- Sat 28 June, 7 pm -

From the Cinematheque members email:

Alfred Hitchcock was for years the master of movie suspense. But 50 years ago — 1958 — he brought out a film so weird that filmgoers didn’t know what to make of it.

It was called VERTIGO.

It had Jimmy Stewart as a San Francisco detective afraid of heights, on the trail of icy blond Kim Novak.

Why is this movie considered such a masterpiece? We’ll find out on Saturday evening, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Hitchcock’s VERTIGO.

Joining us on Saturday will be one of the world’s leading authorities on Alfred Hitchcock, Professor Tom Cohen. Dr. Cohen will introduce the film with a 30-minute lecture, What’s So Great About Vertigo, and will stay for a discussion/ Q&A after the screening.

Hanoi Cinematheque
Sat 28 June, 7 pm

For reservations phone 936 2648 after 13:00 daily

VERTIGO is one of Hitchcock’s most complex movies. On the surface there is a great story that is full of wonderful details, but if we want to go deeper we find out that the movie works on many levels and that it is both psychological and philosophical. On a literal level it is a mystery-suspense story of a man hoodwinked into acting as an accomplice in a murder, his discovery of the hoax, and the unraveling of the threads of the murder plot. On a psychological level the film traces the twisted, circuitous routes of a psyche burdened down with guilt, desperately searching for an object on which to concentrate its repressed energy.

At the time of its release, VERTIGO was a commercial failure. But today it is on most film critics’ “Ten Best Films of All Time” list. It is ranked by the American Film Institute as the 9th Greatest American Film ever made. Obsessive, perverse, haunting, bizarre; countless essays and whole books have been written about VERTIGO.

FILM NOTES

VERTIGO
1958 Directed by Alfred Hitchcock 129 minutes
English, with Vietnamese audio option

VERTIGO IS STILL A DIZZYING, DAZZLING DISPLAY OF MOVIEMAKING, 50 YEARS LATER
By Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times movie critic

Watching VERTIGO, Alfred Hitchcock’s glorious, intoxicating tale of obsession, is like entering a dream; time slows down in its green-colored light as the world is reduced to a man, a woman, a weary hotel room and a sad, doomed passion. Darkly inviting, it takes over its viewer in the way few movies do. Every time I watch it - and this film is meant to be watched over and over - it sweeps me in with its thick, almost humid atmosphere of yearning. As its final scenes go by, you watch it barely breathing, becoming part of it, knowing the ending is inevitable but wishing it could somehow change.

VERTIGO celebrates is 50th anniversary this year, in a version beautifully restored in 1996. It’s a chance to revisit a film that never grows old. Set in a San Francisco whose wet streets and gray fog speak of untold stories, VERTIGO is both psychological thriller and mournful romance. Scottie (James Stewart), a retired police officer, reluctantly accepts a strange job: An old acquaintance wants his wife shadowed. The wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), seems so fragile that a gust of Bay Area wind might break her; she’s a whispery blonde obsessed with a long-dead ancestor. “Do you believe that someone out of the past, someone dead, can enter and take possession of a living being?” the husband asks. Scottie answers, instantly and firmly, “No.” But the character’s gee-whiz matter-of-factness quickly dissolves into the fog. The lonely Scottie falls, hard, for the doomed Madeleine, and even the protests of his sensible pal Midge can’t stop the force of his unexpected emotion. (Midge, portrayed with delicate wit and sympathy by Barbara Bel Geddes, happens to be quietly in love with Scottie herself; VERTIGO, it turns out, is a journey through a hall of mirrors.) From there, the story swirls into unexpected waters, which I’ll let VERTIGO newcomers discover, deliciously, for themselves.

Stewart’s performance, is astonishingly good; nothing the actor had done before quite prepared audiences for his work here. Scottie’s transformation is thorough and devastating; he changes from laconic everyman to hollow-eyed ghost before our eyes. In the film’s final third, he walks the streets like a gaunt shadow. What he’s starved for seems gone - until, gazing at the object of his love, he’s suddenly fed and desperate for more. And Novak’s vulnerable, heartbreaking performance matches his; at times her character almost seems choked by her words, trapped in a cage of secrets.

VERTIGO is filled with the sort of detail that rewards re-watching: the audaciously wordless 10-minute sequence early on that seems to go by in a heartbeat; the way cinematographer Robert Burks’ light catches Stewart’s blue eyes, making him look just the tiniest bit otherworldly and menacing; the long, sad hallway shot in which Bel Geddes makes her exit from the film; the way Novak’s smile, late in the film, seems entirely drained of happiness. Now 50 years young, its strange beauty deserves celebration.

CAMILLE PAGLIA ON ALFRED HITCHCOCK

It’s only Hitchcock whose films have bridged the generations. Many contemporary students are as fascinated by his films as we were. As a culture critic, I say that because of his technical innovations and massive influence, Hitchcock is the equal of Picasso, Stravinsky, Proust and Joyce. Hitchcock’s vision is so extensive, so broad, that it takes in everything, from architecture to politics to sexuality - but sexuality in particular, with its weird mixture of beauty and desire and horror and the macabre. There’s an amazing emotional depth to Hitchcock’s films.

- Camille Paglia, critic, writer and Professor of Humanities

HANOI CINEMATHEQUE
Hanoi’s unique ‘art-house cinema’, is a members-only film society.

Memberships are available at the box office for only 100,000VND per year.

Members receive regular emails with detailed schedules and reviews of the films.

Tickets to the films are by donation.

HANOI CINEMATHEQUE 22A Hai Ba Trung Street (at the end of the alley leading to Artist’s Hotel) RESERVATIONS: Tel: 936 2648 (14:00 - 20:00) Fax: 936 2649 Email: info2@hanoicinema.org CAFE CINEMATHEQUE from 17:00 weekdays and from 13:30 weekends.