Green for danger

The first time I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), it was probably on the night of its last televised viewing in the mid-1960s (The ABC Sunday Night Movie?), before the picture was exiled into contractual hibernation for two decades. Too young to comprehend the scenario, too callow to value its aesthetic, I’d also gone in with a preconceived opinion fostered by two unappreciative, myopic parents who recalled it as being nothing more than “a dog.” Vertigo was not popular in its day, and Hitchcock, ever mindful of his audience, immediately reverted back to crowd-pleasing with North by Northwest (1959) and the dark manipulation of Psycho (1960).
    Indeed, after Psycho, The Birds (1963) and his weekly television series, the director was becoming known for his knack with horror as much as suspense. And my mother, in a move to placate her little boy’s voracious appetite for horror movies, took me to see Marnie (1964) the weekend it opened. Thinking that it, too, would be another exercise in macabre thrills, we sat in the dark, my puritanical mom absolutely mortified that homicidal motel clerks and kamikaze seagulls had mysteriously paved the way to frigid Marnie’s repressed sexuality and a newlywed husband’s unbridled need to screw his wife. A staunch subscriber to the Catholic Legion of Decency (which undoubtedly condemned Marnie just for that titillating shot of the bathrobe falling down ‘Tippi’ Hedren’s bare legs), mom would never trust Hitchcock again. Good thing, too: Frenzy (1971) would’ve knocked her unconscious.
    All during this time, Vertigo, out of reach to the public, was developing a reputation among critics who began proclaiming it as the director’s crowning achievement. When it was finally reissued in the mid-1980’s — as part of a package that also included the similarly withheld Rope (1948), Rear Window (1954), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1955), and The Trouble With Harry (1956) — Vertigo was universally lauded for its daring eroticism, as well as for Hitchcock’s fascinating use of silent-era technique. Vertigo derives most of its power visually; there are vast stretches deliberately without dialogue.
    The director was then in the midst of his fruitful association with composer Bernard Herrmann, whose score for Vertigo is superb. In 1969, Herrmann went into the studio with the London Philharmonic Orchestra to record The Great Movie Thrillers for London Records. A collection of themes written for Hitchcock, it also includes a beautifully arranged suite from Vertigo (download below). I bought this album in the early ‘70s, and throughout my adolescence Herrmann grew to become one of my strongest musical influences. As for the film, it, too, became something of a personal reflection for me: there were two Madeleines at different times earlier in my life, both of whom continue to haunt me from a distance to this day; one Judy who I disastrously tried crafting into a Madeleine; and one Midge who very likely saved my life. And I’ve experienced firsthand that black pit where even Mozart fades to meaningless cacophony, a state I'd never wish on even my worst enemy.

Vertigo 10:35 (mp3)
1. Prelude
2. The nightmare
3. Love scene