Keats said autumn is a time of ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’, but it seems to me it’s more masquerades and fruity madness.  From Halloween to Christmas it’s the done thing to don a disguise, over do it and carve faces into your cucurbita pepo.  With the long dark evenings providing ample time for reflection and getting some Hitchcock action I got to thinking about the masks we wear day to day. 

Vertigo:  Kim Novak plays a woman (Judy), playing another woman (Madeleine), who falls in love with the guy (James (Scottie) Stewart) she’s stringing along.  Unfortunately he’s developed an infatuation with the faux Madeleine, portrayed by Judy as an elegantly disturbed, icy blonde with a penchant for staring wistfully into whirlpools; and twisting her hair into knots tighter than the tangled web of lies Judy has conspired to create with the genuine Madeleine’s wife-murdering husband.  Pant pant. Phew. Anyone feeling dizzy yet?

Anyway… the real Judy is actually a brash brunette with a line in big brassy earrings and even bigger eyebrows; and however relieved we might feel that scatty Scottie has taken it upon himself to give his girl a Gok over, when Judy-as-Madeleine-part-deux steps out of the bathroom, bathed in a ghostly green glow, it’s obvious this weird menage a trois is a menage gone mad… 

Scatty Scottie is driving both himself and Judy crazy by insisting Judy agree to be Mad-eleine (again).  And more to the point, what the hell is Judy thinking, if she is ‘thinking’ at all?! Even if Kim-Judy-Madeleine-Novak hadn’t unwittingly given the game away and pushed James (Scottie) Stewart even further to the brink of insanity, by waving that necklace around, you just know that either Madeleine-Judy will be forever reminded that her real brash brunette self is not good enough for James (Scottie) Stewart, or eventually he won’t believe in the make-believe-Madeleine any more.

Vertigo is always a film conoisseur’s fave, and I wonder partly whether it’s because we’ve probably all played one or other of the characters ourselves in real life.  We are often bewitched, bothered and bewildered by beloveds who are Frankenstein-phantasms we’ve fashioned from fairy tales.  Or, perhaps worse still, we try to squeeze our proverbial foot into the glass slipper of a guy’s imagination, and are destined to forever feel like the ugly sister. Compromising some je-ne-sais-quois-ish intangible part of us we thought we could live without can only ever end badly because two’s company but bringing along your masked alter ego for comfort ends up being a bit of a crowd.

Just a thought…

Oil up your rubber plant leaves, we’re in for a vertiginous afternoon…

Inspired by David Cairns‘ wonderful Vertigo post, I took another look at the film (a longtime favourite) last night. And today, as fate would have it, I find myself in possession of the power and the freedom to do something about it.

But what?

I’ve read so much about this movie–and referred back to it in so many discussions (often revolving around Lynch, De Palma or 1970s Amazing Spider-Man comics)–that I’m not sure where to begin my own proper blog entry on Hitchcock’s masterpiece.

I do, at least, feel comfortable describing the film in those terms. But that’s where the comfort ends. This is a polarizing movie. And it should polarize you, as a viewer–especially if you happen to be a male gazer. When I first saw it, as a youngster, it made me really unhappy. I found it bleak, incoherent and, above all, misogynistic. (Interpretations of this sort are available in great abundance on the web.) These days, after somewhere between ten and twenty subsequent viewings, I can’t really argue with my 12-year old self–Vertigo really was built with those monstrous materials.

The difference is that, as an adult, I am willing to concede (which is not the same thing as accepting–in fact, for me, it’s quite the opposite) that bleakness, incoherence and (don’t kid yourself dude) misogyny make our sad orb go ’round. Once you make that concession, it becomes possible to understand that Vertigo itself is a plunge into the swirl of fallenness that shapes (or distorts–or both) our daily lives. Like Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, Vertigo is a sick film… a spiteful film. However, unlike our troubled Russian friend, Vertigo is very attractive indeed.

I like to think of this movie as the depressive rhyme to Emerson’s famously manic intuition of the Sublime:

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.

Apparently, Judy-as-Madeleine Elster doesn’t agree with ol’ Waldo. Maybe tree size matters? Those East Coast woods are a lot less intimidating…

Vertigo is retrospective… everything happens too late… and it builds the sepulcher of Patriarchy–trapping our protagonist in a terrible tomb. Yes. If I have anything even moderately new to introduce to the immense discussion about Vertigo, it’s that Kim Novak’s character is the hero of the piece.

Of course it doesn’t start out that way. For more than an hour, the film lulls us into a very comfortable affinity with the subjective experience of Jimmy’s glib jerk.

What remains to be said about Stewart? He’s probably the most important male screen star of the 20th century. An incredibly complex figure–and a one-man argument in favour of the narratological usefulness of the star system. The cinematic embodiment of kindness and decency (although he played A LOT of parts that don’t bring these values into play at all)–everyone loves him, even after they discover, to their (or, at least, to my) horror, that he was a rabid right-winger, a proud carpet-bomber and a demented Vietnam hawk… And it means something, something terrible, something very hard to put into words, that “Scottie” Ferguson rasps Judy Barton to her doom in the same injured-boy tones that Jefferson Smith had used in fighting for the lost cause of democratic freedom in 1939.

But there’s no reason to mince words here.”Scottie” is an ASSHOLE. We know this right from the start. Or, at least, we know it from the moment that we see him in action with the much-put-upon Midge. We should know it, anyway–take a look at him up there, teasing his friend with his weirdly wandering innuendo. But it’s hard to see. This is Jimmy, after all. And he even does a Philadelphia Story-style comic drink take, as Midge dashes out the door to Pop Leibel’s. He might seem a bit crusty, here and there (or drop the occasional bomb), but we feel confident (the first ten times we see the movie), that there’s a good man in there somewhere. And, obviously, Midge is just as taken in by the Stewart oeuvre as the audience is–why else would she put up with his shit? The star’s track record protects Midge from seeming like a fool–allowing us to take her seriously as a character. She sees the same genial mirage that we do.

Ferguson, meanwhile, is in the grip of another, far more palpable, delusion:

This is the look Scottie ought to have been trying to recreate, if you ask me… And the fact that I’m only half-kidding about that cuts to the heart of this film’s power… Most of us, I think, know what it’s like to become more preoccupied with an image of beauty than is good for us. Vertigo can’t work at all if you don’t become complicit in Stewart’s objectification of Kim Novak. Mea culpa.

And there’s no question that, after the gloriously intersubjective promise of 1930s screwball (in which men and women actually seem to like each other), this objectifying “love” represents a massive step backward (particularly with that lovable screwball Midge relegated to the sidelines, in her cold driver’s seat, whispering: “Well now Johnny-O. Was it a ghost? Was it fun?”)

Yup–it’s the ghost of his own desire… But there’s no fun here.

This is “Romance” Midge. This is FUCKED. Get with the program.

Among other things, Vertigo is a crash course is the historiography of movie love.

And it blossoms into full-blown critique when Judy Barton, our thirties-style “shopgirl heroine” comes into focus as the subject at the core of the narrative:

Some viewers are annoyed by the supposedly premature revelation of Judy’s identity, but these people are deeply confused. I’m not the first to point this out, of course, but I want to stress that the shift to Judy’s POV is the most breathtaking narratological redirect in the history of the cinema. Or anyway, it’s right up there with the subjective jumpcuts that keep Mulholland Dr. hopping. In the blink of an eye, through the looking glass of Judy’s memory, Vertigo goes from misogynistic thriller to feminist tragedy. After the above-pictured moment, the hard decisions are all made by Kim Novak…and this sometimes-maligned actress–whom I personally love in just about everything, but especially here–rises magnificently to the task. As she later tells Ferguson, she deliberately puts herself in harm’s way during the second half of the film.

Why does she do it?

It’s because, having magnetized him once, as a prepackaged confection, she longs to repeat the feat… making him love her “for herself.” Ferguson is an automaton during the entire second half of the film… People have interpreted the Judy section as Stewart’s fantasy… That he never actually emerges from his catatonic state, and concocts this weird story as a way of assuaging his sense of failure. There’s not a lick of sense in it. If these events are the stuff of anyone’s dreams–they’re Judy’s (and, of course, they’re nightmares). It’s far easier to make the case that Elster’s erstwhile accomplice, consumed by guilt, devised this scenario as a way of punishing herself for her role in the murder. This would account for the total absence of Midge in Judy’s section (Judy doesn’t know she exists) and would also explain the nun-sensical leap off the tower (which calls back to Madeleine’s scripted memory of “Sister Theresa” scolding the children for daring to venture into their favourite play area–a commentary upon the ways in which patriarchy forces women to police each other’s jouissance?).

Ultimately, I don’t have much interest in “what’s a dream, what’s reality?”-type analyses of deliberately oneiric films (this impatience bubbled up most famously in the Mulholland Dr. debates of yore). I’m interested in exploring subjective states–and examining the preconditions (or the possibility) of intersubjectivity. Vertigo does the first extraordinarily well–making us feel both what it’s like to desire and to be desired under the dark star of patriarchy… And it confronts us with all of the questions (re: the second) that no well-adjusted person wants to ask–because we’re afraid the answers will leave us right here, on the brink of a deeply non-Emersonian Sublime:

House of Mystery Halloween Annual #1 | HorrorsNotDead.com — A …
INDIA vs AUSTRALIA 3rd ODI
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DREAD ZEPPELIN RUINS
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rain delay

It may not have inspired nearly as many movies as those cheerier, more wholesome, festivities that take place in December, but Hallowe’en rears its ugly, pumpkin, head in a rich mix of classic films – from family fantasies, such as ET, to such serious dramas as Kramer Vs Kramer.

It pops up in musicals, romantic comedies, thrillers and chillers. Just as there are certain movies which are perfect for getting us into a Christmassy mood, so there is a less well-documented collection of films which are ideal for conjuring up the spirit of Hallowe’en. Here’s my guide to essential Hallowe’en viewing.

Pais: EU
Año:  1955
Género: Melodrama
Duración: 115 min.
Dirección: Joshua Logan
Guion: Daniel Taradash (Obra: William Inge)
Música: George DuningProducción: Columbia Pictures

Reparto:
William Holden, Kim Novak, Rosalind Russell,Susan Strasberg, Arthur O’Connell, Cliff Robertson, Betty Field, Verna Felton.

Descripción:
Hal Carter, hombre vago y aventurero, decide sentar la cabeza y busca un trabajo en un pequeño pueblo de Kansas. En el picnic que se celebra con motivo del día del trabajo, Hal se queda prendado de la belleza local, la encantadora Magde Dwens. Al día siguiente, Hal le pide que se vaya con él a Tulsa.

Críticas:
1955: 2 Oscar: mejor montaje, mejor dirección artística película en color.
–
“Un título mítico y en su día de lo más polémico, que presenta, en forma de oscuro melodrama, los turbios amoríos de un inquietante aventurero. Aunque el paso de los años le haya restado algo de intensidad dramática, permanece intacto el talento narrativo de Joshua Logan” (Miguel Ángel Palomo: Diario El País)
–
Polémico (en su día) melodrama sureño con un erotismo impropio de la época que obtuvo seis candidaturas a los Oscar, incluyendo mejor película, director y actor secundario (Arthur O’Connell), llevándose dos estatuillas. (FILMAFFINITY)

Picnic esta basada en la obra teatral del escritor estadounidense William Inge. La obra ganó el premio Pullitzer, el Premio de críticos teatrales, los Premios Outer Circle y el Theatre Club. Inge descubrió su vocación como autor teatral, después de presenciar “El Zoo de Cristal”, junto a su amigo Tennesse Williams. Conoció el éxito con “Come back Little Sheba”,”Picnic” y “Bus Stop”. Finalmente ganó un Oscar por el mejor guión original en el film “Esplendor en la hierba” de Elia Kazan. Posteriormente, tuvo una serie de fracasos y irremediablemnte se sumergió en el alcohol y las drogas. Acabó derrumbándose en su mansión de Hollywood Hills en 1973. Joshua Logan fue el director del Film y de la maravillosa e iconocalasta película “La leyenda de la ciudad sin nombre”, entre otras. Con todos estos ingredientes, William Inge, Joshua Logan, Holden y Kim Novack como la reina de Neewollah (Haloween al revés), no podía resultar nada menos que una obra maestra. La película obtuvo seis candidaturas a los Oscars. Desafortunadamente sólo obtuvo dos estatuillas, un Oscar al Director artístico y otro al mejor montaje original.

El film nos ofrece un muestrario psicológico de caracteres insatisfechos, intentando vivir otras vidas en una pequeña y asfixiante localidad de provincias. Un rudo y desorientado aventurero, interpretado por William Holden, llega a este pueblo en busca de trabajo, acabando por sacudir irremediablemente la vida de tres mujeres de personalidad dispar: Rosalind Russell, Susan Starnsberg y Kim Novak. Nunca el cine fue tan sensual e incluso sexual, como en este melodrama sureño. El baile entre Holden y Kim Novak, la noche del Picnic, es de una sensualidad sobrecogedora, el plano de Rosalind Russell, mirando sin pudor la entrepierna de Holden (apoyado en un árbol) es sorprendente, y como mínimo politicamente incorrecto para los años 50 y finalmente la química entre los protagonistas es tal, que uno desearía ser Holden o Novack, dependiendo de los gustos o inclinaciones de cada uno/a. El estimable sentido ambiental y costumbrista junto con el adorable Technicolor de James Howe, hace que esta película resulte un ejemplo del mejor cine. Los secundarios (Betty Field, Rosalind Russel, Arthur o´Connell, Cliff Robertson y Verna Felton) conforman un cuadro interpretativo difícil de igualar. Todos ellos parecen creados para protagonizar dicha obra. Pero sin duda alguna, es Kim Novack quién consigue con tan sólo 23 años, destacar, gracias a una belleza espectacular y sin artificios. No volvio a estar tan bella hasta su interpretación en “Vértigo” de A.Hitchcock. Es recomendable prestar atención al último plano aéreo del film, tomado desde una pieza de madera adjunta a un helicóptero, en la cual iba sentado el cámara Haskel Wexter. Mientras, la reina de Neewollah (Kim Novack) se sube a un autocar en busca de su propio destino. Espléndido final para una película que se ha convertido en todo un clásico del Séptimo arte.

Datos Técnicos:
Tamaño:  1,67 Gb
Duracion: 01:48:32
Vídeo codec: Xvid (doble pasada)
Resolución: 720 x 304
Bitrate: 1815 Kbps.  Qf: 0.332
Audio codec: 0×2000(AC3, Dolby Laboratories, Inc) AC3
Bitrate Castellano/Inglés: 48000Hz 192 kb/s total (2 chnls)
Subtítulos : [Castellano-Inglés]

Capturas:

Película

Subs.es-en

“Les groupes caennais The Lanskies et Kim Novak ont réuni environ 500 personnes, place Saint-Sauveur, à l’occasion de l’unique soirée rock programmée durant l’été sur la place piétonne. « Il y a du monde à Caen quand il y a des choses bien », constate un étudiant enthousiaste.

Dans la fraîcheur de cette soirée proposée par la Ville avec l’association Happy Daymon, les spectateurs ont pu apprécier notamment la prestation des Kim Novak. Une fois de plus, le trio a confirmé qu’il était l’un des fers de lance de la scène locale grâce à un set intense dans lequel les réinterprétations des anciens morceaux donnent à l’ensemble une cohérence séduisante. Un peu plus en deçà qu’à l’accoutumée, The Lanskies ont enchaîné leurs morceaux à un train de sénateur. La semaine prochaine ce sera au tour des Chocolate Donuts de faire leur rentrée devant le public caennais dans le cadre de la fête de la Presqu’île”.

Ouest France

www.kim-novak.com

What better way to ease myself back into the blogging routine after a forced absence than to return to a series that I very much enjoyed, the Randomised posts. In case you don’t know what this means, check out some of the others in the category’s archive. In short, I use a random number generator to give me three figures which will automatically decide three frames from a film, and these frames become the basis for a (hopefully) asymmetrical discussion of the film. It stops tired critics like myself from banging on about the best bits from their favourite films while ignoring the more interesting corners of a well known film. Of course, because it’s random, you might get the most famous, or the most banal images from your chosen text. That’s the fun. You just never know…

Probably because it’s familiar to me, and partly because the orange case makes it jump out at me from the DVD shelf, I’ve chosen Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) this time around. It’s admittedly an orthodox choice, so much so that it’s easy to forget that its masterpiece status is well-earned. It’s haunting and dreamy, unfurling as many strands of meaning as you want to drag out of it: that’s Hitch’s real achievement – making populist packages that entertain but which can also explode with jack-in-a-boxes of complex perversity if you look even slightly deeper.

The randomiser has given me 17, 37 and 111. And the first image, from the 17 minute mark, is…

… ablaze with red. Scotty (James Stewart), a retired, traumatised detective, has been hired as a private investigator by Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) to follow his wife around San Francisco in an effort to explain her odd behaviour. Elster has set up a scene where Scotty will get a good look at his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak) as the pair have dinner. In this shot, Scotty watches her leave. The stately, prowling camera is not quite Scotty’s point-of-view, but the embodiment of his increasingly inflexible gaze. It also stands in for our own fascination, allowing you, dear viewer, an out-of-body float through spaces where people look you in the eye but don’t know you’re there. In this shot, Madeleine is leaving, approaching the camera. Her husband looms behind her (fortuitously positioned in a manner that visualises his manipulation of his wife from the shadows), and the vivid decor plunges back into a distance of nested spaces. If these are not mirrored zones, they certainly look as if they might be. The green of Madeleine’s dress, and the gold of her hair, not to mention her central framing, make her the undoubted focus of the image: the rest of the composition has been cleared of any similar colours, and her skin is lit to glow brighter, blonder than anyone else in the room. At the right of the frame, though, is a tiny insurgence of green in the leaves of the pink rose. It’s an inkling of the importance of flowers in the iconographic identity (flowers, paintings, hair, jewellery) that Scotty gathers up and pegs on her.

At 37 minutes, we’re in the Argosy bookstore, where Pop Liebel (Konstantin Shayne) is telling the sad story of Carlotta, the mysterious woman with whom Madeleine appears to be fixated. I’m sure that, even before I’ve finished typing this sentence, you’ve noticed that all three of the carefully staged figures in this composition are looking in different directions. Ever more disconnected, Scotty listens while facing away. He holds his hat as if in reverence. He’s a strange investigator. Rather than interrogating his lead he passively takes the information, concentrating on selecting the bits that can be moulded to match his suspicions, his desire not uncover the truth but to confirm Madeleine’s desirous vulnerability. Ever-faithful Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes – hey, trivia fans, did you know that Jimmy Stewart starred with both Miss Ellies from Dallas? Bel Geddes’ replacement, Donna Reed, played the love of his life in It’s a Wonderful Life) is shunted into the shadows, intently watching the storyteller. She also is not necessarily interested in the truth, but in anything that might rationalise Scotty and bring him back into the scope of her fond attentions. Her simple love for him has a stifling insistence about it, but it’s never at the ferocious level of his obsession. It’s the most consistently touching aspect of the film, I find. Midge (another “M” name, but a witheringly diminutive one, loaded with unprecious overfamiliarity) enacts a simpler form of romantic love built on protective concern and stable availability. Scotty is already away, though, in pursuit of a beautiful ghost. The stillness, and dimness of the scene (the bookshop is a place of deep, arcane knowledge) is contrasted with the brighter lateral activity on the street outside. As with the previous image, the background action is oblivious to Scotty’s fixations, which find stillness and purpose by latching onto objects and making them stand out amidst the busy surroundings.

We finish in one of the unsettling scenes where James Stewart grimly, palm-sweatingly attempts to make over his new girl, Judy, into a perfect replica of Madeleine. It’s discomfiting to see America’s favourite actor so fixated on the finer points of female couture, and his needling, pathetic need is similarly shocking. It’s as if Madeleine’s fixation on a phantom presence from her past (all a fabrication anyway) has passed on to Scotty like an infectious dream. In describing this shot, I feel suddenly redundant. So efficient is the signification, through mirrors, of Judy/Madeleine’s duality and the crossfire of dishonest gazes at, but not really at, one another, that it seems trite to point it out. Mirrors are cinema’s most portable symbolic props, but here it is precise, as Judy retreats to a corner only to be confronted by the image of her own duplicity even  as Scotty tries to reduce her to a mirror image of his absent object of desire. Note also the brown colour palette in this shot, in stark contrast to the earlier shots of Madeleine as a Vistavisioned semi-divinity. It is only when Judy’s transformation is complete that the screen once again explodes with colour.

Obviously, I can’t cover everything, so if you have any further observations about these images, please feel free to comment below.

PETER BJORN AND JOHN, le groupe indie rock formé à Stockholm, sera en concert au NORMANDY le 16 octobre à St-LÔ. Avec un nouvel album en 2009 : LIVING THING Peter Morén (chanteur, guitariste et harmoniciste), Björn Yttling (bassiste et claviériste), et John Eriksson (batteur et percussioniste) passent par la Normandie et sont en tournée mondiale jusqu’à fin novembre 2009.

KIM NOVAK assurera la première partie de cette soirée INROCKS INDIE CLUB.

www.kim-novak.com

Le Groupe KIM NOVAK sera en concert le 19 septembre dés 20h30 au festival ZICODOCUS de Dozulé (14). Les Caennais peaufinent actuellement le mix de leur prochain album, entre Amsterdam et Caen.

Photos par Céline B.

Voici quelques photos du concert Place St-Sauveur à Caen. Le trio normand KIM NOVAK a offert une prestation vraiment intéressante devant un public venu trés nombreux. Tout d’abord, le groupe n’a pas hésité à piocher dans le répertoire du premier album Luck & Accident (in the mirror, Lost at play…). Ensuite, 10 nouveaux morceaux se sont succédés à un rythme effréné. Le spectacle est assuré avec un set travaillé qui tranche vraiment avec la période Luck & Accident. La qualité des titres augure un très bel album…que l’on attend toujours…

Prochaine date : le 11/09/09 à BERNAY

Photos de Marine Le Carrer

Saturday!

Let’s keep this brief. It’s Labor Day weekend. You’re probably out doing some dangerous and weird. Good for you. Right now, I’m doing the exact same thing, just with the internet apparently. and Sapporo. What else is new, right?

A brief confession: This doesn’t interest me at all. I’m trying to think of the last sonic pairing that left me just as flaccid… Oh, yeah, I thought of it. Real talk: She & Him sucked. But it takes someone like Scarlett Johansson doing music to make Zooey Deschanel sound interesting to me. I’m not telling you what you want to hear, I know, I know, but I am telling you what you need to hear.

Videos! Conrad and I are constantly emailing each other links to internet videos, partly because we get bored easily and partly because we’re sick people. For example, here’s one he sent me recently:

I have no idea what the fuck that is. It’s… Well, I just don’t know. So I sent this in response back to him:

The girl in that video, by the way, is Jenny Slate, one of the new cast members announced for the upcoming season of Saturday Night Live. Anyway, in response, I got this:

Let’s just say, it got pretty dirty from there. Including this clip from an old BBC TV movie called Secret Smile, starring David Tennant and Kate Ashfield:

Moving on…

No, really now. Seriously, moving on…

Other music/videos:

1. Someone doing a little thing to Lykke Li’s “Dance Dance Dance.”

Isn’t that just the most precious, most twee thing you ever saw? It’s wonderful. And fitting of Lykke Li, who I like quite a bit as an artist, but still tend to view her as Bjork’s international and vastly more normal little sister who uses Robyn as a deodorant.

2. And old commercial for Levi Jeans.

This clip, starring Gael Garcia Bernal, was always a really interesting, really effective bit of commercial-ing to me. So much so that I remember it years and years later, partly because of the events, but also the fact that it’s set to Air’s “Playground Love,” which is just awesome. Was recently reminded of it when listening to Phoenix covering Air. I don’t think you have to pay royalties if you’re both French.

3. A music video somebody made for Harvey Danger’s “Carlotta Valdez.”

I don’t expect you to remember this band (at all), but I enjoyed their first album, back in the 90s, and they had two after it, both of slightly diminishing quality, but they still make an interesting 90s curio item of alternarock psuedo-smarmy intellectualism. Also, Vertigo is my favorite movie.

4. The Beatles “Something”

George! A sharp, lovely reminder that “the quiet one” was a strong songwriter in his own right. This song and “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away,” one of my favorites by the group, were breezing through my mind the other day when thinking about the break up of the band. Just timeless gorgeous pop music here. It’s especially fun with this video to compare the fresh faced beauty of Patti Boyd, the star of this song and Eric Clapton’s “Layla” with Yoko, who parades around with John in outfits that make them look like Mr. and Mrs. Warlock.

5. Just for Benjamin Light:

Quentin Tarantino talking about the top 20 movies that have come out since 1992. Some of these choices are incredible displays of crap, and some are actually excellent. But excellent in a “No shit!” kind of way, which is usually how QT works.

6. MF Doom “My Favorite Ladies”

I have no real comment here, honestly. After Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Doom is my favorite rapper. How could he not be? Anyway, I was reminded of this track/discovered the video when I also heard the song mashed up with this next and last group…

7. Flying Lotus “Infinitum”

KIM NOVAK est en concert gratuit à CAEN Place Saint-Sauveur ce vendredi 4 septembre. Devant le public caennais, le groupe saisit l’occasion de dévoiler les titres de leur prochain album. Cette soirée concoctée par Happy Daymon et la Ville de Caen dans le cadre de “l’été indien” associe un deuxième groupe caennais : The Lanskies.

D’autres dates à venir pour KIM NOVAK en Normandie :
Le 4 Septembre CAEN place St-Sauveur,
Le 11 Septembre à Bernay, Mjc
Le 19 Septembre à Dozulé, Festival Zicodocus
Le 16 Octobre au Normandy à St Lo dans le cadre Inrocks indie Club

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) and North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) 

Let’s raise a glass to the nice folks at Dalston Rio for spoling me rotten with this double bill. Screw the heat and the sunshine, I can’t think of a more rewarding way to spend one’s Sunday afternoon.

I thought one good way into talking about these two films might be to attempt a comparison -they were made back-to-back- but they’re actually very different. One is a dark love story that deconstructs love, and shows how we project our own ideas onto our lovers/victims. The other is an utterly accomplished action film, a ripping yarn located in the world of espionage; a world of poisoned umbrella tips, Tintin & Snowy, all of that. Not to belittle it; Vertigo is the one I know much better but to say that North by Northwest is no match for it is to say that Lionel Messi is no Maradona.

What they have in common is that they are mysteries; at the outset, we are as in the dark as the hero, then a device is employed to put us in the know and one step ahead of the hero- who finds out and catches up with us at a later point. Both involve lots of fretting over a non-existent person (Carlotta/Madeleine and George Kaplan). Both feature definitive Hitchcock blondes and soigné English villians, as well as an iconic Everyman leading man.

In both, the latter has a slightly adolescent view of women and their mysteries; Scottie’s fascination with the brassiere models, Thornhill studying Eve’s blusher, tweezers and leg shaver when he is locked in the bathroom. There are mother figures too; Scottie’s unrequited lover Midge comforts him with the words “Mother’s here”, and Thornhill’s closeness to his domineering mother (who “sniffs my breath like a bloodhound”) looks forward to Psycho.

Perhaps the best way to describe their differences is by looking at the Saul Bass title animations. Without wanting to get too heavily into Freudian symbols (fashionable though they were in Hitch’s heyday- see Spellbound), Vertigo is all deep, swirling circles and North By Northwest fills the screen with strident straight lines, inclined upwards. In Vertigo the spirals come after a female face and a zoom into the eye, then the pupil. The isolated eye is quivering, looking one way then another, we half expect Bunuel’s razorblade to slice it open. The human form, and the window to its soul, are under the microscope. The lines of NBNW eventually morph into the glass windowframes of gleaming skyscrapers. It’s impressive, modern, an artificial construction, a tall story; smoke and mirrors. The swirl in Kim Novak’s bun versus the phallic train on which Cary Grant takes his bride.

Anyway, Vertigo. Jimmy Stewart was always my proxy in this film, and I felt that Madeleine’s first “death”, which throws him into grief and insanity, was the point at which the film took off into the stratospheres; when he haunts their old meeting places, mistakes strangers for her, then takes it all out on the first woman he meets (who happens to be the same woman). The one close friend of mine who was as much of a Vertigo obsessive as I, however, rooted for the grey-suited blonde who was fixated on her suicide. She felt the film would be better if it ended with that first death, and often turned it off at that point. Most likely there are as many reasons to fall under the spell of this film as there are people who have done so. 

Years ago when I first discovered the film, I saw all my experiences and defects mirrored in it. There are times when I have started weeping as Scottie falls off the stool at the beginning, and not stopped the whole way through the film. But life moves you along, and one can only be disappointed in love so many times before the water table gets saturated; these days I watch it with much more objectivity. Vertigo feels perenially fresh because it changes as the viewer changes.

As you step back, other things come to the fore. For all I’ve said about the artifice of NBNW, you could say that Vertigo is equally about the artifice of cinema. The plotters manipulate Scottie as Hitchcock manipulates his audience, knowing when and how hard to tug on the heartstrings and the nervous system. On the first day of “tailing”, when Scottie follows Madeleine into a grotty back room off a grotty back alley, it’s still a shock and a surreal sight to see the door open on an ceiling-high display of brilliant flowers. Scottie has a very elaborate show laid on for him, as do we.

Something new catches your eye with every viewing. Maybe the minor characters; the English villain who gently prods Scottie to look for his weak spots (“Would you like a drink now?”). The repressed, forlorn Midge, who needs paintings to tell Scottie what she needs to tell him. We know she’s amorous from the moment Scottie idly recalls their university dalliances; the camera cuts straight to an intrusive close-up of her pout. The masochistically comic relief of the court coroner, who slaughters Scottie with an assessment of exaggerated bias and no little malice. The fruity-voiced German, the lighting in whose antique bookshop gets darker and darker and darker as he delves into the story of Carlotta Valdes.

The supreme attention to detail; the Bunuelish touch of Novak’s dangling, resistant foot after Scottie has hauled her to the top level of the bell tower. Novak in silhouette and profile, on that first night in Judy’s hotel room where the sickly green neon seeps through and makes it a ghost train of a bedroom. Novak always looking over his shoulder as they kiss at the Spanish church. The first date, where Scottie’s eyes latch onto a blonde lookalike in a grey suit and Novak realises what she’s done.

If one accepts that Hitchock films are firmly embedded in the star system and each star actor brings their own persona to their roles, you could say that Kim Novak is playing four roles-within-roles. She plays the feline-faced Hollywood actress Kim Novak, playing a dumpy shopgirl from Kansas, playing a posh and distinguished heiress, playing the restless spirit of a C19th suicide.

Her tragedy is that nobody loves her as she truly is; in a way it is the dilemma of a typecast actress. Scottie/the public fell in love with a character she played and unless she wants that love to die, she is condemned to keep playing that character for the rest of time. People don’t want you warts and all, they want a mysterious ideal which they can follow discreetly from the car behind and onto which they can project, project, project.

With its 39 Steps man-on-the-run plot and its dazzling array of locations, North by Northwest is a perhaps lighter handling of some similar problems; identity and playing a role. Thornhill is exasperated and furious when the criminals mistake him for their quarry Kaplan and are deaf to the truth (“You make this very room a theatre”). Then, like Alain Delon in Mr Klein, he gets sucked into the vortex and starts to accept his role- he introduces himself as Kaplan in the United Nations, hangs out in Kaplan’s hotel room and answers the phone. He protests vehemently when he is framed for car theft, but soon becomes a car thief to escape from the exploded oil tanker.

Then there’s the blonde, again playing parts-within-parts. Thornhill first meets Eve as the goodtime girl on the train who is upfront about her sexuality. When he follows her to the auction and sees her with Vandamme, he thinks he’s figured out who the true Eve is and becomes the “peevish lover stung by jealousy”; Thornhill rages at her. But there is still another layer to the onion; she’s acting with Vandamme too because she’s FBI. More so, in fact, as she feels something for Thornhill and her reactions to his anger have put her in jeopardy; Thornhill is contrite. She loves him, she loves him not.

I like James Mason in this film and wanted more of him; he’s a similar kind of actor to Dirk Bogarde. The first thing he does upon entering the film is to close the curtains on the daylight and illuminate the lamps- as if confirming that Thornhill has been ripped from his dull life and planted into an adventure movie. Hitchcock gives him most of the best lines too.

Where Cary Grant is alpha male action man, bedding the girl, rolling around in dust and perpetually climbing windowledges, Mason never does anything that would crumple his blue wool suit. He’s aloof, cerebral, slightly sickly. He’s got one of those faces and his performance reminds me of a line from Neil Tennant; “I wanted to give the impression that I didn’t care at all, because in fact I cared very deeply”. They way he looks at Eve, even as he plots to kill her, shows that still waters can run the deepest.

The set pieces are too well-known to merit recounting, but it’s always funny and exciting. The pace is so breakneck that there isn’t time to catch your breath, let alone scrutinise any holes in the plot. I enjoy the subversiveness of Thornhill having to go drink-driving to stay alive, pulling goofy faces as his car swerves offroad. I enjoy the surreal, Kafkaesque scene in the lift where everyone but Thornhill is laughing hysterically, just as he is seconds away from death. I enjoy the unbearable, Western-like tension of Thornhill’s wait at Prarie Stop 41 and the faceless, inexplicable terror of the crop-dusting plane.

Seeing the two films together, I wondered if North by Northwest was an attempt to atone for the rigorous pessimism of Vertigo. As Eve falls off the cliff-face at Rushmore, Thornhill reaches out and grabs her hand as Scottie failed to do with the policeman. Both are clinging on by Thornhill’s fingers, with a villian grinding his foot onto the fingers, when the cliffhanger is abruptly resolved by the deus ex machina of an FBI marksman (cut to the FBI guardian angels, the favoured James Mason at their side and still making droll remarks).

Then, the jump cut to that fairytale ending. It’s as flippant and comic as Vertigo’s finale is devastating and Wagnerian; with a dumbfounded Scottie standing on the ledge, one only hopes that the nun will do the human thing and push him over as well.

    Kim Novak, in her official screen debut (she had a bit role in the Jane Russell film The French Line), was Columbia Studio’s answer to Marilyn Monroe and there are some early scenes where I thought I detected Kim doing an imitation of Marilyn’s breathless soft whispering style of talking.  Only about 21 years old when this film was released she looks fantastic. Continuously criticized for being limited in range as an actress here she is alluring and provides a decent performance as a femme fatale in this early work. In fact, she is extremely enticing and I for one do not blame MacMurray for being a pushover for her. In real life as well as reel life director Richard Quine became her mentor, and her lover. They would do at least five films together including “Pffft!”, “Bell, Book and Candle”, “Strangers When We Meet” and “The Notorious Landlady.”

    “Pushover” is a quick moving low level “Double Indemnity” without The Wilder Touch, nicely written by Roy Huggins who would go on to create the classic 1960’s series “The Fugitive.”  Want proof of the good writing just listen to the dialogue in a very early scene where Novak and MacMurray’s characters meet for the first time. There is some crisp double-entendre writing here actually worthy of Mr. Wilder.

      The film begins with a bank robbery. Harry Wheeler (Paul Richards) and his partner steal $200,000 from a bank killing the bank guard in the process. We then cut to the outside of a movie theater where Lona McLane (Novak), dressed in a fur coat, is exiting the theater (double feature showing “It Should Happen to You” and “The Nebraskan”) heading for her car. The car won’t start, suddenly a man’s voice is heard asking if she needs help. It’s Paul Sheridan (Fred MacMurray) a man she noticed sitting alone in the theater. Sheridan admits to noticing her too. How could he not? How many beautiful women do you see in a movie theater alone and wearing a fur coat?  Paul tries to start up the car, checks under the hood, but admits to not being able to get enough spark, to which Lona seductively replies “I’m not enough of a spark?”  A repairman is called who informs them it will take a few hours to fix. The two agree to wait together by going to his apartment while her car is being fixed. It’s made pretty obvious what they do to pass the time.

    In the following scenes, we find out Paul is a cop and Lona is under suspicion of being Harry Wheeler’s girlfriend. Once convinced she is Wheeler’s main squeeze the police set up an observation post in an apartment across the street from her place, figuring that eventually Wheeler is going to show up.  At one point during the surveillance, Lona puts on her coat and leaves the apartment. Paul volunteers to follow her. She ends up at a hotel waiting for Paul who by now she suspects is a cop. “I had my car checked”, she tells him, “there was nothing wrong. What did you do to it?”  Lona is ready to walk out but they are hot for each other and swiftly fall into each other’s arms. Before long the two lovers have devised a plan that will, put Lona’s boyfriend bank robber in jail without the police recovering the $200,000 in stolen money, which Sheridan and Lona will keep and run off with together. Of course, soon things start to go wrong. Nosey next door neighbors, honest cops and too many cover ups all contribute to its failure.

     The film is suspenseful with touches of Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” voyeurism thrown in when the cops are keeping surveillance on Lona’s apartment, which is for a good portion of the film. They not only check on Lona but also start viewing her beautiful next-door neighbor (Dorothy Malone) who will have a significant impact on the storyline. These voyeuristic scenes do not have the erotic impact or suspense of Hitchcock’s classic. The voyeurism in “Rear Window” is more enticing, as we watch the James Stewart and Grace Kelly characters viewing the going’s-on in the various apartments across the courtyard, then there is us, the moviegoers, also getting our own voyeuristic pleasures by not only watching what Stewart and Kelly are watching but by watching them also. In “Pushover”, while you see what’s going on in the two women’s apartments, and in the apartment the police setup up for surveillance, it is certainly more exciting to watch Stewart and Kelly than Fred MacMurray and his police cohorts recording conversations and drinking some joe. Of course watching any movie in itself is a voyeuristic act and we as moviegoers are all participants in this guilty pleasure.

    After watching these scenes in “Pushover”, you may walk away with the impression that Director Richard Quine was derivative of Hitchcock, or dare I say, Hitchcock was derivative of Quine? Well it was really neither, just coincidental that both films have similar voyeuristic scenes.  According to the IMDB website, the two films were not only both released in 1954, but within a week of each other!

     Quine keeps the film claustrophobic, hard edged, and moving at a nice pace. As a director, Quine never fore filled his early promise. His choice of films was eclectic (Pushover, My Sister Eileen, Sex and the Single Girl, The World of Susie Wong, Strangers When We Meet) and he never seemed to find his niche. At his best, his films are entertaining without standing out from the crowd. Two of his best comedies, “Operation Madball” and “The Notorious Landlady” were co-written by Blake Edwards. Quine’s career went downhill in the 1970’s mostly confined to TV shows and in 1989, deep in depression, he unfortunately committed suicide. Fred MacMurray was always at his best when he is in his creep mode, in films like “Double Indemnity”, “The Apartment”, and “The Caine Mutiny” where he reveals a slimy quality behind a decent guy façade. Here, like in “Double Indemnity”, he’s a bit of a sap for a sexy dame and Kim Novak is a hell of a sexy dame! From the first scenes in the parking lot when she first meets MacMurray she is incredibly alluring and has the most amazingly seductive eyes. For an actress of supposedly limited talent throughout her career she managed to work with some great directors: Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, Joshua Logan, George Sidney and Robert Aldrich. I can only surmise that these talented men must have seen something in her. At her worst she sometimes can be a little stiff. At her best she is alluring, sexy and possesses a captivating aura that just sucks you in. The cast also includes E.G. Marshall as a police Lieutenant. “Pushover” is a decent, entertaining thriller; just do not expect anything new or innovative. Everything here has been done before, crooked cops, a guy who’s a sucker for a beautiful dame and stolen money.

The FBI letter to Petrelis, saying that Michael's FBI file is available for $49.10, or about 10 cents a page (Courtesy: 24Bit)

I’ve got more stories I am working on, but this is a shortie.

Above is the initial letter from the Feds.

From the Petrelis Files:

When I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for any records they may have in their archive on Michael Jackson, I expected the agency would reply saying they didn’t locate any such records, or that there were only a handful on pages on the late entertainer. I was wrong.

A letter from the FBI yesterday informs me they’ve located close to 600 pages on him.

More like 591.

Frankly, I am not surprised that within the last years of J. Edgar Hoover and beyond his 1973 death, the FBI would keep a file on this internationally-known and -appreciated black entertainer. Hoover was fixated on any black man (Malcolm, King, the Panthers) gaining that kind of appeal, and it seems that this predilection has been carried on within that organization. Hoover was not only motivated by his very deep-seated racism, and self-hatred and fear of his own sexuality, but because, through his father, he himself may have been part-black.

Lotsa things to hide.

That didn’t mean that the FBI didn’t spy on white rockers too, like Elvis Presley (those hips scandalized more than the city fathers looks like, but he wasn’t investigated) or the Lizard King himself, Jim Morrison, and the Doors (their filthy, filthy lyrics) and famously, John Lennon (who wanted to live here) and The Beatles. But Billie Holiday (drug charges in San Francisco), Sammy Davis, Jr. (the subject of extortion and death threats from The Mob for his interracial love affair with actress Kim Novak in the Fifties) and Marvin Gaye (possible fraud) also had files.

Longtime gay activist Michael Petrelis is a founding member of ACT-UP-New York and is based in San Francisco. In the past, he’s participated in outing closeted gays in Congress, and investigating where exactly that donated money to AIDS charities goes when the spotlight is turned off. Nowadays, he wants to restore marriage equality in California.

No doubt, Petrelis’ researching Jackson’s FBI file may also confirm, deny or render inconclusive those claims that Michael Jackson was gay. But anyone can get it if they want. Not just Petrelis.

His movies are so good, he has an adjective named after him. But which of these Alfred Hitchcock classics leaves you on edge? Read the arguments and decide.

Ross McG: Vertigo

I have to go back into the past once more

When it was released in 1958, Vertigo was dismissed by most as a big pile of confusing crap. Viewers and critics moaned that James Stewart was too nice – and too old – to play the role of John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson, a man with a rather unhealthily obsessive attitude to women. Others said the film just didn’t hold together or make any sense. Director Alfred Hitchcock may have taken the criticism to heart – he never worked with Stewart again. He also reportedly felt that his female lead Kim Novak was wrong for her part – she hadn’t been his original choice. Vertigo was filed under ‘curio’ and forgotten.

But time does strange things. Movies don’t suddenly die as soon as they’re released (except Transformers 2, of course) and Vertigo went on to live a long and fulfilling life after its initial stumble into the world. How anyone could fault it is, frankly, amazing. Vertigo is a stunning film – beguiling, bizarre and frightening, it is quite comfortably Hitchcock’s best, something he himself admitted later with the benefit of hindsight.

Vertigo is pure Hitchcock – mood and mystery is put above everything else, as seen in the statement of intent that is the opening credits. There are none of the cheap thrills and therapy babble that let Pyscho down slightly. And there is no need for big action scenes to divert the audience’s attention as in the still splendid North By Northwest (has there been a better run in movie history than these three pictures coming in consecutive years between 1958 and 1960?). Vertigo is Hitchcock at his most focused, fashioning a compelling story while retaining the power to chill.

No, it's not a Megadeth album cover, it's the Polish poster for Vertigo

It is clearly a better film than Rear Window. Vertigo is about those things that drive every human being: obsession, love and despair. Rear Window is merely a technical exercise. That’s not to say it isn’t a great film – it is an entertaining watch and has real star power in Stewart and Grace Kelly – but it ultimately leaves me cold. It’s Hitchcock’s Panic Room, a film designed to show what can be done with a camera. While Vertigo may have its own visual beats (most famously, the dolly zoom shot), it is the human drama at its heart that makes it ripe for repeat viewing. Rear Window is an example of style over substance, its technical aspects supersede the story, which in itself is pretty flat.

Stewart plays likeable old Jimmy Stewart, who isn’t sure if he wants to keep seeing beautiful Grace Kelly (Ha! Has there ever been a less believable subplot?). While holed up in his apartment with a broken leg, he thinks he sees a murder. It turns out he was right. That’s pretty much it. The set is amazing and Hitchcock practically puts you in the chair of Stewart’s character, but there is none of the torment and heart-shattering drama of Vertigo. This is a film that keeps you guessing.

Hitchcock takes the relatively familiar setting of San Francisco and makes it otherworldly, like something from a dream that could go wrong at any second. Vertigo also has the added bonus of Stewart’s best performance. George Bailey and Mr Smith were American heroes, guys it was easy for audiences to root for. Scottie, on the other hand, is an oddball, an obsessive with a mad streak. Which, of course, is why Stewart was so perfect for the part – the audience has to be unsettled by the strange glint in his eye but also feel sympathy for his plight. There is no other actor who could have pulled this off.

They really don’t make films like Vertigo any more. Mainly because they can’t. And even when they could, its brilliance still went unnoticed. 

Ross McD: Rear Window

That feminine intuition stuff sells magazines, but in real life it’s still a fairy tale

From the start, you might be forgiven for thinking Jimmy Stewart is playing the same character in these two films. They both open with a crippled bachelor being fawned over by an adoring woman, who are subsequently ignored. But while one progresses into a suspenseful masterclass in direction, the other tangents off into a wandering tailspin of randomness.

With Rear Window, director Alfred Hitchcock is almost showing off – he demonstrates why terms such as master and genius are never far away from his name in sentences. The entire film is shot on a single set, with just a handful of locations all in the one apartment block. Hitchcock manages to convey Stewart’s boredom and frustration at being trapped in a plastercast and his apartment, but doesn’t let the audience feel the same despite spending two hours looking at the same room. While Vertigo is beautifully shot in San Francisco, I could beautifully shoot San Francisco on my mobile phone. It is no challenge to the director: just one of the reasons Rear Window is a tighter film.

Of course, the set up in Rear Window is a little contrived – why Stewart is upset at being stuck at home is beyond me. Besides a smoking hot Grace Kelly willing to *ahem* bend to his every whim, he’s got a lifetime’s worth of entertainment right outside his rear window. Stewart’s apartment block is a Big Brother aficionado’s wet dream – newlyweds shagging all the time, a scantily clad exercise fan, a tortured composer, a suicidal old maid, a mad couple who sleep on their balcony and run dog lift service, and of course a guy who may or may not have killed his wife.

Simpsons did it

But speaking of contrived and wife killing, Rear Window’s set-up is nothing compared to Vertigo’s Gavin Elster and his zany plot. Not since the Annual Bond Villain Convention has someone gone through so much effort to complete their dastardly plan on screen. His plot is so over-elaborate it completely kills any plausibility the film has up to its reveal – and it has more holes than a Bates Motel shower curtain. What if Stewart’s Scottie had, in the circumstances, continued on up the tower? How did Elster know he was going to leave immediately afterward, and not just sit moping in the stairwell? How did he know the police wouldn’t get there in time? What if Scottie’s fear hadn’t been of heights? Would he have found someone with a fear of church bells? Or a fear of darkness, and turn out all the lights halfway up the tower and just hope they didn’t bring a flashlight? Or a fear of clowns, and have one ready to jump out and scare Jimmy Stewart back down the stairs?

Another aspect to the grand plan that annoys me is Kim Novak’s character deciding to just hang around San Francisco after she’s supposed to be dead. ‘Oh I’ll just dye my hair a bit darker, I’ll probably not run into Jimmy Stewart again’. Though if I’m perfectly honest, I didn’t actually recognise her. But then again, I’m not in love with her. I’m in love with Grace Kelly.

The big difference between the two films is pace. Rear Window is metered perfectly, progressing fast enough to keep you on the edge of your seat, but slow enough that you can savour it and take everything in. Pace-wise, Vertigo is all over the shop. Some of the crucial scenes feel rushed, like the stupid cop falling to his death right at the start (seriously, what did he think he was going to achieve holding out his hand like that? He wants to pull Jimmy Stewart up, and he can’t even stand up himself. He fully deserved his speedy pavement introduction) causing the eponymous acrophobia, or the bizarre finale when the nun jumps out and shouts Boo! à la Homer Simpson with his new-chainsaw-and-hockey-mask, and then doesn’t seem to give a sh*t that she just killed somebody. Whereas in the middle, when we are following Novak and her mad wanderings, and listening to her whine on and on about the dreams she’s having, we are just bored, and even Stewart can’t convey interest – he looks like he isn’t even listening to what she says and just wants to get into her pants. Which I suppose is how any other man would react.

Hitchcock himself even seems to realise halfway through the film that the pacing is all wrong, and that he isn’t going to be able to draw out the big reveal and keep the audience in suspense. So he just cops out and has Novak explain everything Scooby Doo-style in a voice-overed letter halfway through, killing any suspense and making the last act a by-the-numbers wrap-up with little pay-off for the audience.

Vertigo does however have one thing over Rear Window – sexist lols. That scene where all the ladies in the store are dragging Novak in and out of countless outfits just because Jimmy Stewart ‘knows what he wants’. It’s just a pity he didn’t make one of them get him a beer while he stuck on the football, just to complete the scene.