BMFI film fan and author Gus Cileone interprets Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller Vertigo. Do you agree? See the film for yourself on the big screen at Bryn Mawr Film Institute on Wednesday, July 17. Vertigo is showing as part of our Hitchcock at the Height film series, which is presented in conjunction with a four-week film course about the filmmaker's best-known works.
Voyeurism, Fantasy, and Vertigo By Gus Cileone, BMFI Film Fan *Spoiler Alert*
Alfred Hitchcock addresses voyeurism often, which is fitting, since his audience lives vicariously through the characters he presents on the screen. But, he goes further, making the audience, from the perspective of the camera lens, an unseen presence stepping into the stories themselves. We become a Peeping Tom, like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window; we observe Janet Leigh through the hole in the wall, in Psycho; we are accused directly of causing the coming apocalypse in the diner scene in The Birds.
In Vertigo, Jimmy Stewart’s weird obsession with Kim Novak’s Madeleine takes this voyeurism to the point of obsession. The voyeur has no respect for the individual, who is only a means to satisfy the voyeur's fantasy. In the opening credits we see a woman's face and then her eye. We then look into that eye, and there is a spinning pinwheel. Right from the beginning, Hitchcock is saying that a man can lose his balance with obsession over a woman.
After Stewart's detective, Scottie, discovers that he has acrophobia, hanging from a gutter after chasing a criminal, he is traumatized by witnessing a fellow policeman fall off the roof trying to save him. Falling becomes a motif in the film. The story takes place in hilly San Francisco, which symbolizes the precariousness of Scottie's predicament. (Scottie lives right near Coit Tower.) Probably because he feels guilty about the dead police officer, he dives into the bay to save Novak's character. But the jump also shows how dangerous his obsession can become. Of course, there are the falling deaths from the tower, and Scottie has dreams of falling off the tower. After the death of his fantasy woman, he drops into a state of catatonia, unable to be in the real world. The falling theme also refers to the danger of falling in love with the wrong person, for both Scottie and Novak's Judy. One could push it and say, for Scottie, the towers are phallic symbols, and the fear of falling could symbolize the fear of impotence in real life, thus encouraging the escape into fantasy.
Jimmy Stewart stars as a traumatized detective caught in a deadly scheme.
The acrophobia is not only a plot device so that Scottie can't witness it when Gavin (Thomas Helmore) throws his wife off the tower. It also symbolizes Stewart's character's inability to see the big picture from a height. He can only see as far as his version of a dream woman. The first scene deals with beauty and sex, as we watch his ex-fiancée, Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes), draw fashion pictures and discuss a newly designed bra. She is not the Hitchcock ice goddess, since she just draws beauty and clinically describes the bra's engineering. When she draws a picture of Novak as Gavin's wife Madeleine and substitutes her own face, Scottie quickly departs the room, showing how she does not fit his sexual requirements. She is real and can't compete with a dream girl. Gavin is an old friend, who knows of Scottie's disability, and wants Scottie to find out where his wife is going on her mysterious trips. At first Scottie is the voyeur spying on her beauty at the restaurant. Hitchcock places the audience in the car seat, following Novak, joining the detective in his fantasy. When he follows her through a dark walkway and opens the door, the scene lights up with the beautiful colors of flowers that the equally beautiful Novak is buying. It reminds one of Dorothy opening the door of her drab house to witness the awe of Oz, which is both a fantasy land and can be dangerous, just like Scottie's obsession.
Madeleine (Kim Novak), when Scottie follows her to the flower market.
The husband says a dead woman is possessing his wife. She goes into spells, visits her grave, and looks at the dead woman's painting on the wall of the gallery. Scottie observes that the curl in Novak's hair mirrors the curl of the dead woman in the painting. We realize that the circular curls also echo the theme of spinning wheels, leading to actual and symbolic vertigo. The story of the ghost plays into the whole unreal, fantasy theme of the film. Scottie sees Madeleine check into a hotel, but the concierge says she was not there that day, and there is no evidence of her in the hotel room. After Scottie rescues Madeleine from the bay, the camera shows her clothes hung up and drying in his home, and Novak naked under the covers in his bed. This is kind of creepy, knowing that she has been undressed by a stranger. It is as if Stewart's character presumptuously has actually taken possession of her (in contrast to her pretending to have become possessed) as an object in his fantasy world.
After rescuing Madeleine, Scottie takes her to his apartment.
When they are in the sequoia forest, Madeleine seems to disappear for a while, like an unearthly spirit. After his release from the mental institution, Scottie looks for Madeleine wherever he goes, like a morbid ghost hunter. It is ironic that he becomes haunted by the ghost of a woman who pretended to be haunted by another dead woman. Of course, when Scottie accidently sees Judy, thinking she is only a Madeleine look-alike and not part of the murder conspiracy, he wants to resurrect the dead Madeleine, forcing the now-in-love Judy to again play the same part. After Scottie finally recreates Madeleine by changing Judy’s make-up, hair color and style, and clothes, Novak materializes out of the hotel room's wall in a neon-sign-illuminated mist, like a ghost.
Scottie's obsession is a kind of madness. Gavin says there is madness in Madeleine's family, which sets the stage for the belief that she would commit suicide (her name even has the word "mad" in it). And, Scottie's madness leads to a sort of personality suicide as he realizes at the end, as Roger Ebert says in his book The Great Movies, that another man (Gavin) created the woman he wanted to forge, and thus Scottie's dream was not even his own. First he lost the person he wrongly thought was his ideal woman incarnate, and then he loses the woman he thought he created to be his perfect reproduction of his ideal. For Hitchcock, the desire to possess one's dream person is an impossible act and can only turn life into a nightmare.
Gus Cileone is a retired government employee who worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs. He has received several writing awards and has published two novels, A Lesson in Murder and Feast or Famine. You can visit his website at www.augustuscileone.com.
In advance of our four-week class on filmmaker Sidney Lumet starting Tuesday, April 9 at the National Museum of American Jewish History, film fan Gus Cileone looks at the depiction of truth in one of his favorite Lumet films, The Verdict, starring Paul Newman.
Why I Love Sidney Lumet's The Verdict By Gus Cileone, BMFI Patron and Film Fan *Spoiler Alert*
We lost one of our most gifted and prolific directors not too long ago. Sidney Lumet made such great films as: Long Day's Journey into Night, Fail-Safe, The Pawnbroker, and Network. However, a number of his films deal with crime and the legal system. These include: 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Murder on the Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon, and Prince of the City.
My favorite movie in this area, one that deals with who stands for what is right and what is wrong, is The Verdict. You cannot find another title of a movie that has so much to do with what the film is about. The word "verdict" is derived from the Latin and means "to speak the truth." This movie shows how lies can have tragic consequences and how outward appearances are not good indicators as to who is the most reliable source of truth. It is here where the marriage of Lumet with writer David Mamet is a match made in screenwriting heaven. Mamet, too, deals with the line between justice and injustice, society's rules and the breaking of those rules, in such films as House of Games, The Spanish Prisoner, Glengarry Glen Ross, and The Edge.
The Verdict, a 1982 film, showcases Paul Newman—in maybe his best performance—as Frank Galvin, a promising lawyer who has fallen from legal and ethical grace in the Catholic world of Boston's jurisprudence. We first see him as an alcoholic who tries to fund visits to his favorite bar by browsing the obituaries and soliciting representation from grieving families at funerals, pretending to be a friend of the deceased. His foul-mouthed mentor, Mick (Jack Warden), throws a potentially lucrative malpractice case his way. At first, Frank is just out for the money, looking for a quick settlement. He reassures the family of the comatose victim while not revealing his dilapidated office (an expressionistic touch that mirrors his life), under the pretense that it is filled with paper for another case (a lie). He also hangs a sheet of paper on his door that says he is meeting with the judge (untrue).
Paul Newman stars as a lawyer seeking redemption in Sidney Lumet's The Verdict.
The way setting is presented in this film depicts who has power and who are the downtrodden. In his book, Making Movies, Lumet says, "In The Verdict we used a very narrow color selection and older architecture. No modern buildings were seen in the movie." St. Catherine's (the Catholic Hospital), the courtroom, the office of James Mason's defending lawyer Concannon (whose name implies he is a big shot), Frank's sleazy apartment, and even the bar Frank frequents are old fashioned in style, but are differentiated as to level of refinement by those who populate them. The heft of the dark hardwood weighs everything down, emphasizing how difficult it is to alter society's entrenched power structure. Lumet emphasizes the disparity as to the opposing sides as he cuts between the old legal library where Newman and Warden prepare for the case, and the army of litigators in the opulent conference room presided over by Mason.
Editing is essential in showing Frank gravitating back to his ethical base (and living up to his name which means "free from guile"). As Lumet writes in Making Movies, "In The Verdict, the most important transition in the movie was illuminated by the close-ups of Paul Newman examining a Polaroid photograph. He had taken the picture of the victim, and he watched it develop. As the photograph took on life, he did too. I could feel the present breaking through for a man who, up until then, had been trapped in the detritus of his past life. It was the intercutting between the developing Polaroid and the close-ups of Newman that made the transition palpable." When Frank meets the Bishop (played by Edward Binns), he cannot accept the low offer that the Bishop gives him because "no one will know the truth" that those who should have looked after his client failed her. If he takes the hush money, he will be "lost."
James Mason and Paul Newman face off in Sidney Lumet's The Verdict.
Past lies have derailed Frank before and hinder his forward movement in the present. Warden tells Frank's new girlfriend, Laura (Charlotte Rampling), that Frank was forced to lie and take the fall for his law firm's jury tampering after he threatened to expose his partners. He lost his job and his wife. In the current case, he has a doctor willing to testify against a peer, but that physician is forced out of the country by the powers-that-be, so he cannot tell the truth. Even Frank is not honest with the relatives of the patient about no longer wanting to settle out of court. Concannon is always one step ahead of Frank and we find out why: Mick finds Concannon's check made out to Laura, who is a spy, feeding information to Concannon. Ironic that on their second meeting Frank tells Laura, "Tell me the truth. You can't lie to me." But she has fallen for Frank, and does not tell Concannon about the admitting nurse (Lindsay Crouse), who Frank convinces to testify. The esteemed doctor had not read that the patient had a full meal one hour prior to the delivery of her baby, and she aspirated vomit in her mask, causing her to lose oxygen, creating the vegetative state. The doctor then coerced the nurse to lie about the time of the meal, changing the "1" to a "9." The lies of the powerful spread like a virus to infect those working for them. It is ironic to see Concannon, who has been duplicitous with Laura, lecture the nurse about perjury. Even though the photocopy of the original admitting form is tossed out, the testimony is heard by the jury. The Bishop asks an underling, after the nurse's testimony, that despite Concannon's legal prowess, did he believe her? The other's silence shows that the jury saw the truth. The irony that the supposedly trustworthy Catholic Church is behind such a distasteful cover-up is evident here. Earlier in the film, Frank tells Laura, "The jury wants to believe. I mean they want to believe." In his summation, Frank says that we hear so many lies, we doubt our institutions, we feel powerless, and we become victims. But he tells the jury the outward signs of stature and tradition don't matter because today they are the law, and he believes that there is justice in our hearts.
Ultimately, the financial settlement is not as important as is the moral victory and truth may bring redemption, but it does not erase the betrayal of lies.
Gus Cileone is a retired government employee who worked for the
Department of Veterans Affairs. He has received several writing awards and has
published two novels, A Lesson in Murder and
Feast or Famine. You can visit his web site at www.augustuscileone.com.
BMFI will screen The Right Stuff on Tuesday, August 21 as part of the "Director in Focus: Philip Kaufman" film series. BMFI patron and film aficionado Gus Cileone tells us why he loves this Kaufman classic. Check back for additional posts by BMFI staff and community members that explore the movies we love.
Why I Love The Right Stuff By Gus Cileone, BMFI Patron, Student, and Volunteer
[Spoiler alert.]
There were many fine films in 1983—including The Big Chill and Terms of Endearment—but for my money, The Right Stuff, directed by Philip Kaufman, based on the book by Tom Wolfe, was the best movie that year. One thing this film is so successful at doing is showing heroes as real people with definable character traits. It accomplishes this feat without diminishing what these men achieved, or undermining the courage needed to face the unknown obstacles confronting them.
The tone is set by the opening voiceover describing test pilots in epic hero terms as they chase the "demon" out there in the sky. The men’s quest to break the sound barrier and "punch a hole in the sky" emphasizes the theme that people must break through the barriers that try to contain them.
The pilots are all distinct personalities, revealed with humor and insight. John Glenn comes off like a squeaky clean Marine. Ed Harris even looks like Mr. Clean in the TV commercials. He can't curse when he is angry, and leaves the profanity to the other pilots to fill in the objectionable words when he speaks. He is admirable as he backs up his wife, who has a speech impediment, so that she doesn't have to let in the press and the grandstanding Lyndon Johnson when they are camping out on her front lawn. Alan Shepard, played by Scott Glenn, is a mischievous prankster, who does inappropriate Hispanic impersonations of then-comic Bill Dana's politically incorrect persona. Gordon Cooper is a bragging charmer, played by Dennis Quaid, who keeps asking "Who is the best pilot you ever saw? You're looking at him." He is so cool that he has to be awakened after falling asleep in the space capsule just before his launch. His pal, Fred Ward's Gus Grissom, calls him a "hot dog," and there is a chilling scene as he holds up a burnt-to-a-crisp hot dog at a barbecue, which strikes Cooper’s wife as a bad omen. Grissom is a man of few words, and is stoical most of the time. But he knows how to get the other astronauts to unite and take control of their missions. He emphasizes how they must show their superiors that the test pilots are not just the equivalents of chimpanzees. He makes those running the program realize how much they need the astronauts, because they are the ones who generate funding, when he says, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers."
The pilots of Mercury 7 (from left to right): Gus Grissom (Fred Ward), Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid), Deke Slayton (Scott Paulin), John Glenn (Ed Harris), Scott Carpenter (Charles Frank), Alan Shepard (Scott Glenn), and Wally Schirra (Lance Henriksen).
Sam Shepard's Chuck Yeager, the test pilot who first broke the sound barrier and who refused to become an astronaut, is the most iconic character portrayed in the film. After breaking the barrier, he howls at the moon, presaging the time when man would land on earth's satellite. He is the essence of cool, quiet manliness. But when he gets knocked off his horse after hitting a tree branch while galloping after his wife (Barbara Hershey), he tells her, "I'm a fearless man, but I'm scared to death of you." One of the last scenes in the film has Yeager ejecting from a doomed test plane. You can't help but be moved when Yeager, his face greasy and looking burned, strides away from the wreckage. One of the soldiers asks, "Is that a man?" Another says, "Yeah, you're damn right it is!" Machismo in the most dignified sense of the term. When the bar where the first test pilots congregated burns down, it symbolizes the passing of an era, as Yeager figuratively passes the baton to the next generation of "star voyagers."
Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) returns after a successful test flight.
These men are supported by their long suffering wives, who shudder every time the "man in black" appears to give them the bad news whenever one of their pilot husbands crashes. Mrs. Cooper (Pamela Reed) leaves at first but later returns to back up her husband. Mrs. Grissom (Veronica Cartwright) rails against the military because they owe her for her sacrifices. As one of the wives says, the military spent a lot of money to train their men, but nothing to prepare the wives to be fearless. But these women obviously were attracted to these men; as Mrs. Yeager says, she must have been drawn to a man who "pushed the outside of the envelope."
Louise Shepard (Kathy Baker), accompanied by her fellow pilot wives, listens as her husband's fate is revealed over the phone.
Besides showing the challenges that these men face, the film is notable for its humor. Jeff Goldblum and Harry Shearer are very funny as they show films of potential astronauts to the President and his top officials. They say surfers would be good for splashdowns and car racers even have their own helmets. Eisenhower comes off pretty well as he rejects the outrageous nominees and insists on test pilots, whom his advisers consider to be uncontrollable. Since the Russians were the first to send up an orbiting satellite, our technical ability is questioned by these advisers. But they are assured by rocket scientist Wernher von Braun that "our German scientists are better than their German scientists."
The best comic scenes center on the tests that the men must pass, which look like torture treatments. You have to laugh when Scott Glenn can't remove his arm off of the table after a needle has overstimulated his muscles. The scene where he has a balloon inflated in his rectum and he must run to the bathroom to relieve himself is also hysterical. Another hilarious sequence is when the men need to provide sperm samples. Cooper knows Glenn is in the next bathroom stall because he is humming the Marine Corps theme song. Cooper tries to drown it out with the Air Force counterpart, and the sounds get louder as they race toward their respective climaxes. Of course, the scene that shows Mission Control having no contingency for going to the bathroom in space for the first flight overflows with humor. We roar as Shepard, who had drunk numerous cups of coffee, grimaces and must request permission to relieve his bladder into his spacesuit.
The pilots undergo one of their many pre-departure tests.
This film expertly shows the bravery and failings of these space pioneers, and it, along with Apollo 13, reminds us of a can-do America where "failure is not an option."
Gus Cileone is a retired government employee who worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs. He has received several writing awards and has published two novels, A Lesson in Murder and Feast or Famine. You can visit his web site at www.augustuscileone.com.
Why I Love Brazil By Gus Cileone, BMFI Patron, Student, and Volunteer
Since I was a Federal employee with the Department of Veterans Affairs for 35 years, I am familiar with the machinations of bureaucracy. I experienced the crazy regulations and redundant procedures imposed upon me as a civil servant as I worked to finalize disability claims for veterans. Although one can experience the frustrations of the individual confronting large institutions in the private sector as well (anyone who has tried to get his or her cable company to fix a problem knows about that), the fear of a centralized, all powerful entity strikes totalitarian fear into those who particularly value personal freedom.
Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce, left) arguing over bureaucratic issues with co-worker Harvey Lime (Brazil's screenwriter, Charles McKeown, right) at Information Retrieval.
So, it's not surprising that a movie like Brazil would draw my interest given my work background. Add to that the fact that I am a Monty Python fan, and Terry Gilliam is the director, and the deal is sealed. The film is a dark comic take on the plot of 1984, with a Big Brother government and modern technology that looks old (very much the way the future appears in Gilliam's 12 Monkeys). There is the dissatisfied worker, Sam Lowry (played by Jonathan Pryce), who is drawn into the resistance movement because of a girl (in this case Jill, played by Kim Greist). The individual is not successful here, either, at least not in the "real" world. The difference is that while 1984 is deadly serious, Gilliam pulls out all the stops and turns the cautionary tale into a satire.
Air ducts represent one of the primary visual motifs in Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
Probably the most effective images Gilliam employs in the movie are ugly air ducts that snake through every room in this brave new world. They look like the tentacles of a huge monster invading everyone's lives. There is a great scene where Robert De Niro appears as a renegade repairman dressed like a military commando. In it, he opens up the walls of Lowry's flat and the ducts expand and contract, as if breathing. This metaphor is an apt one showing the intrusion of the government into individual lives. This privacy invasion is also seen when the two main characters are physically prodded by machines as Lowry goes to his mother's party and Jill confronts a government official about the wrongful abduction of her neighbor. It also seems that the film is saying that the more mechanized our society becomes, the more chances there are for the machines to break down. There are numerous illustrations of this fact, what with Lowry's coffee machine pouring liquid on his toast, his air conditioning breaking down, and plastic surgeries becoming fatal. When "Central Services" is called to fix things, they are either unavailable, don't have the proper paperwork, or create more damage instead of repairing anything. The phones in the film have the most annoying ring tone around, sounding like a demonic dentist drill. Of course, the more things break down, the more the population is dependent on those in control of the systems in place.
Totalitarian regimes try to control their subjects by manipulating the outward appearance of the world in contrast to the underlying reality. The emphasis on having plastic surgery in the film illustrates this idea. Also, in the movie, the food at the restaurant served to each person is a yucky mush. But each plate is accompanied by a picture of a savory meal, implying that is the reality they are to buy into. And explosions are ignored as room screens are placed around the diners' table, promoting the idea that one should ignore the negative elements in the environment.
Lowry's boss, Mr. Kurtzmann (Ian Holm), greeting his employees in the morning.
The paperwork here is labyrinthine, where you need a receipt to show proof that you have received a receipt. It is paralyzing and strikes fear into people (such as Lowry's boss, played by Ian Holm) if procedures aren't followed, which appears to be the goal of the organization. Gilliam seems to be saying that this type of world wants people to be frustrated and feel powerless. Another brilliant and devastating image occurs when in Lowry's dream state, the resistance blows up the Ministry of Information and there is paper everywhere. The paper covers and entangles De Niro, and he disappears in it, symbolizing how the individual is lost in the whirlwind of bureaucratic red tape. The effect of the dehumanizing bureaucracy is shown in the offices where Lowry goes after his promotion. There are numbers on office doors, not names. His office is so small it looks like a closet, or the size of a prison cell. People are seen as becoming diminished and restricted. But Gilliam never shows us any manipulating, all powerful heads of state. It’s as if this bureaucratic and mechanistic construct here has a life of its own.
One of the many propaganda slogans that indicate the skewed mindset of Brazil's totalitarian government.
One of the posted signs in the street says "Suspicion breeds confidence." People have been taught to suspect each other. That way, they will not band together, and become stronger. Later in the film, Lowry asks Jill to trust him, and realizes that he has to earn her trust if they are to succeed. There is another sign which reads "Happiness – we're all in it together," which is an anesthetizing slogan to placate the people. When De Niro says, "We are all in it together," it is genuine because it is in the context of the power of joined resistance to authoritarianism.
The soundtrack has the song "Brazil" being played. It is a Latin-infused, fun, liberating song that stands in contrast to the lives of the characters. Lowry escapes his claustrophobic, penal colony of a world by losing himself in a dream state. There, he flies on Daedalus wings in the sky, pursuing his blonde fantasy (also Jill), doing battle with the monsters imprisoning her. (Robin Williams lives in a similar fantasy in Gilliam's The Fisher King). In the end, when he is a restrained captive, Lowry's body may be enslaved, but his mind has escaped into the freedom of his imaginary world.
Welcome to BMFI's blog. We're a non-profit art house movie theater and film education center in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Check here for the scoop on upcoming films, education courses, and information about the renovation of our 1926 theater.
