3.47 - VERTIGO and Obsession

Our next Hitchcock film, coming a decade after last week’s offering, is his 1958 hit VERTIGO. After short reviews of the film, we talk about everything from how the movie creates distance in its audience to the creative endeavour evident in the Marvel films (it’s relevant, honest) — and we end with a Rob’sRantTM.

Next Week The final Hitchcock film this month — and the last in his career — is 1976’s FAMILY PLOT, available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfLiZcDAIdc

This Week’s Media HALLOWEEN 1, 2, 3 (1978, 1981, 1982): John Carpenter, Rick Rosenthal, Tommy Lee Wallace DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978): George A. Romero, David Emge, Ken Foree TASKMASTER (S7): Alex Horne, Greg Davies, Kerry Godliman

Recommendations SAUL BASS: TITLE CHAMP (2008): Gary Leva, Saul Bass, Martin Scorcese MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001): David Lynch, Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring BULLITT (1968): Peter Yates, Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959): Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint

Footnotes For more on the noir genre of film — that we touch on here — this is a good resource: www.bachelorsdegreeonline.com/blog/2013/an-amateur-academics-intro-to-film-noir. On cinematic stock characters, as mentioned by Rob, see here: screencraft.org/2017/07/09/99-archetypes-and-stock-characters-screenwriters-can-mold. More information on the Alfred Hitchcock Presents tv shows, that were running at the time of the movie — and while Hitchcock was at the height of his powers — can be found here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Hitchcock_Presents. There’s more on the ‘dolly zoom’ technique pioneered in the film (incidentally, I should mention here, because we don’t in the episode, that this was the work of Director of Photography Robert Burks) to represent Scottie’s acrophobia here: nofilmschool.com/2014/01/everything-need-know-dolly-zoom and here: boingboing.net/2015/01/26/watch-23-of-the-best-dolly-zoo.html (here’s the video linked to this article, which is well worth a watch: vimeo.com/84548119). Finally, though I can’t track down the full interview, here’s a series of GIFs celebrating Lucy Liu’s particular sort of creative freedom: imgur.com/gallery/MdA04.