Uncomfortable

Well, it's Wednesday and it's still snowing.... still.  The dogs are loving it.  They run around outside and when they come in I drive them off with a big, green fluffy towel.  They love that, too.
"Vertigo" is playing at my local AMC this evening - I'd like to go but probably will skip the show.  Not because of the snow, more because the last time I watched it I found it uncomfortably creepy.  Jimmie Stewart stalking Kim Novak while mentally unraveling.  The way he dresses her up like the dead Madelaine, where she's just a shadow of what he's looking for.

Her business suit is actually grey, the green light is from a neon light outside the hotel room

And Hitchcock lit that scene in squeamish green, a favorite color of his in this film.  "Vertigo" is considered his masterpiece, and many consider it the best film ever made.  He forces your eyes to move, to focus on the specifics he wants you to see.  Look at how he frames Kim Novak over, and over, and over again.

Anyway, the Idiot Jerk in the White House congratulate the dictator of Russia for winning another phony election.  And, of course, Sarah Scumbag tried to put some sort of spin on it, as did his supporters.  Interestingly enough, only a very small percentage of Americans feel he's leading the country in the right direction.  And that number seems to be sliding downward.  Oh, and I see that an ex-playboy bunny is getting in on the lawsuit action - another one he had to pay to keep her mouth shut.  Oh, my.  His reprehensibility just seems to be growing, and growing.  And evidently people are beginning to quit Faux News, calling the network a "propaganda machine" for the Idiot Jerk.  Oh, dear me.  This is sooooo uncomfortably funny.

Vertigo = Number 1

Since 1962 (a long time ago) Citizen Kane has been considered the best movie of all time.  In this classic, Orson Welles made cinematic history with innovative camera shots, unconventional story telling, and set a precedent by thinly veiling an unauthorized biography of William Randolph Hearst.  Over the years, however, other films have slowly inched their way either up or down that ladder; time always tells.  Now, Citizen Kane has been knocked down a rung and finds itself in the number two position.  What replaced it?  Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.

I have to say I am in full agreement.  While I've liked Citizen Kane and have seen it 3 or 4 times I have always seen it as a demonstration of innovative genius rather then cinematic genius.  Vertigo, on the other hand, has fascinated me ever since I saw it on TV as a child.  Back then I thought it was just "wow" without any understanding of the psychology involved.  In my twenties, I watched it again and realized it was not just about one man's fear of heights.  I began understanding the psychology involved.  The word "obsession" began entering my vocabulary when I talked about it with friends, while we postulated the differences between obsession and mental illness since this film is about both.  I watched it again a few years ago and must say there are times in it when I felt truly uncomfortable most especially the scene where James Stewart dresses up Kim Novak as the dead Madeleine.  

This scene creeped me out so badly I almost got up and walked out the room because at that moment  I realized just how crazy James Stewart's Scottie had become and like the police officer who falls to his death in the beginning, Scottie has stepped off the roof of reality.