Ver­ti­go (1958)

There can be no last word on Ver­ti­go. In 2012, it usurped Cit­i­zen Kane as Sight and Sound’s ​“great­est film of all time”, but with this superla­tive label comes an expec­ta­tion for absolute mean­ing. Since its release 60 years ago, aca­d­e­mics and crit­ics have tried (and failed) to dis­sect the plot and spill out Hitchcock’s preda­to­ry sub­con­scious. Now Park Cir­cus (the folks behind the new 4K restora­tion), aware that their audi­ence has prob­a­bly mulled all this over a thou­sand times, are ask­ing us to do some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent – to sim­ply look at its lav­ish surface.

Of all the old cel­lu­loid prints being cleaned and sharp­ened to a mighty 4,000 pix­els, this is sure­ly the most gor­geous. Audi­ble col­lec­tive gasps filled the audi­to­ri­um at scenes we believed so famil­iar, awed by the sheer colour of the film. It is a cin­e­mato­graph­ic achieve­ment one might expect of Robert Yeo­man in any Wes Ander­son pic­ture, or in the sun-drenched moder­ni­ty of La La Land. But here we have an intense thriller with themes of voyeurism, dual­i­ty and tragedy – a tran­si­to­ry piece from the steely mono­chrome of film noir into visu­al sen­su­al­i­ty, or ​‘film couleur’, if you will.

Con­sid­er­ing which films direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy Robert Burks has influ­enced fur­ther reveals the con­trast between theme and image. As John ​‘Scot­tie’ Fer­gu­son (James Stew­art) observes the out­line of Kim Novak’s face sil­hou­et­ted against sump­tu­ous blue-green neon, the mind races for­ward to Mia and Sebas­t­ian (Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling) duet­ting ​‘City of Stars’ in a sim­i­lar­ly lit room in Damien Chazelle’s 2017 musi­cal. The scene in the lat­ter film comes when the cen­tral rela­tion­ship is break­ing down, using turquoise to cre­ate a slight­ly nau­se­at­ing sense of unease. There is undoubt­ed­ly a sick­ness to the shot in Ver­ti­go, but one of far rich­er impli­ca­tions for Scottie’s men­tal insta­bil­i­ty. With the crisp­ness of 4K, the dis­par­i­ty is much stark­er, jar­ring the view­er with lust­ful fear.

If there is a sex­u­al obses­sion behind the cam­era, it is then made all the more pre­scient by the qual­i­ty of the pic­ture. The sets Novak as Madeleine or Judy drifts through, from the lux­u­ri­ous scar­let of Ernie’s Restau­rant to a mar­ket over­flow­ing with flow­ers, have evi­dent­ly been craft­ed by Hitch­cock at his most scrupu­lous. His fix­a­tion is mir­rored in the lens, and here we are treat­ed to the clear­est ver­sion of his per­spec­tive – when Judy emerges from the bath­room of her flat dressed as Madeleine, her pure lumi­nos­i­ty is almost blind­ing. What­ev­er Hitchcock’s inten­tion behind these shots might have been, it is impos­si­ble to ignore their aes­thet­ic beauty.

The oth­er major ben­e­fit of watch­ing Ver­ti­go in a cin­e­ma is Bernard Herrmann’s score. After the bewitch­ing pre­lude plays out over Saul Bass’ open­ing titles, the throb­bing love themes devel­op toward a series of cli­max­es that erupt on screen before fad­ing to black. When Scot­tie first kiss­es Madeleine, they do so against a back­drop of ejac­u­la­to­ry sprays of water smash­ing against rocks. Hav­ing sim­mered before­hand, the orches­tra sud­den­ly explodes into orgas­mic rap­ture, expert­ly adapt­ing the erot­ic themes of Richard Wagner’s Tris­tan und Isol­de. It is this com­bi­na­tion of sen­so­ry stim­uli that sends the emo­tions into over­drive, mark­ing a syn­the­sis of artis­tic masters.

The plot is incred­u­lous and smat­tered with holes. Scot­tie is a rep­re­hen­si­ble hero through his har­row­ing treat­ment of Madeleine, and for some this might mar enjoy­ment of the film. Bring your­self, if you can, to look beyond that and focus on the deft­ness of its audio­vi­su­al allure. In doing so, you might for­give error and rel­ish its intri­ca­cies and inher­ent com­plex­i­ty. Prais­ing the film today is as much a cel­e­bra­tion of what Hitch­cock and his crew achieved in 1958 as it is of the rig­or­ous work of its restorers.

Find out where Ver­ti­go is show­ing near you at park​cir​cus​.com