strange and random happenstance: Madeleine

Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock
Based on the book by Boileau and Narcejac
Release Date: May 9th, 1958
Starring: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy
John "Scottie" Ferguson has left the police force. After the tragic death of his colleague following a criminal through San Francisco's rooftops he has severe agoraphobia. He spends his spare time hanging around his friend Midge's apparent, which she doesn't seem to mind in the least. One day he gets a call from an old college buddy, Gavin Elster, who wants to see him. Gavin wants Scottie to use his spare time to find out what's wrong with his wife, Madeleine. He doesn't know what's wrong with her. He has not taken her to doctors because he fears that she is possessed, as he tells Scottie "Do you think the dead can live again?" Scottie reluctantly agrees to at least see Madeleine. That night at Ernie's Scottie catches a glimpse of Madeleine and there is no doubt he will accept the case. The following day he trails Madeleine from a florist to a grave to a painting in an art museum to a hotel. The painting being the most unnerving, in that the flowers match those in the painting, as does Madeleine's hairdo. What's even stranger is that the portrait is the woman whose grave Madeleine visited earlier in the day. With Midge's help, they learn the history of the woman, Carlotta Valdes, who lived in the hotel Madeleine visited and committed suicide after her lover took their child for his own. When Scottie presents this information to Gavin, it's clear Gavin knew all this and more, as Carlotta is Madeleine's great-grandmother. But Madeleine does not know this, so it can't be an obsession with her family's history. Scottie continues to trail Madeleine and even hauls her out of the bay after an apparent suicide attempt. Scottie now becomes her protector and they start to fall for each other. But soon a fall from a bell tower will end Madeleine's life and Scottie's will be shattered. Time passes and Scottie wanders the streets he walked with Madeleine till one day he sees Judy. Judy, not only looks like Madeleine, but unbeknownst to Scottie, she is the Madeleine he knew, the one hired to help Gavin murder his wife and use Scottie as a pawn. But Judy, instead of running, decides to stay and hopefully get Scottie to love her for her. But all he wants is to turn her back into Madeleine. Can either of them survive this destructive path they are on?

As Hitchcock said, in regard to adapting a book for the screen: "What I do is to read a story only once, and if I like the basic idea, I just forget all about the book and start to create cinema." This is what takes the fairly good book by Boileau and Narcejac with unlikable characters and no real passion, and turns it into a classic of cinema. Hitchcock added mystery to Madeleine by us going with Scottie on his discovery of her "possession." He also gave the characters a love for each other, that made Judy stay for love, not to play out some sick game. But more than anything, with the score and the beauty of San Francisco, we fall under the spell of the story. Instead of watching the headlong rush to oblivion that the book captures so well, we are wound in the web of a story, slowly building and entwining us like the lissajou spirals of the opening credits. Like the book before, being a love letter to Paris, here we have a love letter to San Francisco. This film is the quintessential film of that beautiful city. I don't think that the film would be what it is if Hitchcock himself was not so in love with the city. Plus, there could not be a worse place for an agoraphobic to live, which gives a certain dark jab to the character of Scottie. Of course, I find it interesting how much the film does mirror aspects of Hitchcock's life. His obsession with Grace Kelly could easily be Scottie's obsession for Madeleine. Whatever it was that made the fates align so perfectly for this movie makes me easily proclaim it one of my favorites and now that I've read the book, it's amazing to me how Hitchcock distilled it down and made a classic out of a decent novel.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Boileau and Narcejac, Carlotta Valdes, Gavin Elster, Grace Kelly, Hitchcock, James Stewart, Judy Barton, Kim Novak, Lissajou Spirals, Madeleine, Paris, San Francisco, Scottie, Vertigo

Vertigo (The Living and the Dead/D'entre les Mortes) by Boileau and Narcejac
Published by: Bloomsbury
Publication Date: 1956
Format: Paperback, 170 Pages
Challenge: Thriller and Suspense
Rating: ★★★
To Buy
Roger Flavieres begrudgingly went into the police force, but after his partner dies tragically because of his own fear of heights he quits and goes into the law. One day his old school friend Gevigne looks him up because he is in the midst of a very odd situation at home. His wife, Madeleine, seems remote. She has also been behaving very oddly. Gevigne is convinced it has something to do with Madeleine's great grandmother, Pauline Lagerlac, who killed herself. He's not sure what is going on, but thinks the the spirit of Pauline is inhabiting his wife. Flavieres, thinking it perhaps an act of a dissatisfied wife is thrown when he learns that Madeleine knows nothing of Pauline. Intrigued he agrees to trail her. Flavieres instantly becomes obsessed with Madeleine, whose behaviour bears out Gevigne's theory. She sits in a hotel room in a house that Pauline once lived in and often visits Pauline's grave, but not with a sense of someone visiting an ancestors grave, but of someone visiting their home. After Flavieres rescues Madeleine from a suicide attempt by drowning, the same method Pauline used, he decides not to leave her side. But in the fatalistic days leading up to full out war with Germany, Paris is hardly the place to keep a vibrant, young woman in the here and now, versus slipping into some unhappy past. What Flavieres had dreaded from his first loosing his heart to Madeleine comes to pass. On a frantic drive through the country she rushes out of the car and into a church with a tall bell tower. Unable to follow her to such heights, Flaviers cannot stop the inevitable, Madeleine throws herself off the top of the tower. Having lost the woman he loves and with the war beginning, Flavieres leaves. He leaves Gevigne being investigated for his wife's murder, he leaves his practice and he leaves France. Four years later he returns to Paris a broken drunkard. But a new obsession gripes him when he sees a woman in a newsreel who is Madeleine, but isn't at the same time. Rushing to Marseilles he eventually encounters Renee Sourange, Madeleine's doppelganger. Flavieres becomes more obsessed than ever thinking that Renee IS Madeleine. That it is possible for someone to live again. Just as it took awhile for Madeleine to realize she was once Pauline, he is sure that Renee will eventually realize she is Madeleine. But what if the truth is darker than that, not dealing with spirits, but with the connivances of man?

There is no chance while reading this book that you will be able to separate it from the film it became. Vertigo is one of Hitchcock's best films and one of my favorites. But, it is interesting to see what captured Hitchcock's imagination and what he kept and what he discarded. The book is written in a very basic prose with all the facts laid bare before you. At first there is no mystery. Flavieres has all the information handed to him and he just must bear witness to the veracity of Gevigne's observations. It is more Flavieres inner self loathing and self obsession with Madeleine that is the driving force of the book. None of the characters are very likable, and Madeleine does not seem the type of woman to entrance and capture the ferocity of feelings she receives from Flavieres. Once Madeleine "lives again" it's just a waiting game as to who will break first. Will Flavieres drink himself to death? Will Renee admit she is Madeleine? Or is it all in Flavieres head? If you have seen the film, you will know that the outcome is tragic. But the book is even darker, laying the death of Renee not just on Flavieres conscious but, quite literally, on his hands. Instead of Renee staying for any real affection, she just seems to be playing her part a second time and reenacting the earlier mystery to ride herself of Flavieres. The fatalism of life during wartime is perfectly captured in the downward spiral of these two souls who are desperately lost. The original title, The Living and the Dead, or in a more direct translation, Enter the Dead, is more fitting to the book than Hitchcock's title Vertigo. Even if it is that downward spiral that Hitchcock captured in a more mysterious, more visual way. But the tower, the grey dress, the painting, the drawing, the hair... all of it are essential to both. All of it comes together as a fascinating study of man.