks, which is, when you love someone, just what do you love and how do you love it? The ache that Jimmy Stewart’s detective character feels is profound because he becomes obsessed with an image, or an idea, rather than a person. And Hitchcock makes that point very powerfully indeed with his camera.
Here’s how effective Vertigo is: I first saw it on TV, cropped and cut for time with a faded picture, and I was still transfixed - and haunted. Seeing it several times since in a theater has only made it more powerful, despite the giggles of some “modern” audiences who don’t “get” it, because they aren’t truly paying attention.
Unfortunately, my schedule prevents me from being there today, but I do hope to see future films in the series. For now, if you’ve never seen Vertigo before, you are in for something special. And even if you have seen it before, well, trust critic Leonard Maltin when he calls it “a genuinely great motion picture that demands multiple viewings.” Wander over to the library - and dream.
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