Hmm. I didn't lightly make my claim about VERTIGO that the McKittrick Hotel scene with its 'vanishing lady' act was an echo of the matching scene in Curtis (Kurt) Berhardt's CONFLICT (1945) - and to some extent of a scene in Hitchcock's own THE LADY VANISHES. Such 'borrowing' by Hitchcock was one among scores, possibly hundreds, of such 'borrowings' Hitchcock made over the years. He was an avid cinephile, and an authority on film history, who regularly watched films by other directors (though he might publicly profess otherwise!). For many years he and wife Alma were regular vistors to the repertory cinema in Los Angeles run by film lover and cinematographer Gary Graver, best known for his work with Orson Welles. Back at the studio - as the logs show - Hitchcock would regularly view other directors' work in his private theatrette. But in any case, I would have thought it self-evident that the McKittrick Hotel scene in VERTIGO echoes one in CONFLICT - just as I think it self-evident that, say, the 'Momma Lucy's' scene in Hitchcock's MR AND MRS SMITH is indebted to a scene in King Vidor's THE CITADEL (1938), starring Robert Donat and Rosalind Russell, and that another scene in VERTIGO, the one where Midge paints herself as Carlotta to try and regain Scottie's attention, is indebted to the matching scene in Albert Lewin's film of THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1945). (We know that in his youth Hitchcock read the Oscar Wilde novel 'several times' - to quote Donald Spoto.)
But in any case, Mike Frank in his post here seems to deny that VERTIGO is about what he calls a 'conspiracy' against Scottie when in fact that's what the whole film turns on - or hadn't you noticed, Mike?! (Gavin Elster takes Judy Barton as his mistress and together they collude in a plan to murder Elster's wife - with Scottie as a 'made-to-order witness' who will be conveniently set up as the plan's stooge.) In turn, I have shown how such a scheme has other pre-echoes in the cinema - indeed, how such a scheme figures in several 'big lie' films, as I call them, including Kurt Bernhardt's own CARREFOUR (1938), made in France on his way from Germany to settle in the USA, and its Hollywood remake, Jack Conway's CROSSROADS (1942), starring William Powell as the stooge/dupe. Moreover, I have shown how Hitchcock regularly looked at films made by German ex-patriates in Hollywood, including Bernhardt, Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and William Dieterle, and how there was a 'reciprocity of influence' that often operated among these directors' films. (Jeanine Basinger has drawn particular attention to the link between films by Hitchcock and Siodmak, noting that for a time both directors shared a producer, Joan Harrison, and I have further traced Hitchcock's 'echoes' of Siodmak's 1940s films in particular.) So the McKittrick Hotel 'borrowing' is by no means an isolated instance of what I am adducing, Mike.
Of course, I would be among the first to praise Hitchcock's bold use of his 'borrowing' from CONFLICT to bemuse and intrigue VERTIGO's viewers, putting us right inside a no-less-bewildered Scottie - an excellent instance of what I call Hitchcock's 'subjective technique'. Equally, I would not for a moment want to deny Hitchcock's own ambivalent position about the Romantic side of VERTIGO, meaning that a part of him always wanted to believe in 'transcendental' things, even when his own 'hard-headedness' told him that they were 'all in the mind'. (I have known several Catholics who were like that. My late friend, Ron Conway, a prominent Melbourne psychologist and Catholic layman, kept a special part of his extensive bookshelves for what he called his 'occult' volumes, including mystical and Eastern works. For what it's worth, Ron was also well-read in Nietzsche, whose influence on a film like VERTIGO seems clear to me.)
To conclude, I'm going to quote from an email I received just last month from another friend, Melbourne film exhibitor and film buff, Ross Campbell. He writes: 'I have just had the pleasure of re-reading your "Fragments of the Mirror" piece on VERTIGO and its sources. What prompted this was a recently-purchased Warner Brothers' Archive release of Curtis Bernhardt's CONFLICT, which, up until now, I had never seen. I had quite forgotten the VERTIGO connection, so it was with great pleasure that I viewed the pawn shop and vacant apartment scenes as the deja vu kicked in.'
And Ross added: 'Bogart [in CONFLICT] following his "first wife" through the city streets reminded me also of Cocteau's scene [in ORPHEE, 1950] of Orphee following The Princess through deserted Parisian streets.' Which sounds another plausible VERTIGO link to me. After all, Hitchcock had been an admirer of Cocteau's BLOOD OF A POET (1930) and ingeniously echoed its opening and closing scenes the following year in the opening and closing scenes of THE SKIN GAME.
I rest my case, Mike.
- Ken Mogg
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