Vertigo (1958)

Vertigo is Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece about the lengths to which an obsession can consume a person and about the inability to maintain a stable sense of identity (for ourselves and of other people). James Stewart, a frequent Hitchcock collaborator, plays John “Scottie” Ferguson, a policeman who suffers from the title affliction so severely that he has had to retire from the force. An old college friend, Gavin Elster, asks Scottie to follow his wife, Madeleine, who has been behaving strangely; in fact, he thinks she might be possessed by the spirit of her great-grandmother, Carlotta Valdes, who committed suicide at the age of 26, Madeleine’s age now. Kim Novak plays Madeleine as well as her doppelganger Judy Barton, whom Scottie meets months after he witnesses Madeleine jumping to her death from the tower at Mission San Juan Bautista. Scottie slowly begins making Judy over in Madeleine’s image, buying her new clothes and having her hair dyed to match Madeleine’s blonde twist (a favorite color of Hitchcock’s for his leading ladies). She becomes his project, and he refuses to back down from his attempts to make her into the woman he loved and lost. He even takes her to places where he and Madeleine had been, and after some initial resistance, Judy becomes Madeleine in Scottie’s mind. Viewers have, of course, already learned that Judy had been hired by Elster to portray his wife so that he can kill his wife and obtain her inheritance. This revelation comes two-thirds of the way through the film rather than at the end, a brilliant Hitchcockian move that generates greater audience suspense because we must now watch to see if and/or when Scottie will realize Judy’s secret. After watching the relationship develop between Scottie and Madeleine during the first two-thirds of the film and witnessing how devastated he is after her death—even winding up in a sanitarium for a while—we feel almost as invested as Scottie in his recreation of Madeleine. Both Stewart and Novak are fascinating although he takes a rather shockingly different approach to acting even when they are in scenes together. Getting to witness a Method-trained actor (Novak) perform with someone from the classical era of Hollywood (Stewart) provides a very clear sense of contrast in these styles. The locales where the film takes place also contribute a great deal to the atmospheric thrill of the film. In fact, the city of San Francisco almost serves as another character in the film, and its locations are beautifully rendered here: Ernie’s Restaurant with its bright red flocked wallpaper, Mission Dolores and Mission San Juan Bautista (south of the city), the Palace of the Legion of Honor with its extraordinary portrait of Carlotta, the redwood forests north of the city, and the gorgeous Palace of Fine Arts. Apparently, there are tours of the various locales still available for visitors to the city, a testament to the power of a film that is almost sixty years old. The ending of Vertigo remains as unsettling and enigmatic today as it was when it was first released, and it’s interesting to recognize how much the film’s reputation has grown since its restoration and re-release a couple of decades ago.

Oscar Nominations: Best Black-and-White or Color Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Sound

The Goddess (1958)

 

The Goddess traces the life of Emily Ann Faulkner, a poor young woman from Maryland who becomes Rita Shawn, a Hollywood movie star famed for her sex appeal. It’s told in three main sections, following her life chronologically from 1930 to 1957. Emily Ann (played by the acclaimed stage and television actor Kim Stanley in one of her rare film roles) first appears as an unloved, unwanted child whose mother tried to dump her on relatives. As a young woman, she’s flirtatious and talkative, and she dreams of being a movie star. She marries and then leaves her first husband, and she abandons her daughter, saying that she didn’t want to have her, another generation replicating bad parenting behavior. After Emily Ann becomes a movie star and becomes Rita, she marries a retired boxer named Dutch Seymour (played by Lloyd Bridges, who looks pretty good in just the bottom half of his pajamas, to be honest), but their marriage is unhappy. He always thinks she’s cheating on him, and she always seems to be looking around for someone else better. The middle section of the film is tough to watch as the marriage dissolves, but the final act of the movie is truly quite painful. Emily Ann/Rita has had a nervous breakdown on a film, and her mother has arrived to help take care of her. When her mother, now a devout (almost fanatical?) Seventh Day Adventist, plans to leave, Rita first begs her to stay and then yells at her mother when she decides to go anyway. The film’s ending, set around her mother’s funeral, finds Emily Ann/Rita hysterical at the gravesite and almost suicidal. The screenplay, written by one of the most talented screenwriters of all time, Paddy Chayefsky, builds in intensity. Allegedly, it was based loosely upon the life of Marilyn Monroe, but only broad strokes of her life could connect to the film’s events. It seems more like it might have been inspired by some of the key moments of Monroe’s life rather than an attempt to be a faithful biography. Regardless of how closely it hews to the life of anyone “real,” The Goddess is most useful as one of the few film documents of the talents of Kim Stanley, a remarkably talented actor who only appeared in five films. She was not nominated for Best Actress for this role—she was nominated just a couple of times for Oscars throughout her career—and as a result, few filmgoers may be familiar with her talents, perhaps only knowing her as the off-screen narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Oscar Nomination: Best Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen

Gigi (1958)

Gigi, winner of the Oscar for Best Picture of 1958, is an almost perfect example of the skill with which MGM made musicals. Producer Arthur Freed had, by this time, perfected the art of bringing together some of the most talented individuals to work on movie musicals. A long-time member of the so-called Freed Unit, Vincente Minnelli was the director for Gigi, adding to his list of triumphs such as An American in Paris, The Band Wagon, and Brigadoon. And, perhaps most important of all, the great Cecil Beaton oversaw the entire "look" of the production, from sets to costumes and everything in between. It's all rather sumptuous, even when we're supposed to believe that the title character's family lives in poverty. (All of the impoverished should live so well.) They knew how to make movies look good in those days.

However, despite all of the technical skill involved in its creation, Gigi is a rather slight confection. The story is a rather simple one: a young girl is groomed by her grandmother and aunt for life as a courtesan since she would have very low prospects for marrying well. Of course, this being 1958 and MGM, no such word as "courtesan" ever gets uttered on screen. You have to figure it out for yourself, but it's not that difficult. Gigi, played by Leslie Caron, is supposed to be a relatively naive French schoolgirl. She enjoys spending time with family friend Gaston, played by Louis Jourdan. He's a rich playboy who goes from one woman to another as casually as he travels from Paris to Monte Carlo. Everything is boring to him, except for the moments that he spends with Gigi, of course.

You can perhaps sense where the story is headed already. Yes, Gaston falls in love with Gigi after taking her and her grandmother to the sea for the weekend. Upon their return, Gigi's Aunt Alicia (Isabel Jeans) sets her sights on Gaston as Gigi's future benefactor, and all of the pieces begin to fall into place. All of them except, of course, for Gigi's consent. She doesn't want to be a courtesan, not really. She wants to fall in love and marry the man she loves. She just doesn't realize it's Gaston, at first. Gaston, being a man of the world, initially agrees to "keep" Gigi as his lover, but eventually he too begins to re-evaluate his feelings for her. If you've seen enough MGM musicals from this era, you already know how it ends, so I'm not going to tell you.

Jeans gets some of the best lines in the film. As she tries to teach Caron's Gigi to be ladylike, she passes on the wisdom she has accumulated throughout her many liaisons with the wealthy men of Europe. Her reaction when Gigi guesses that one of her jewels is a topaz, for example, is priceless, as is her withering dismissal of another woman's pearls as "dipped." My favorite remark of hers, though, is when she tries to teach Gigi how to "insinuate" herself into a chair. The look on Jeans' face sums up just how poorly Gigi lives up to this standard.

I've also mentioned Caron and Jourdan already, both of whom are very charming here. But the real heart of the movie is the performances by the older cast members. Maurice Chevalier, as Gaston's uncle, Honoree, is a delight. Honoree is sort of a mentor for Gaston in the ways of being a playboy. The movie begins with his famous rendition of "Thank Heaven for Little Girls," and it's a charming way to start the narrative. It certainly gives you all of the insight you need into his character. (A short reprise of the song also ends the film.) The other great performance is by Hermione Gingold as Madame Alvarez, Gigi's grandmother. She's so much fun to watch whenever she's on screen, and her duet with Chevalier, "I Remember It Well," is such a lovely ode to lost love. I would have preferred to watch a film version of their adventures instead, but youth must be the focus, I suppose. None of the cast members were nominated for their performances, oddly enough, a rarity among movies that win Best Picture.

A good musical must be judged by its songs, and you don't get much better at choosing songwriters than Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, who are no doubt more famous for their musical My Fair Lady. They made some fine music for Gigi as well, including "The Night They Invented Champagne" and the two songs I've already mentioned. My personal favorite is "I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore," sung by Chevalier. It's a somewhat bittersweet song, but Chevalier brings to it a wealth of history. If there are any songs that don't seem to measure up, the one that stands out the most is the title track, which won the Oscar that year for Best Song. "Gigi" sounds to me like an obvious retread of "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" from My Fair Lady. Even the pacing of the song is very similar, not to mention the overall rhythm and content. Still, one weak song in the bunch is a pretty good average.

Gigi won nine Oscars in 1958, a record number at that time, and a lot of them were in the technical categories such as art direction and music and costume design. In fact, it won every Oscar for which it was nominated. It had some pretty interesting competition for Best Picture of 1958, a comedy (Auntie Mame) and three dramas (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Defiant Ones, and Separate Tables). I think it's really a testament to the Freed Unit that Gigi was the winner. It is all beautifully made, even if there is little substance to the story. There's no social message involved, no deep meaning, perhaps, just a bit of light entertainment set to a lovely score.