A dizzying array of opinions
The common view of “Vertigo” is that it is the ultimate film of voyeurism and obsession. I’ve always thought it’s a film about two people alone in the world, unable to trust each other, or even themselves. Its obsession is with the elusiveness of the human heart.
Film historian David Thomson has still another take. He’s frightened of the 1958 San Francisco-shot Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece.
“My core point and what frightens me is how this great film is such a study in cruelty, as if Hitchcock was both troubled by and impressed at the controlling power of film,” said Thomson.
So Hitchcock, then, was as much in a moral quandary as were Scotty Ferguson (James Stewart) and Judy Barton (Kim Novak).
Thomson, the prolific author and internationally respected critic and essayist, is hosting quite an event at the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival. Titled “Two or Three Things That Frighten Me in Vertigo: David Thomson Master Class,” it is designed to shed new light on the film the influential once-a-decade Sight and Sound poll called the greatest of all time in 2012. Naturally, it is also the quintessential San Francisco movie.
Thomson will have an extended lecture about the film at 1 p.m. Sunday, April 16, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, followed by a screening of the film itself. Yes, the talk comes first.
“I hope to talk about it in a way that enriches the viewing,” Thomson said.
This is the perfect film for such an approach. Even after repeated viewings, “Vertigo” retains its mystery. Our opinion of it shifts the longer we live. The film seems to gain new dimensions, evolving, as if it were still a work in progress.
“We have learned how to watch it,” Thomson wrote in his 2008 book “Have You Seen …?”
“It’s a test case,” he wrote. “If you are moved by this film, you are a creature of cinema. But if you are alarmed by its implausibility, its hysteria, its cruelty — well, there are novels.”
Other retrospectives in the second week of the festival (www.sffilm.org) include:
“Man With a Movie Camera” with DeVotchKa: Excited with the possibilities of the relatively young film medium, Russia’s Dziga Vertov took to the streets of Moscow, Odessa and Kiev to give us a portrait of an everchanging world that is more essay than documentary. It’s a 1929 silent film that added its punctuation in the lab — jump cuts, dissolves, split screens, etc. — to create an indelible work in cinema history. The Denver band DeVotchKa (famous for the score for the 2006 film “Little Miss Sunshine”) will perform its own take on Vertov’s film live. 8 p.m. Thursday, April 13, at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St., S.F.
A tribute to James Ivory —
“Maurice”: Anyone who says the legendary MerchantIvory film team didn’t take risks hasn’t considered “Maurice.” Producer Ismael Merchant and director James Ivory are known for their audience-pleasing, meticulously produced period pieces based on great literature like “Howard’s End” and “The Remains of the Day.” But after their breakthrough, the wildly popular and Oscarnominated “A Room With a View” in 1986, the duo went in a different direction. They again adapted E.M. Forster, but this time it was “Maurice,” a novel Forster wrote around 1914, then promptly stuffed into a drawer; its purpose was to help him deal with his own homosexuality. It wasn’t published until after his death in 1970. That Ivory, who himself is gay, pushed to make this film, starring Hugh Grant, James Wilby and Ben Kingsley, says something about his artistic commitment. Predictably, ’80s audiences were not kind — it made about one-tenth the box office take of “A Room With a View.” The festival is honoring Ivory, 88, who presents this 4K restoration in person. “We were a pretty contented group of people,” Ivory told me last year, speaking about the Merchant-Ivory team. “We were happy making our films exactly the way we wanted to make them. As a group, nobody was the real boss . ... We were pretty much a group respecting each other, loving each other.” 6 p.m. Friday, April 14, at SFMOMA.