Amazon.co.uk Review
Vertigo is Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece and perhaps his most personal film. To view it once is to be devastated. With each subsequent screening, most viewers notice bits of business, depths of thought, and stunning ironies that had previously eluded them.
Vertigo is a riveting experience, haunting its fans in the same way that Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) is haunted by the mysterious Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak). While researching the film, author Dan Auiler found that "this odd, obsessional, very un-matter-of-fact film was created" under "systematic, businesslike, matter-of-fact circumstances." His book gives us the opportunity to witness the construction of a film that seems at once amazingly complex and absolutely seamless. He discusses the painstaking development of the screenplay (including its controversial explication of the mystery only two-thirds of the way through the film), the decision to cast Novak instead of Vera Miles opposite Stewart, the typically meticulous Hitchcock shoot, the film's amazing special effects and extraordinary credit and dream sequences, and the legendary musical score composed by Bernard Herrmann.
Upon finishing the book, readers will appreciate the various contributions of Hitchcock, Herrmann, Stewart, Novak, actress Barbara Bel Geddes, Thomas Narcejac and Pierr Boileau (who wrote the book upon which it is based), uncredited scenarists Maxwell Anderson and Angus MacPhail, screenwriters Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor, cinematographer Robert Burks, editor George Tomasini, costume designer Edith Head, and many others. The book includes a list of cast and crew, an appendix discussing the VistaVision process in which it was shot, a forward by Vertigo enthusiast Martin Scorsese, and hundreds of production photos, reproductions of memos, storyboard sketches, and posters. Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic has enhanced even this avid fan's appreciation of a film he's long known and loved. --Raphael Shargel
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
A yeomanlike study of one of the few deserving films not yet granted an entire book. Carefully and thoroughly (and with the cooperation of Hitchcock's daughter), film collector Auiler's first book traces Vertigo to its start as a pesky alternative to another Hitchcock plan for a more studio-agreeable extravaganza called Flamingo Feather. Auiler then details Hitchcock's interest in the authors of Vertigo's novel source (their first novel became Les Diaboliques) and reports the screenwriting process, spanning playwright Maxwell Anderson, Angus MacPhail, and credited authors Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor. The book brims with behind-the-scenes material, all presented matter-of-factly. Unintoxicating (and pregnant) Vera Miles was replaced by "heat"-carrying Kim Novak, who attracted problematic paramours Sammy Davis Jr. and Rafael Tmjillo Jr. and who said she understood her character Madeleine/Judy's desire to be loved. Jimmy Stewart was a pro and an avuncular counselor to Novak; Hitchcock did shoot efficiently, except for the troubling post-rescue encounter. The film's crew considered Vertigo "just another Hitchcock project," and on release, the movie was generally praised but panned by Time as "another Hitchcock and bull story." And maybe the movie showed that Hitchcock never recovered from losing Grace Kelly to Monaco. Yet even more interesting is the author's noting how Vertigo has grown in stature over the past 40 years, through a survey of Hitchcock scholarship, interviews with those involved in its restoration for 1996 rerelease, and speculation that it reveals a "longing for what we can never have again." This book assumes the film's worth and through well-researched explication of its subtleties leads even skeptics to understand it, too. (Kirkus Reviews)
by Charles Barr
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