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Hal Ashby and Being There (1979)


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1:18:15–

Part II of Vertigo begins with JS in the position that Madeleine was in during Part I : JS is “sick” amid self-assured, judgmental Reason. But we’ve received an education into Reason by now, so that the Coroner’s self-assured, judgmental remarks, while heard as Reasonable to the jury within the film, are heard as Unreasonable by the Spectator. (For example : the enimently Reasonable Coroner lets the Murderer slip away!)

PATTERNS

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(1:23:44) / (23:39) 607276054_012339.thumb.jpg.81e5301bf7d4219141ad32f537e34d91.jpg

BEFORE THE DREAM

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(1:24:18)

The color purple (associated with Madeleine) conveys aspect of inner disposition.

Looking at us : existential moment of questioning :

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All this, for fun, recalls, for example, Tommy Lee Jones’s hand on lens in Natural Born Killers (1994); oil dappling lens in There Will Be Blood (2007); blood on lens in Planet Terror (2007); and so on and so forth back to who knows when.

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Edited by Jeff Bernstein
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Is a film itself like a dream? A film, like a dream, (a) is visual, (b) is the result of our conceptual absorption, (c) yet is out of our control. Shot follows shot just as dream-image follows dream-image : and just as we make sense of the one, we often attempt to make sense of the other. Reason prioritizes the “ordered” waking experience over the “disordered” dream experience. But Reason, as Vertigo leads us, is eventually represented not by the disordered JS, but by Gavin Elster : immaculate (but vacuous) Evil.

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(1:24:36) What is this shot?

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(a) Simple : a collection of random elements joined by a dream logic unavailable for scrutiny.

(b) Something not so simple.

 

This shot is the audience’s peek into a dream. Not to nitpick, but this is a simulacrum of JS’s dream, not the dream, because in the dream Elster and Carlotta should be in POV . . . ?

 

Theory : this is a difficult shot to understand. Some amount of thinking has to be done before understanding this shot is even attempted. For example, Elster emblematises Reason : but this determination can only be arrived at after the film has been absorbed for the first time. This is a shot to return to. The audience, trying to piece fast-moving details together in real time, is experiencing vertigo just here. As in a dream. As in life.

 

Consider Carlotta as dream-symbol : (1) the past; (2) a surrogate for Madeleine; (3) visual emblem of Madeleine’s “mental problem”; (4) the dead; (5) and so on and so forth.

 

This shot is bottomless. Art is infinite.

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Thought is infinite. What results as "thinking" depends on how much concentration one devotes to "thinking".

 

P.S. the necklace. Possibly because this detail makes it into JS’s dreams, he recalls it later, when Judy wears it? However, he was a Detective. (Recall, for example, Inspector Bill Armstrong’s quick associative mind in Zodiac (2007) : “Basement for future use.” (53:55) Or the similarly-minded band of detectives in Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood (1966) : for example : "Hold on, Perry. You’re jumping ahead." and "Perry, I’ve been keeping track of the lights.”)

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(1:26:05) Role Reversal

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Just as the audience acquires the mystic vibe of Vertigo at (36:49), when light blossoms Stararo-like at the Argosy Bookshop and the audience possibly doesn't notice, as if lost in a dream : here, the opposite occurs : JS now resembles a member of the audience.

 

Another window. (This window appears one minute of running time following the window in the Dream.) JS has his back to this window (revealing an entrapment of iron bars) : a visual expression of rejection. This is a Renaissance painting technique : for example : Angelico, "Annunciation" (1400s) :

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1:28:37–1:29:00. Midge’s last words : “I don’t think Mozart’s gonna help at all.” Throughout the film she presented herself as confident and Reasonable. Where has all her confidence and Reason brought her?

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To a bleak passageway. This vibe not only recalls the alleyway at (20:02–20:38), but also

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Dejection.

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Let's pause to contemplate (quickly) what we've just seen.

 

JS is unable to get over the second trauma. His nightmare is one example of this. His self-loathing may be excruciating for him to experience. The second trauma, intensifying the situation of the first, has jarred JS out of society. (The policeman at the start of the film sacrificed his life for JS—and has JS subsequently “earned it”?) Is JS choosing not to speak, in the manner of Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962)? Is he opting out? At any rate, JS is broken. Midge is broken. (Her sad transit of the hallway recalls some lines from Sunset Boulevard : “an unhappy look . . . like . . . Miss Havisham . . . given the go-by.”) Marjorie Wood is the archetypical “no longer young” woman “no longer with the bloom on the roses”, and evidently not riveting marriage material : is she shaping up to be an Old Maid? Yes, a bleak hallway. JS lost Madeleine, Midge lost JS, commonsensical Reason collapsed in both, and Evil has won. The Situation only goes downhill from here.

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1:29:50–1:31:45

As the final stages of Vertigo get underway, JS has become Madeleine/Carlotta. He is haunting Madeleine’s old haunts as Madeleine haunted Carlotta’s. Regardless of the degree of his sanity : In doing all this, what does JS want?

 

We might speculate. What could a man want, by haunting all the old places which a now-dead love once visited? Surely he knows he cannot ever get closer to the physicality of the lost. But the vibe of the lost : What might be captured is the wisp of a climate, the climate that surrounds a person, like soothing air streaming through an open window. This is what JS is after when he visits her old residence, and Ernie’s, and the Museum. (At least this is one in the constellation of motives and desires that makes a multi-person.) By haunting the old places, JS catches the scent of her vibe; this might hurt his heart, yet it doesn’t stop him. He has a compulsion. This is real life (so to speak). This is really happening to him. How perversely funny then, when an analogue of this entire story, the “Madeleine” fabrication, was precisely that, a fabrication, a wondrous story which JS denounced with firm certainty of Reason at the outset (13:54) :

 

Elster : “Scotty, do you believe that someone out of the past, someone dead, can enter and take possession of a living being?”

JS : “No.”

 

Well, JS, to quote Wall Street (1987): “Look at you now.”

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(1:31:58)

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The green/red color scheme of “Madeleine”.

Note the enclosure of green around Judy : (a) a natural girl ; (b) she is trapped by the past; (c) whatever else.

Judy is trapped by the past? Wasn't that the role she was playing : "Madeleine"?!

This is a random encounter between Judy and JS (the opposite of JS meeting Madeleine; the opposite of Part I).

Judy Barton is introduced among friends/colleagues. “Madeleine”, however, endured in a solitude.

Encounter on the streets : this is an analogue of the passersby of the Argosy Bookshop (35:15–36:35)! Hence, this is now a story "of the streets", a story full circle to Carlotta’s, a hundred years later. This is not a story of the Fortune 500.

Dream imagery : (a) doorway; (b) passageway (perpendicular side street); etc.

Note the not unprominent use of the color black.

Fashion : Judy is no fashion plate. Judy is an “ordinary” girl.

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(1:32:03) From dreamy world to hard reality

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JS meets Judy Barton in the front of the flower shop which we visit from the back, in Part I. No longer does this location have a symbolic-thematic aspect. Yes, it has a personal aspect to the protagonist (the bouquet in the window reminds him of the past), but, this time, the establishment itself is charged with no “extra meaning” such as the thematic poles of mask/behind the mask. JS’s world, with the vanishing of the mystic, artful “Madeleine”, has become drab and one-dimensional.

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1:29:04–   Vertigo : Recapitulation so far

 

1. So, as the final stages of Vertigo get underway, the narrative includes a series of role reversals :

(a) Judy Barton has become a Madeleine (she cannot escape her past);

(b) JS has become a Madeleine (he is obsessed with the dead);

(c) JS has also acquired the mute passivity of the audience;

(d) etc.

 

2. Caught in patterns :

(a) JS retracing his steps through Madeleine’s old haunts;

(b) Judy unable to escape the role of Madeleine;

(c) audience watching echoic narrative structure and shot compositions;

(d) etc.  

 

3. At the outset of Vertigo, JS was a positive surrogate for the audience, a “good guy” of moral authority representing Rightness. Now, JS is doing nothing much, saying nothing much, represents nothing very admirable, and is amounting to nothing much. Q : Is JS now more than ever a surrogate for the audience?

 

4. Hitchcock has intentionally reduced the stature of his film star from Hero to Zero. This storytelling strategy recalls the trajectory of Dr Bill in EWS : by the end of that film, Kubrick has reduced the biggest film star in the world to a moron. Why? Both Hitchcock and Kubrick are exploring the concept of Reason. If a protagonist represents Reason and Logic—well, that protagonist must therefore suffer, because Reason is a species of imbecility (Truth hurts).

 

5. Ramification of presenting a film star as a loser: Vertigo : box office failure. EWS : one of Tom Cruise’s lowest-grossing films. Perhaps audiences find unappealing the sight of themselves on screen? (“Humankind cannot bear very much reality” : T. S. Eliot)

 

6. Revenge. When Hitchcock presented the audience with “too much” truth in his most carefully-composed film, the audience stayed away. (What is more painful than learning the Truth of oneself?) So Hitchcock subsequently created Psycho, the first so-called big-time Hollywood YouTube movie, and while terrorizing audiences he achieved his biggest box office success in the process. (Might this response be deemed “a last laugh”?)

 

7. The Random. How curious life is! Under all this surface change at this point of Vertigo is a foundation of stasis. JS is not moving forward . . . until a chance encounter with Judy Barton. Chance (the random) is antinomical to the predetermined movements of Part I. With the appearance of Judy Barton as “herself”, the Random is now a vital concept in Vertigo . . . as in life.

 

8. Both Judy and JS have become a Madeleine? Must Madeleine have tremendous symbolic value encoded in her character to be assigned so many highly-charged significations? I hinted at one aspect in the previous post : Madeleine’s thematic connection to Art itself. (The “Fake”.) Apparently, Art is the place to be. It may be full of death, but it’s also full of Inspiration. (How inspiring have the people around you been today, in “real life”?)  Art is a beautiful dream that hopes for a better reality. JS wants to get lost in the beautiful dream—just as the audience does. How disappointing then, when both JS and the audience are given "real life" instead!

 

9. Protagonist on Pause : JS is an analogue of the audience insofar as he is pretty much a “watcher”, an “onlooker” of the action. Now, as Vertigo approaches its climax, JS will feel he has to act (i.e., the climactic dialogue of Body Double (1984)). Moreover, the audience expects the protagonist to “do something”, to “resolve” whatever the Situation is. Yet, just now, JS is doing what one might define as pretty much “Nothing”. And when JS does act, what does he do? He makes things worse. Doing nothing much and making things worse : sounds like Daniel Plainview’s view of “people”.

 

10. Q : Is it strange that both JS and Judy have evolved into analogues of Madeleine? What is the general symbolic value of the character of Madeleine, that she can be applied in such a free manner? In this particular context of commentary, Madeleine represents Art itself. The Beauty of Art. Take Art away from life and you’re left with bland repetition, drab one-dimensionality, endless lies, cruel Tyranny. Art is as beautiful an escape as the most beautiful dream. Take Art out of life, and you lose the chance of Escape. Good luck.

 

Word to move on with : In life, there is only Vertigo.

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(1:32:22)   JS is following Judy to her apartment . . .

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(a) JS has reverted to his old role as Detective (“tailing a suspect”) : a type of thoughtless repetition compulsion. (This recalls Ovid's vision of Hell, where the dead are "devoting themselves to some work practice in imitation of their former life" Metamorphoses, IV.445.)

(b) JS is repeating his movements of Part I : tailing the girl. The audience is seeing double! (Have the film reels been mixed up? Are we seeing reel 3 again?)

(c) Both JS and audience intuit some connection between Judy/Madeleine. . . . All is as a Dream. . . .

(d) JS has become “the sad Carlotta” ! ! ! — looking for his lost love, “walking the streets alone” . . . (Argosy Bookshop Owner, 35:51)

(e) Is the color of his suit . . . graveyard-brown? Madeleine's brown? . . . And is it the same suit as in Part I?!

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(23:57)

Edited by Jeff Bernstein
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(1:32:43)  Hotel Empire

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Didn’t Hitchcock hail from a place called the “British Empire” (ha)? Story goes, he was knighted on the soundstage, in between two set-ups. That's how much Hitchcock cared about his beloved "British Empire". That creatively-destitute cesspool known as London requires an outreach program, because those self-defined "superiors" are unable to produce anything of merit themselves : hence, for example, Hitchcock's Royal welcome. Hence, the entire rigged game : to make chicken salad out of their chicken. . . . (But I'm not here to teach anybody anything. I'm losing control : experiencing Vertigo). Didn't Alan Cumming, from EWS, just toss back his own Royal something-or-other? And Crash author J. G. Ballard refused his? But the world loved the Queen : for our entire lifetimes we in the UK were told she was "good for tourism" (this was expressed as justification). I wonder, is King Charles? Hitchcock, for one, wouldn't have lost sleep over the question.

 

P.S. Hollywood loves salary talk. Bertelsmann made a bank transfer of a $20 million advance for Prince Harry to produce a memoir for January 2023. This product of the Germans was then popularized as story number 1 on the BBC ("British Broadcasting Corporation") for a week, along with a running commentary in the Independent in the manner of a moment-by-moment updating of a disaster. A "publishing event" was created around a figure no one in the UK cares anything about (don't take it personally, Harry). Random House is a private German company, a company that was forced to admit it happily collaborated with the Nazis. (Hitchcock, meanwhile, the Artist, helped bring early news of the Holocaust into the world.) Is all this true? Or more fanciful than Vertigo?

 

The phrase and concept “American Empire” was popularized fifty years after Carlotta’s death, as evidenced, for example, by the speech to President McKinley in the U.S. Senate by Albert J. Beveridge, Republican Senator from Indiana, on January 9, 1900.

 

Now the concept of glorious Empire (e.g., Conrad's "Heart of Darkness") has been trivialized, visually reduced to a seedy archive of bric-a-brac. Contrast : all the elegance of Evil Elster’s office : celebration of Empire, of its “Freedom” (not ours).

Or has an "Empire" always been trivial? And the only thing going for it is a gang of arrogant mediocrities maintaining a superior power position : their comically imbalanced numbers game (there are only a small number of these viles) is offset by their manipulation of the group mind through rubbish such as governmental speeches. But Art "slips one past 'em".

 

Empire : a seedy establishment of destitution.

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Hotels.

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The Shining (2:04:50)

 

A Hotel is an interchange, a place of coming and going, a place of public transit (like a bus station or airport), a place where the foreign plays an intrinsic part. A Hotel is a conduit for a constant stream of strangers who leave no mark behind. You arrive : you stay : you vanish. (Like an audience. Like a film.) No one remembers you were there.

 

The Hotel is a metaphor for Time : the open space :

 

The hotel is an abyss of the forgotten faceless organic multitude.

 

Inside a hotel, one is contained in the "security" of the rectilinear building which is at the same time synonymous with the shapeless Abyss (Temporality). A Hotel is a metaphor of the enigma of evanescence. A Hotel is a sharp cinematic metaphor for such grand mechanic assemblages as Reason and Logic and Natural Law : a Hotel is a good symbol for phenomenological Being : for Humanness which we are caught in, but only for a lifetime. There's more than a whiff of mortality and the Void in a Hotel.

 

Hotels are places of mystery. Of closed doors. (Secret unions. Loneliness.) Places where strangers repeat previous strangers' movements (one sits on the bed similarly, for example) : occupants playing out like trained animals a repertory of ready-made gestures of rhythms and behavior : caught in the patterns that determine us as Human. Imprisoned in comfort. (Keep changing the metaphor : that's all we can do as we skirt around the rim of the abyss.) We inhabit our hotel rooms like ghosts who will leave no trace behind. Hence, hotels are dry runs for the crypt and the graveyard.

 

The Hotel is related also to the Hospital. All those interchangeable rooms, places where private dreams are born and die. The atmosphere of a Hotel magnifies our futility.

 

In the dead of night a Hotel is as quiet as a morgue. An environment that is crowded with bodies feels deserted. A subtle paranoia broods. 

 

A Hotel is a cinematic dream symbol of the secret in plain sight.

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Hierarchy to elements in film frame : predominance is given to the principal performer and/or principal vibe of any given shot; more generally, emotional cues are transmitted to the audience at all times. Here, for example, is also a geolocational cue to the position of the camera : the audience well-nigh instantaneously/unconsciously understands where JS is to go.

 

However, the brain has more than one integration system in use at all times (so to speak). Let's say, for example, two are used here : the Unconscious and Reason. The Unconscious' integration system is different from the one used by Reason. The quiet brain, taking in all parts of the frame equally and instantly, may respond to cues which loud Reason ignores. Put another way : the audience’s Intuition may respond separately to, or in harmony with, the audience’s Reason. Consider the words in the frame above : FIRE ESCAPE. Yes, the simple explanation is that the sign lends authenticity to the location. But the fact remains that the words FIRE ESCAPE enter the audience’s brain. Consider an extreme example : What if an audience member had survived a hotel fire? Do you think those words might mean “nothing” to that audience member, if noticed? Now let us “dial this back” : since we have no idea how the Unconscious processes incoming information, we therefore have no idea to what degree the words FIRE ESCAPE may or may not “intrude” or (however you want to put it) on the audience’s contentration of JS.

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Eyes Wide Shut : (37:24).

 

 

 

Edited by Jeff Bernstein
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