Cure Rear Window Vertigo in 39 Easy Steps!

The impression I get from Alfred Hitchcock, from the three films we watched in class and from others that I've seen, is that he is a skilled filmmaker. His great talents, I think, are his understanding of the audience and his ability to make all sorts of stories work that you wouldn't expect to.

It's interesting to compare Hitchcock's famous movies to those of other 'great' directors. Some critics have suggested that interest in the Oscars this year will be lower, because the highest acclaimed Oscar contenders, There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men, fit the common mold of the critically-acclaimed-but-not-as-popular movie: bleak, somewhat depressing, and not having enough explosions/speedy plotline/Keira Knightley. Hitchcock, on the other hand, is as close as the 60s got to 24 or the Bourne trilogy: come on, he had Cary Grant get chased down on foot by an airplane, before finishing up with a nose-tickling cliffhanger on Mount Rushmore.

He knew that movies could have a dose of implausibility and absurdity without being stupid. Take The 39 Steps. Yes, I'm sure that some guy would take in a random woman claiming to be a spy, and not only believe her but take on her task once she is killed. But the film works because of what Hitchcock fills it with, like the clever scene with the main character's impromptu political speech.

Or look at Rear Window. A man looks out his window, and manages to convince himself and several others that a murder occurred before he has a shred of real evidence. But the movie creates a full story involving an entire neighborhood, works successfully with its windowside shooting perspective, and gets viewers to identify with the protagonists so closely that Mr. Thorwald's simple piercing look at the camera is actually alarming. People can look into the film's broader meanings, sometimes too far, but just on its own, the film provides a lot and draws the viewer in.

Vertigo has the most implausible story: A murder plot that is covered up by a ridiculously over-the-top possessed-by-the-dead fraud pulled by a woman playing the double of the murderer's victim, his wife. Add a romance between the unsuspecting fall-guy protagonist and the fake wife, and it sounds like the sort of crap that happens when the writers are on strike. But seeing the story unfold is something different. The mood of the film is creepy, due partly to a great score by Bernard Herrmann. The key is seeing how James Stewart reacts to and is affected by what happens. His madness after Madeline's death, his obsession for Madeline-who-is-actually-Judy, before and after her apparent death, and his freakish desire to turn Judy back into the woman who he thinks is dead give this twisted plot a bigger impact. What happens to Scottie is far freakier than the murder plot itself, and since he is the main character, who the audience is supposed to relate to, the plot is translated through his experience and is made more significant, dramatic, and involving.

I know that Hitchcock had a number of movies that were stinkers, or at least a lot more mediocre. But hey - what's life without a little excitem-WHAT'S THAT BEHIND YOU?!?!!!